And what this book does is it allows people even if you haven't traveled outside the United States to get some kind of perspective, because she's essentially telling the story of moving from one place with one worldview to another place with a different worldview, and did they couldn't be more starkly different, you know, and it just gets you thinking about what is worldview and the power of ideas.
Hi, Friends, Welcome to Ideas have consequences, the podcasts of the disciple nations Alliance, where we examine how our mission as Christians is to not only spread the gospel around the world to all the nations. But our mission also includes to transform the nations to increasingly reflect the truth, goodness and beauty of God's kingdom. Tragically, the church has largely neglected the second part of our mission. And today, most Christians have little influence on their surrounding cultures. Join us on this podcast as we rediscover what it means for each of us to disciple the nations and to create Christ honoring cultures that reflect the character of the living God.
Well, welcome again to another episode of ideas have consequences. This is the podcast of the disciple nations Alliance. My name is Scott Allen, I'm president of the DNA and I'm joined today by Luke Allen by Shawn Carson. And Dwight Vogt. Hi, guys, good to be with you today. And, yeah, we're gonna we're going to talk today about a book that we some of us have read, others have listened to podcasts, but it's had a huge, I would say huge influence on us has been very powerful in terms of just kind of shaping and stirring up our thinking it's a book by yami Park. And the title of the book is wall time remains a North Korean defectors search for freedom in America. And I know yami Park has been on a variety of podcasts, and many people now are familiar with her name. She was interviewed by Jordan Peterson A while ago, and I know that podcast garnered a lot of attention. I think that may be how we kind of came across her name. But she's got two books, actually, the first book I have picked up and I don't have the title in front of me, but it's more of her story of growing up in North Korea. This book is it picks up where that one left off. And this is really about her time now living in the United States as an immigrant, and attending Columbia University, and just really her concern about what she's seeing in the United States, with the kind of capture of so much of our institutions and our culture by
by cultural Marxism or critical theory, really these Marxist ideas that she is very familiar with from growing up in North Korea, and just how alarmed she is that those same horrible ideas are have taken such route in in the United States. And so the book is really about how do we stop that? How do we prevent these ideas from taking the United States down the same road that North Korea has gone down? Anyways, it's an amazing story of survival of, of just what it's like to live in North Korea, what's happening in North Korea. And I thought maybe we could just begin by for those who aren't familiar with the book, or with the story, but just kind of lay out the story. And then we're going to drill in on a few points. You know, what we want to talk about today is, you know, ideas have consequences. I mean, just the ideas that led to North Korea. And then of course, her experience with a wholly different country, the United States and the ideas that led to many of the freedoms and the prosperity and things that we enjoy and take for granted here. So we want to be looking at that question of ideas shaping culture here. And she's she's really a great guide guide for us in that but so yummy Park. She's about the age of my, my eldest daughter Kayla, she's, I think she's in her late 20s or early 30s. She was born and raised in the north part of North Korea along the Yalu River, which is the border of China so she was kind of a rocks throw away from China there. She had a sister I believe, I'm not sure exactly how big her family was a mother and father and sister. And you know I guys I'd love to hear your thoughts on on this aspect of it that she she tells what it was like to grow up in North Korea and I mean, we know about North Korea at some level but the level of insight that she gave as to what it's like to live there was really sobering to me and really eye opening. You know, for those of you aren't too familiar with that history, North Korea was up until World War, the end of World War Two was obviously part of South Korea that was supposed to there was just Korea. Prior to World War Two, the Japanese had taken over korea and made it into a kind of a colony of, of Imperial Japan. And then after the Japanese were defeated in World War Two, there was immediately a war over what was going to happen with Korea after that. And the Soviet Union kind of came down and was making a play to take all of Korea over is a client state a kind of a Soviet client state, but then the United States joined in that fight to kind of keep Korea free. And so that was the that was the beginning of the Korean War in the 1950s. That really was fought essentially to a stalemate and, and left Korea divided. And so today, we still have this divided Korea, we have north and south but one is the north part is still dominated by kind of Stalinist Marxist ideas, obviously with its own kind of Korean flavor. And the South is, is you know, a free democratic country. And incredibly prosperous so I mean, Korea itself is such a fascinating case study and ideas have consequences. Many of you probably have seen the pics famous satellite picture of, of the Korean peninsula at night, you know what half of its dark North Korea, there's just there's very little infrastructure, there's almost no power. It's it's it's poor, impoverished, and desperately kind of, I mean, people are literally starving to death there. And then you go to South Korean it's, it's just an economic powerhouse, you know, so anyways, it's, it's, that's where we're at today. So she grew up in North Korea. And she talks about just what it's like living in North Korea today how she and her sister were starving to death very often on the way to school, they would eat, you know, dragonflies and crickets, because that was the only protein they could find. They were some, it's it's hard to find places, honestly, in the world today, even in Africa, or places where even in Southeast Asia, Bangladesh where there's just extreme malnutrition like that. I think
what struck me and hearing her story, too, is I mean, right now she's, you know, trained in Colombia. She's brilliant. She's probably going to get a PhD someday. She's just a brilliant woman. She is very articulate. And yeah, growing up in North Korea. You know, our podcast is ideas have consequences. She actually didn't wrestle with ideas. she wrestled with survival. Yes. And I was struck by all she cared about was, how do I get my next meal? What do I eat? And that was that drove her life
that drove Elijah survival. Yeah, it's kind of Maslow's hierarchy, you know, or she, she just couldn't think about these things higher on meaning and purpose in life and whatnot. I mean, she was just basically living everyday to survive. As she talks about the way that she describes North Korea is it's ruled by Is it Kim Jong Hoon, third generation, you know, dictator there. And it's, it's as close as you can come, I think, guys to what George Orwell writes about in 1984. I mean, it's, it is a prison camp. I mean, it's completely locked down. And the people there are completely indoctrinated cult like indoctrination, you know, they don't understand what's going on anywhere else in the world. You know, it's just complete mind control. And it's hard to imagine that you know, that it can happen. But it does that there's no access to internet, you know, there's just no connection to the outside world. And if you do happen to bring any of that in and introduce kind of these, you know, outside ideas that are a threat to the regime, you go to prison camp, and those prison camps are pervasive. I mean, millions of North Koreans are in prison camps today. And there is brutal and as deadly as any camp in history. I think that's the thing that struck me is I'm reading about something that sounds like the concentration camps in Nazi Germany during World War Two. And it's today Like it's going on now. And it's not some small scale thing. We're talking about millions of people, you know. And that just, I was really I was kind of gripped by that, just and
she was talking about levels of the camps. I mean, yes, one, none of them allow any freedom at all. But there are some that are basically death camps, and others are just holding tanks and others you go to because your great grandfather was on the wrong side and said something bad. And so now you are guilty, because of what your grandfather did. And you live in this, quote, concentration camp.
