In 2014, Park was selected as one of the BBC 100 Women. [30] She moved to New York City in 2014 to complete her memoir while continuing to work as an activist. [31] Park became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2021, [1] and was married to an American man named Ezekiel from 2017 to 2020, with whom she had a son. [27] Park and her mother found a Christian shelter headed by Chinese and South Korean missionaries in Qingdao. Due to the city's large ethnic Korean population, they were able to evade the attention of authorities. With the help of the missionaries, they fled to South Korea through Mongolia. [21] Claiming asylum in Mongolia [ edit ]

Jolley, Mary Anne (3 September 2014). "Celebrity Defector: Speaking out against North Korea". Dateline. Archived from the original on 8 May 2020 . Retrieved 23 December 2020.At three the following morning, Yeonmi and her mother took his remains to a nearby mountain and secretly buried them. ‘There was no funeral. Nothing,’ Yeonmi says. ‘I couldn’t even do that for my father. I couldn’t call anyone to say my father had passed away. He was 45 – really young. We couldn’t even give him painkillers." Dissenting voice ... Park Sang-hak, releasing a balloon carrying anti-North Korea leaflets, has been branded ‘human scum’ by the regime. Photograph: Jung Yeon-je/AFP/Getty Images After escaping North Korea for China, Park and her mother then travelled to Mongolia, where according to Park they were both arrested in Mongolia where the guards stripped them naked every day. [7] Experts, including professor Shi-eun Yu who worked with North Korean defectors for many years and Professor Kim Hyun-ah, were both highly skeptical of this story. [39] They told journalists that they had never heard of any North Korean defectors being stripped naked in Mongolia. According to professor Yu: "In the past, the South Korean government has sent counselors over to Mongolia to help North Korean defectors in detention... so how can defectors be stripped naked everyday?" [7]

In the meantime, the love theme is casually inserted in the story, when a rich, smart, cool and older (I am running out of adjectives) kid falls for the 13 year Park, despite the social class gap. I recommend Yeonmi's book to all asylums and refugees and all Americans especially the young generation to have some awareness about what is going on in the world so they appreciate what a great country they have and I should say we have because I am a proud US citizen and I love my second home country. Yet there were people, including her father, who (silently) questioned the propaganda of a North Korean socialist paradise. Illegal access to Chinese and South Korean television programmes showed people in “enemy nations” enjoying plentiful food, clothing and reliable power electricity while in North Korea, emaciated bodies regularly turned up in rubbish heaps and the streets were full of people crying for help. Journalists have stated that Park's memories and descriptions of her early life are often contradictory and at odds with those of her mother, as well as descriptions of life in North Korea by other defectors, and that her story has changed depending upon the audience. [14] [3] [7] In 2023 The Washington Post published an article by Will Sommer after the launch of Park's second book, While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector's Search for Freedom in America, described as Park's "disenchantment with American liberalism", writing that "Park is making the media rounds to raise alarms about another nation: the United States". [3] Sommer wrote: [3]Park was born on 4 October 1993 in Hyesan, Ryanggang, North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea – DPRK); [19] her father was Park Jin-Sik and her mother was Byeon Keum-sook. [20] Her older sister, Eun-mi, was born in 1991. [19] Her childhood was during the North Korean famine. [7] Today Yeonmi Park is a human rights activist, speaking out against the North Korean regime and appealing to the world to help the people still suffering in her home country. She got that coveted university place, became a television personality (appearing on a talk and talent show featuring North Korean defectors) married and became a mother. Confronting The Past Yeonmi Park was born in North Korea in 1993, escaped to China in 2007 and settled in South Korea in 2009. She rose to global prominence after she delivered an emotional speech at the One Young World 2014 Summit in Dublin, Ireland, calling on the world to help the millions of people suffering at the hands of the North Korean regime. Her speech received 50 million views in two days on YouTube and social media I am most grateful for two things: that I was born in North Korea, and that I escaped from North Korea.” - Yeonmi Park