"Even North Korea is not this nuts," North Korean defector Yeonmi Park said of her experience at Columbia University. "North Korea was pretty crazy, but not this crazy."
The 27-year-old Park said she went to Columbia from a South Korean university in 2016, but her staying at the school left her upset.
"I expected that I was paying this fortune, all this time and energy, to learn how to think. But they are forcing you to think the way they want you to think," Park said. "I realized, wow, this is insane. I thought America was different, but I saw so many similarities to what I saw in North Korea that I started worrying."
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One such similarity Park noticed was an anti-Western sentiment, but she also noted that other red flags, such as collective guilt and extreme political precision, were also pervasive at the school.
In one instance, Park said she was “scolded” by a staff member for saying she enjoyed classic literature such as Jane Austen.
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"I said, ‘I love those books.’ I thought it was a good thing," Park said. "Then, she was like, 'Did you know that those writers, who had a colonial mindset, were racists and bigots who wrote those books? So they are subconsciously brainwashing you.'"
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Park noted that such occurrences were not alone, as every class she took at the school included the kind of anti-American propaganda she had grown up with as a young student in North Korea.
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"’American bastard' was one word for North Koreans,” Park said she was taught growing up. "The math problems would say, 'There are four American bastards, you kill two of them, how many American bastards are left to kill?'"
The North Korean defector was also worried about issues related to gender and language, remembering how every class would require students to tell the class their favored pronouns.
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"English is my third language. I learned it as an adult. I sometimes [still] say 'he' or 'she' by mistake, and now they are going to ask me to call them 'they'? How the heck do I incorporate that in my sentences?" Park asked.
"It was chaos," Park continued. "It felt like the regression in civilization."
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Park said she used to hire professors and fellow students in debates and claims but learned fast “how to just shut up" so she could have her grades and GPA.
She noted that as she was growing up in North Korea, she had no thought of love and liberty. Park took aim at students who told stories of being oppressed, arguing they did not know what real oppression looks like.
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