Yeah, she always well, she talked about, I think her mother and her mother was, at one point warned her about, you have to watch every word you say everything that you say, because if you speak the wrong thing, you will go to prison camp. And so they lived in this incredible fear, you know, of that. And not only, you know, not only would you go to prison camp, I mean, you know, your family members that had nothing to do with what you were saying or thinking they also would go in so you know, this is just another way of controlling people. So it's, it's really frightening when you see what I mean, it's, it's, in some ways, it's kind of pure Marx, Marxism. Everyone's equal, everyone's equally destitute, right? Except for that ruling regime. I mean, those guys are living in wealth, you know, and prosperity, you know, so it's just, it's about as evil as you can get. I don't know guys any other. And he jumped out at you about that part of the book, but
equally destitute of knowledge about how the world works. I mean, the fact that she, there were words that she never had heard before concepts that she had never heard, because they're never expressed in North Korea, whether it's love or justice, or, and so there's this level of understanding of life that was just so minimal. It was just so it struck me,
it did me too. In fact, that was something that really stood out to me in the book, Dwight was, she talked about words, and and she talked about how the regime in their education systems, as meager as they were, they just didn't teach anything other than the doctrine of the party. And they didn't teach you any kind of vocabulary. So she said, I didn't have I didn't understand words like love, or freedom. And she said, of course, the regime doesn't want you to have an idea of what freedom is, because you don't know that you're a slave, if you don't know what freedom is. And she called it she called it the totalitarian or the tyranny of the mind. It was the it was the deepest form of tyranny. Right? It was, it was that it was this mind control. But it was mind control by not teaching words that when I read that, you know, Dwight, Sean, look, I mean, I thought, Well, how did I come to know these words, right? We just kind of grow up in the United States with some level of understanding about these words, from our parents from books we read when we're children, you know, from then, of course, from the Bible later on, and in, you know, we have these ideas. And it just got me thinking again, about the power of words, right? Again, we take this for granted, because we, as I often say, we just use words, we don't think about them. But words are like packages, like gifts, that inside that is an idea. It's a concept that leads to a culture a way of living, you know, and that if you don't have that word, you can't create that culture. You can't, you just can't You can't.
I remember I just talking about that. It's hard to imagine what that is, and how that works. Because we can't think of, we can't think without words, and yet, we're so exposed to words as children, and we've known
them all our lives.
But I do remember, as a little boy, my parents spoke Low German. And once in a while, my dad would say something in Low German, and my mother would laugh. And so as kids would go, what would you just say, you know, what was that and they would try to translate the idea that was behind that Low German phrase. And it didn't actually translate across the girls, you just need to know Low German, you know, you in other words, we needed to know the word in order to understand the the idea that they were trying to express and I was, that was the first time I encountered this mystery of, of ideas without words and not knowing those ideas. So
anyway, yeah, it's funny, because that's actually a concept from 1984. There's so many parallels, I just, I just read 1984 A few weeks ago, Georgia oil Yeah. George Orwell's book. Yeah. Which he was written in 1948, which was the same year that North Korea became a country. The quote from the book says, But if thought corrupts language, language can corrupt thought. It's exactly what you were just saying. One of the things I took away from the book is, well, we were just saying it earlier. that when people are in abject poverty, they can't even think about desiring freedom or love, or a revolution of any sort to overthrow this government holding them in their place. And yet, they weren't just they weren't just hungry, impoverished for physical means they were impoverished on every level, like we've talked about before, on the podcast, poverty is more than just physical, having a deficit of physical things. It's, it's a poverty of relationship, a poverty of a spiritual poverty, a poverty of intellect. And all of those are just plaguing North Korea today in 2023. And because of that, ease people, you know, Yomi parks is one of the questions he gets most often is why don't the people revolt? You know, they know they're their life shouldn't be this way, in a way, you know, they're just barely scraping by. And yet, they can't even think of that, because all they're trying to do is survive next day. Right. Yeah. Right. Also, as far as poverty goes, she said that we all know that metrics of $2 a day is, you know, what is considered living in abject poverty in North Korea, most people live on just under $2 a month, a month. So that that gives you an idea of how how impoverished that nation is
now. It's the starvation there, the famine and starvation that's ongoing in that country is I think, unlike anything in the in the world. And again, it's just so striking, because just it's a small country, and just to the south, it's just,
I mean, yeah, the 1212 biggest GDP, I think, in the world. Exactly.
Yeah, it's just amazing. It's ideas have consequences. And then North Korea has the fourth largest standing army in the world, too. So almost all the economic kind of whatever economic kind of gains are there are all going to support that. That huge military, you know. So anyways, back to back to words, I just got to read a section of the book, where she talks about this, she says, I had no words in my North Korean dialect, to describe a socialist paradise with nothing to envy. There are no words in North Korea for tyranny, trauma, or depression, or love, for that matter. Without words, to describe an emotion or a phenomenon, I discovered that it's easy to live your life not even knowing that they exist. totalitarian regimes understand this fact quite well. It just was a, you know, thinking about, again, the power of words and how words, you know, God in John, chapter one, you know, Jesus is described as the word and how God communicates. And he speaks words to us through the Bible, right, he communicated a written form, you know, communicates and words to us and, and he gives definitions to words. And it's part of it's a huge part of what it means to really live to be fully human, you know, is to understand God's words, right? And just again, words are something that are unique to human beings, right? Where we use words and language, that's how we communicate and speak to one another. And so we build cultures. Animals don't do that, right. And so it's part of our being made in God's image and just how important again, words are. And here's, here's a regime that's so satanic, that it just swings to the opposite extreme, you know, we're not even going to work. We're going to essentially treat people like animals, we're not going to teach them
well. And essentially, it just allows survival words, then you don't get the thought words, right. Don't get the the aesthetic words, the moral words, the beauty words, or you get a survival words. Right, you know,
right. Yeah. Even Depression, depression,
yeah, you don't know you're depressed if there's no such word for depression. And that's purposeful, right? They don't want these people to know. I mean, they're all traumatized, essentially, they're deeply traumatized. But it's, you know, it's just the way like, it's just the way life is. Right? Well, let's go on, you know, she continues in her story, but just before we go on, I just think one of the things that struck me about this part of the book about her life growing up in North Korea was I felt honestly, I felt angry. I had a lot of emotions, you know, in reading this part, because I thought, you know, again, we talk about World War Two, and we'll never again will we allow, you know, something like the Holocaust to happen or, you know, whatever it is, or the Rwandan genocide or you know, there's, there's these horrible things that happen and we, as a collective world, group of people are always saying, we'll never allow that again. And here we are. It's right here, you know, and I, you know, what am I doing? Like, am I speaking out? Am I Am I a part of raising the concern and the alarm? And, and what are we collectively in the United States? You know, this is something she gets into later that, that North Korea would not, it couldn't survive economically it would, it would collapse without, without China because it's a client state of China, which is which shares that Marxist ideology. And China benefits from North Korea is because it's a buffer, right? It's a buffer between China and South Korea and American and the kind of the free world. So it's, it's being propped up by China. And then Jambi Park comes to the United States later, we'll get to that. And she starts saying, hey, you know, we can really make an effort here in the United States to bring down this communist regime if we stopped supporting China who stopped doing business with China. And nobody's interested in that the United States, my country, our country, right, you know, and I'm thinking, oh, so we're, we collectively are somehow a part of keeping this horrible regime going. And that was pretty convicting to me. And I thought, what, so I'm still wrestling with that thought, like, what can we do? I don't want to be comfortable with this, you know, I feel like there's got to be something that can be done, you know, to bring about an end to this, this horror, that is North Korea. Anyway, she, she does escape, and that kind of moves the story forward with her sister. And as she describes it, they escaped by essentially going across the Yellow River, I think in the wintertime, when it's frozen over and, and it's not something you can just do, like, oh, let's just walk across the river to China at that border is it's like a prison camp. And that, you know, just to go across the border, you can be shot, you know, you know, there's guards everywhere. And but they were able to, you know, sneak across, I can't remember all the details of that. So
I think they bribe guards.
Maybe they bribed guards. That was what it was. Yeah, podcast. Yes. Right
guards.
And it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't like you're saying it wasn't to be free, she didn't have a concept of free as it was to eat. They literally wanted a bowl of rice, they thought if we could just get over there. And they thought that because there was lights over there, right? They saw at nighttime there was electricity, they must have food, they have electricity. Exactly was that simple. And so they got across and and then this is the I think there was a couple of years where she was in China, it wasn't too long. But this was also a really amazing and gripping part of the story. So immediately, she is taken prisoner in China, and she's made into a, a sex slave, essentially, she's trafficked, you know, sexually trafficked. And that aspect of it was it tied into some of the things that we know about China, particularly in the wake of, you know, however many, two decades of one child policy essentially. And this is again, this is such a horrible thing that happened in China, where they literally, you know, forced people to have no more than one child. And if you did, those kids were confiscated, killed. And what it led to was a preference on the part of the people since we can only have one child, you know, for, we're gonna have a male child, right? Because we want to continue to have our name and you know, anyways, it was just, it was a preference for male children. So if you had a girl, often they were aborted. And so consequently, today in China, there's this quite serious, like, imbalance between males and females. And so right now, the, the literal reality of that is that people can't find wives. I'm laughing, but it's just such a tragic thing. So there's this huge market for North Korean girls who happen to come across to feel the need, you know, and so they're trafficked into, you know, essentially she became somebody's sex slave spouse kind of person, because they couldn't find anyone you know, in China. She was she was in that kind of situation for about two years, I think. You know, as I thought that part was really horrific as well, that that's happening. And that's happening with the permission of the government of China. They're fully supporting this kind of trafficking of women from around the world to meet this need that they've got, you know, that's part of the world we live in today. So she went from kind of the frying pan to the fire so to speak. She wasn't starving at that point, but she was essentially a sex slave. And, and then she met and this was very interesting to me as well. She met some miss canaries in China up in, you know, near the border region of North Korea, and they were South Korean missionaries. Because South Korea, you know, to their great credit, the church has missionaries in China, in in that region of China, I've met some of them. And I've heard them talk about what it's like to do missions work in that part of the world, and just how dangerous and dark it is, you know, but she ran into some of these, these missionaries. And they essentially offered to help her escape to freedom, you know. And so one night, to her and a small group of other kind of North Korean defectors, we're, they arranged for them to, to essentially get across Mongolia, the Gobi Desert. And if they could get to Mongolia, then if they could get in safely to Mongolia, then it was a quick journey to South Korea, essentially, into freedom. And she talks about that journey across the Gobi desert at nighttime. It was something that you could do in a one night, I think it was something like 48 hours, but it was in the middle of winter, it was so extremely cold. And that is with her was a family with a baby and infant, you know, maybe more than one. And they all survived, they all got across that a follow stars, you know, that it was like being on a ship and you know, the ocean, they had to literally, you know, just to keep their bearings. And yeah, it was just like, you can't you're just reading this book like. And, you know, she, she says, you know, she really says God helped. I mean, at this point, she's a Christian now, and she says, you know, we were that was, that was a miracle. Like, there was no way we could have survived, given how thin we were, how starving we were and how few kind of clothes we had, without somehow kind of divine interventions, miraculous divine intervention. So I was hooked. I was really encouraged by this part of the book, like God loves knows her sees her face, you know, and he's going to help her right, he's going to rescue her, you know, and just how everyone matters to God, I just really touched me, you know, and he's got a purpose for he's got a purpose for us for you guys to write. And here's God doing this amazing thing here. So, anyway, she finds herself now in South Korea, and she's there for, I think, I want to say a couple of years as well. And just it's like going to a different planet. You know, just, these are the same people, they speak the same language with different dialects, of course, and I thought this was interesting, too, you know, the attitude of the South Koreans towards these North Koreans that would come in occasionally was was not positive. It was they really looked down their noses at them, like these were backwards Hicks. And I was that surprised? Because I thought, Oh, don't don't they want to unify, maybe they don't I don't know what the state of the North Korea, South Korea is, you know, maybe we should have some South Koreans on to talk about a level
of distrust and suspicion and rights like are these spies now? Right? Yes, surprise me as well.
It did. Yeah. So but she, you know, was able to kind of go and enroll in college, she again, she's brilliant. And she was really hungry to learn. And she just recognized right away just how much she didn't know. Like, we were talking about words. And she sees this is where she first came, became exposed. And she's in her mid 20s, to the concept of freedom. And many other things love and she's trying hard to just, like, catch up make up time, like I've got, I've got so much learning to do, you know, I just don't have much time here. You know, so she just became like, voracious in in just wanting to catch up, you know, so I thought that was that was really interesting as well. So and then I can't remember exactly how she ends up coming to the United States. Do you guys remember that?
Went to she went to some event in the UK. And from there she met somebody that Ronnie her right. Application at Columbia University or somehow, yes, Colombia then.
Yeah, she was doing she ended up doing television in, in South Korea. And she I don't remember the details. Yeah, she was she ended up doing some television. And then people she people picked her up and she ended up making a I think it was a TED talk of some sort. That about North Korea and living in North Korea and coming out of North Korea, and it went viral. You're right. So this thing went like completely viral and she was she was doing this in while she was in Ireland. Oh yeah, she traveled. She also traveled the United States during this time. It was her first time the United States she went to Tyler Texas, I thought there must be some YWAM people involved in that. Yeah, that's interesting. So, so she was traveling around and beginning to speak out about life in North Korea, she had opportunities to do that. And then she kind of became known through this viral video that she had made in that year. Right, that led, you know, to invitations to eventually comment in a study in the United States. So yeah, she she came and attended Columbia University in New York. And that's a big part of the book is it was you know, while she was at Columbia that she was exposed her well, our first being backup her first experiences of America where I mean, she, gosh, there's a part of it, maybe I could just read a little bit of it. I mean, she was blown away by the United States. Yeah, here, yeah, she reads, she writes about this in the preface. She says the United States remains the only country that for me was even more magnificent in person than its reputation. It wasn't just the friendliness of the people who are of the people who exude the confidence and openness of men and women living, worshiping and loving as they please. It was the sense of excitement of dynamism, a certain electricity in the air. And in the personal interactions. US were clearly the descendants I thought of those who had overturned imperialism and slavery, defeated fascism and communism, invented motion pictures and jazz, eliminated diseases and created the internet and landed on the moon. I knew then in there, that I wanted to live with them, and to call them my friends and my family, and even to be one of them. In January 2022, I did, I became an American citizen, I sometimes have to pinch myself as a reminder that it's true. I never imagined that I would have the degree of freedom and personal liberty that I've been able to enjoy in the United States. And I just found that part of the book, really moving because, again, this is the country I grew up in. And I think especially now, you know, we not only take for granted the freedom that we enjoy, but it's being denigrated, right? I mean, it's like we're, you know, there's just this hatred now of our heritage, we got to tear the statues down, and this and that, and there's nothing good America's colonial power that's oppressive and slate, you know. So she comes over here, and she just has this completely different perspective coming from North Korea that I thought was, to me, it was really encouraging and very refreshing. And help help me to go What, again, ideas have consequences. What Why is it that we have been able to have this kind of freedom that she immediately recognized and just thought was incredibly life giving, you know, she also
uses the words that dine dynamism, dynamism in her interactions with people and I'm thinking, you know, I don't see that. But I live here. Right? So I'm in the airport, and I go, nobody looks very dynamic here. I wonder how did we ever put a man on the moon? But but then I think of individual engagements in like in Home Depot, or Lowe's or interactions, and people are helpful, and they're, yeah, how can we solve a problem together? And yeah, personal interactions are still I think we're dying. It's dynamic there. Our pastor just returned from from urine Ireland, and it's not dynamic, it's, it's suppressed, you know, and there's something to the human spirit, that it's beautiful to see it alive.
Yeah, there's such a degree of freedom in the United States that you can still come and you can have an idea. And you can, you know, say I want to start a some kind of a business. And you can do that, you know, and you can, you can create something for your family, you can create wealth and, and that's so much a part of the DNA of the United States from the very beginning. And we just grow up with that. I think we take that for granted. She didn't in fact, she, I thought it was really powerful. She reflected a lot on her father, who she really loved. And her father ended up dying I think in a concentration camp in North Korea, he
got released, but he was as good as dead because they just destroyed his
destroyed his mind. But he was an entrepreneur. He was that was just his, his DNA. And she recognized that that's part of what it means to be human right? We got gives us this desire to create and to do something to use our innovation and our creativity and to make something and, and he had that like that was part of what he wanted to do. But he just there was no opportunity to do it in North Korea when he was caught doing that. Yes, so he did black market stuff. Yeah, he was put in prison. Yes. Yeah. He ended up actually making some money by North Korean standards by doing what you know, something use trading trading on the black market, on the black market that was essentially doing business. He was basically doing capitalistic business doing capitalistic business buying low selling high. Yep. And and he was caught and imprisoned for that. And they essentially Dwight said, Yeah, erect recti. Right. They wrecked his mind. Here she comes to United States and everyone's that's just the way we think. And she's just overwhelmed by that. Well, again, what's the idea? Where did that doesn't, you know, we take it for granted. But these ideas came from somewhere that allowed that to kind of flourish and blossom in the United States, and in other Western countries, free Western countries, you know, and I would say they come from the Bible, right.
And under thought, powerful idea, I thought was interesting is her idea of being willing to die for the dictator. And then watching like the Titanic, you know, on a pirated version of the Titanic and seeing Yeah, and seeing people be willing to die for love. And then thinking how I'm willing to die for love. I don't really want to die for this guy, but I will die for love. You know, I thought there's, there's a worldview change happening within her, you know, she's been exposed to a no idea. And now instead of dying for my leader, I'm willing to die for love. That seems like a better option for me. Yeah, better sacrifice,
just again, this idea of love. And what is that and doing something that would you would sacrifice your own life for the good of another, like that idea didn't occur to her. Nobody lives that way in North Korea? Well, parents do. She talked about her parents. I mean, this is just innate. Right? There's some, you know, part of our human dignity is or, you know, just being made in God's image is love. But yeah, so you have a culture shaped by that idea. Go ahead, Luke. Yeah, yeah, she
definitely went through a lot of worldview shock. And I find worldviews often hard to explain, you know, what is a worldview? We don't, it's hard to see. Because it's the way we see everything. Right, right. Until you go somewhere with a starkly different worldview. And all of a sudden, you start seeing these question marks pop up. And why do people do that? Why do people say that? Why do people think that? And this whole story is just such a black and white example? It's a very extreme example, of the power of words of the power world views of the power of a concept like love. And we're using this example and her story here. Yes, it's extreme. But also, I think it really does help us understand concept, using extremes helps us understand concepts and see them in smaller ways as well. So that's, that's what I that's what I appreciate about this book. And why I'd recommend it is because once you start seeing them in the extremes, which it's easier in the extremes, you start seeing them everywhere. And we start seeing that, oh, maybe you know, words are being manipulated in our own culture. And just like North Korea, we should be cautious of that. Because this is where it leads in a way it could lead. Oh, absolutely.
But I really think your point is a good one, Luke, I think, worldview is a hard concept. Because yeah, we're all kind of shaped by the world that's around us. So we're all kind of fish in a fishbowl. And it's really hard to see, you know, to understand this, it's just you know, but one of the best ways you can kind of understand a worldview is by moving to a place that has a different worldview, you know, of traveling to a different culture. I mean, this has been all of our experience, you know, when you see a place that has a different worldview, it gets you thinking about, well, what why do I think the way I think you know, what, you know, where did that come from that idea that shaped our culture? Is that a biblical idea? Or is that not a biblical idea? And what this book does is it allows people, even if you haven't traveled outside the United States to get some kind of perspective, because she's essentially telling the story of moving from one place with one worldview to another place with a different worldview. And they couldn't be more starkly different. You know, and it just gets you just like you said, Luke gets you thinking about what is worldview and the power of ideas. One of the things that stood out to me too, that she, you know, appreciated about the United States, she, she mentioned, concern for people with disabilities, you know, and, you know, you have the sidewalks and areas, you know, buttons that you push that allow for people that can't hear to cross and, you know, ramps for, you know, wheelchairs and all of these accommodations, right, for people with disabilities, like, I've never, you know, never seen that if somebody has a disability in North Korea. They are, you know, essentially exterminated, so that, you know, whatever, the gene, you know, is causing that, you know, doesn't pollute the rest of the population, you know, and it's just so completely opposite, you know, it's just one is just such a culture of death, and the other, you know, imperfectly still this kind of culture that respects life, even life that has, you know, disabilities of one sort or another that yeah, I just that was one that really stood out to her and I thought that was kind of fascinating because again, we take that often for granted you know, In
the development of the idea of freedom to like, she talked about getting to South Korea, and she could wear blue jeans and stuff and, and now you talk about freedom. And she's like, I carry this weight now, because I have this freedom, I have to say stump something. So the idea of eating what I want or wearing blue jeans to, I have to do I have to live a certain way. Now. I have a different kind of understanding of what freedom is.
Yeah, you're right, Sean, her initial idea of freedom when she was in South Korea was first exposed to the idea of freedom was I get to do what I want. And the first thought was, I got to wear blue jeans. She said freedom meant blue jeans, like I got to wear blue jeans. I mean, it was really cute. But then later, when she was in the United States, and she saw the threats to freedom, then she had a much deeper concept, she began to develop much deeper ideas about where does this freedom come from? What is it? How is it sustained?
Yeah. And why was it given to me? Yeah. And what do I need to do with it? Yeah, I think that's what we're missing. You know, we just continue to think it's just about Bluejeans, rather than thinking it's a gift that we've been given that we need to steward and us well,
right, right. Yeah. Now Exactly. Yes, she right now, she spends her days really largely advocating for human rights and change in the North Korean regime. You know, she that's she's really a human human rights activist. So anyways, back to Yeah, so she comes to the United States overwhelmed with what she's seeing, and just the differences in where, you know, what, how, how could a culture be shaped by what ideas lead to this kind of freedom and free enterprise and prosperity and, you know, care for other people and these kinds of things. It's not perfect. I mean, of course, it's not perfect, but it's a society that was shaped by the Bible. And she doesn't see this at that point. But I think that's that's the implication here. But then she goes to Columbia University, and Columbia University is actually an interesting school because it was, it's got it's one of the Ivy League schools. So it's got this very storied history to it. It's one of our elite institutions. And, and yet, in the 1950s, it was really the beachhead for this new form of Marxism. Kind of we talked about Antonio Gramsci on previous podcasts and the Frankfurt School and what became known as cultural Marxism. It was kind of an adaptation of Karl Marx's old kind of Marxism 1.0 That was focused on class and economics. And this one was much more focused on other divides other social divides race, gender, sex. But it you know, the theorists that developed this kind of reboot of Marxism, they did this in Germany. But they quickly emigrated to the United States after World War Two, and that's where they landed their jobs was in Columbia University. And so this was the the beachhead of all of these kind of bad woke ideas that have now come into the culture really did start there, and the 1950s at Columbia. And then also kind of quickly over at UCLA, so they kind of some of them went over to California. But so now she's at Columbia, and she's she's experiencing this cultural, this critical theory, woke ideology, it's dominant in the university. And she is reflecting on it, and how it's causing her to be quiet, to not speak up and to be fearful. And it's, of course, that triggers her right back to where she was at North Korea, you know, and kind of mind control and she's going, it's the same, it's the same set of ideas that are here in the United States in this elite universities that that were in North Korea that were that were essentially being promulgated in North Korean regime that led to that outcome. And she's stunned by that, like, how could this happen in this free country, where these horrible ideas that have destroyed a country and are destroying people are now dominant in this university and I, I know in Jordan Peterson's interview with her at the point where she talks about her experience at Columbia, Jordan Peterson probes and says, was there not one professor there, that that helped you to learn and to grow? Were they all captured by this Marxist ideology? And, and she thinks and she pauses and she says, No, and he starts crying. Like it really touched me. Because because he's a man of you know, from he loves the, you know, he loves the world of the of the academy and that he has an appreciation For the, for these institutions and what they've meant to sustain free societies and how they've been completely captured. It literally brings him to tears. Yeah,
I mean real tears. If you watch the video, they're flowing down his face just
Yeah, well, that's not just grieving this. Yeah, no, that's not fake. That's right. You know, it's
it's amazing.
Yeah.
Yeah, I thought it was interesting because she says something about everybody wanting to make her a victim. Yes. She didn't feel like a victim. But everybody's telling her she is. Yeah, she she should be one. Right. I was like, she was revolting against that.
Yeah. She has a lot of detail about what the ideology looked like at Columbia University. She was living it out. And I could read many examples from the book. But I think if you know it, I would give this book to somebody if they said, Scott, what is this kind of ideology of social justice? A critical theory? I mean, I wrote a book about that myself. But if I had to give a book to somebody to get a really clear idea of what it looks like, I would give this book because just she talks about it from her own experience with it. And she understands these ideas from North Korea, right? I mean, it's this it's not, there's no question in her mind that this is Marxism. Yeah. Right. You know, like, if you talk to a lot of these people that promulgate this ideology, and you say, Oh, this is Marxist, they'll deny it. No, this is not part of, you know, they'll think you're calling them names and being demeaning. I mean, she just sees it straight up, like now this is just, this is exactly what I learned in North Korea, you know, and this is where it goes. I mean, this is where you're going. And so the title, hence the title of her book, while time remains like we've got time to turn the ship around, but not much, you know, because if we don't, it's going ahead. We're gonna end up you know, we're North Korea's is today's Yeah,
it's, it's crazy to me because she's, she's promoting freedom. She's seen where Marxism goes. And she's speaking against that. And, you know, she's really giving a pro American message. And I mean, really, this isn't America, right? These are biblical idea, biblical ideas. She's promoting these, and yet now in the US, she is heavily censored. You know, she's, she's had social media accounts taken, we posted one of her quotes on our own social media, and it was censored. It's crazy. It's like people are trying to silence her.
Just just like in North Korea. I mean, that's it's alarming, it really is that she's such a threat to the regime, even here, you know, and no, I agree. Look, that's very sobering when you think about the way that she's being treated. You know, she talks about why she ended up writing the book, and I thought this part of the story was also pretty fascinating. You know, she, she recognizes that this new form of Cultural Marxism, right? It this kind of idea of intersectionality that there's a scale of victimization. And everyone kind of finds a place on that scale. If you're somebody with a white skin, you're an oppressor, right, you're you're on this side of it, you know, kind of at the maximum level of oppression, you know, you're you have privilege, you benefit from all these systems of oppression because of the skin color and whatnot, male. But then she talks about if you're Asian, like she is, you're, you're a very adjacent to that white skinned person, you're actually on the sight of the oppressor. And so she I mean, this part is just, it's almost like humorously, like, ironic. So here's, she's a victim of oppression, like, unlike probably anyone I've ever read. Growing up in North Korea, as a, as a woman, and well, just in North Korea. I mean, it's just I mean, she knows oppression, like nobody knows oppression. And yet, she comes over here. And now because of this ideology, she's put into the camp of the oppressor, and she's starting to be treated as an oppressor. And this comes across very clearly when she's in Chicago, she's, you know, she's married, has a child, a baby, and she's robbed, essentially, she's right downtown. And, you know, somebody comes up and robs her kind of in, in Open Daylight, and takes her purse. I'm not exactly phone. And people are standing around watching it. And, but they're not doing anything. And at some point, somebody yells from the clerk crowd that's looking on kind of she deserves it. She, you know, she deserves what she's getting here. Because she's an oppressor. And I just, you know, how did I become an oppressor? You know, and this is the United States now, right? And she said, You know, I just knew I needed to write a book, you know, just because this ideology is, not only is it shaped the universities, but it's got out into the culture to such a degree to degree that this can happen, you know, in one of our cities, you know. So, anyways, guys, it's an amazing book. I really want to encourage everyone to read it. because if you're interested in the power of ideas to shape culture, there's probably no more powerful book that you can read than this book. It'll just really help you understand ideas, the consequences of ideas in real time. What what what are the kinds of thoughts as we kind of wrap it up guys did did you? What were some of the things that you took away from the book that you thought were really powerful or that really touched you? And then I want to move on to kind of how do we, you know, what's the takeaway here today? So
like, one word is perseverance, just her everything that she's gone through from growing up there to running away to being a victim, a sex slave victim, and just thinking, gosh, she had all the reasons to give up and not keep going. Yes. And everything was against her. Much of her growing up. Yes. And she persevered through all that. Yes. So good word. I think for us.
It's kind of amazing that she Yeah, she all that she went through starving to death, sex slavery, you know, and yet she's, yeah, she's exactly persevering, and just really continuing to do work for the good. Yeah, it's very inspiring.
My takeaway, maybe where you're going with the conversation, but it was the, the stark atheism of North Korea. And how to, to eliminate Imago Dei to eliminate human rights to eliminate human creativity and dominion and love even Yeah, you have to, you have to eliminate God. Yes. And, and so you replace God with a vacuum, which is the great leader, and a great leader decides how you will live and experience life. And so everything that we enjoy flows from an understanding of the Creator. That's right. And yet, that was the key. You have to destroy the Creator. Yeah, North Korea, right.
Yeah, every kind of all the biblical concepts that she, you know, came came rushing over her when she escaped North Korea. All the things that she saw in the world that were beautiful, we're all biblical concepts, because she lived in abject poverty of them. Love freedom. We've mentioned them all. And yeah, ideas, sheep culture, North Korea has only been around for I mean, the Korean War ended exactly 50 years ago now. And it only know seven years ago, now, it's only taken 70 years for them to pretty much wipe God off the face of that country. And if us as Christians aren't working to shape a culture, shape idea, someone's always shaping culture, you know, someone's always promoting a worldview to a culture. If Christians aren't doing that, you know, consistently, courageously, like we see the prophets in the Old Testament, and someone else is going to do it in that that that hole is going to be filled. And for me, that just gives me it just really motivates me like, right, humans, humans can lose these things. We always think, oh, you can't lose these things. They're just in grounded us. It's like no, that can be stripped away from us not easily, because there are default, because we're made in the image of God, but they can be taken away from us. And as Christians, we shouldn't hope that other people are going to promote love for us, if we're not doing it and hope that other people are going to promote freedom if we're not, because God's laid those out in the Bible. And he's given us the Bible, and written it on our hearts, and we have the Holy Spirit in us and have that clarity to work with him to promote those to the world. And to create a world that, you know, is healthier for everyone. No one wants to see a world that's like North Korea. So yeah, idea shaped culture. And this is such a clear example of that in a short amount of time.
Absolutely. Yeah, there was one other aspect of this book I thought was very fascinating to you. I mean, her life just because again, it blows me away, because again, she's the age of my oldest daughter, you know, and I still think of my oldest daughter's pretty young, right? And she's had so much life that she's lived but she she tells, you know, an aspect of the story here in the United States where she because she becomes a bit of a YouTube sensation with some of her videos that she is. She's introduced to a lot of people at the highest levels of kind of elite culture, politicians, entertainers, and at one point, she talks about how she's, she's living in New York and she's literally picked up one evening by a private jet. That's, I think it's the property of some draw Hollywood director, and all of these kind of elite, you know, people Wall Street people, entertainers from New York You know, are on that jet with her and they fly her to this conference in the San Francisco area where all of these elite people get together and talk about how to make the world a better place. And she is, so she meets a lot of them, Hillary Clinton, she mentioned she meets her personally, you know, these, the, you know, these elites, and they want her to speak about, you know, her experience in North Korea. And she does and, and they're all moved. And then she kind of says, you know, you guys have the ability to do something about this. And they all kind of nod their head and say, Yes, we we will do something to make, you know, to to relieve the suffering of people in North Korea. And then she waits and waits and nothing happens, nobody does anything. And she just has this really damning kind of scathing kind of critique of American elites, that they are so captured by money from China that they are not going to speak out against, you know, the Chinese Communist Party, and, you know, the things that they could do to actually make a difference in North Korea, they're not going to do and I just thought that her perspective on kind of our cultural elites was also pretty. It was interesting, like, she literally got to know these people, you know, and now now she's out of favor, of course, with with those folks. But but she she had that experience. Yeah, I think for me, guys, you know, it got me again, thinking about just the power of culture and how, just as you were saying, Luke, somebody's always shaping culture. And if it isn't Christians, based on you know, the reality of God and the reality what it means to be made in God's image and the reality and the truthfulness of Biblical words like freedom and love and justice, it's going to be somebody else. If we just sit back and don't do anything, to create that kind of a culture, then somebody else by default is going to be creating it. And what that means today is that they'll likely be atheistic. And that does lead to hell. I mean, that's the basic message of the book, that North Korea is hell. And that's where it goes, and our calling as Christians is to be salt and light is to, is to not just see our friends saved, but to create a culture based on the truth of the Bible. It that's life giving and leads to flourishing. And I know people are always been like, well, what does that mean, for me? I don't create culture. And I just want again, challenge people. Yes, you do. We, we are, we are all culture creators, that's part of our DNA, we're part of what makes us human. Culture, again, is I just defined it as the way we do things around here, well, where's here, that here could be as large as a nation, or as small as a family, or a sports team, or business or wherever it is that you've got some influence? There, you're going to be creating a culture and it's going to be created around a certain set of ideas, and has to be done intentionally, if it's going to be biblical. And words again, words, are you I think this is a great message of this book. Are you tuned in to the importance of biblical definitions? And are you do you know them? yourself? And are you teaching them to your children or to the other people in your life? Are you Are they at the basis of policies in your businesses, or the way you treat your your players on a sports team or whatever it is? So thoughts, guys on that whole area of culture creation, because I think this is really what the DNA is about. It's about helping Christians get back into the business of creating cultures that are, that are that are true and good and beautiful. Yeah. And I
think that, that, you know, Jesus Prayer was taught his disciples, his prayer was like kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And, and culture is a reflection of His will being done. And so when you have a sports team, and you're coaching the seven year old boys, you're creating a culture you are creating, you are doing Kingdom business at that point. Exactly. Or if you have a classroom and you're teaching some second graders, you are creating Kingdom culture at that point. So we don't think in terms of what we're doing is creating culture but it's, it's right related to the answer to Jesus Prayer.
Yeah, I encourage people to think about their everyday life, even their the street that they live in on their neighbors, you can literally begin to shape a culture in a neighborhood. But you have to kind of be aware that that's a part of our calling. Right? It's it's to and it's to bring these ideas, these powerful ideas, these biblical ideas, to play. I think, very often, again, Christians just have very narrow idea of what it means to live out the Christian faith. It's just to, again, preach the gospel, praise God for that. We're always going to say that that's essential. But it doesn't go beyond that. Right? It doesn't in any kind of talk about culture. Well, now that's that's kind of a rabbit trail or a sidetrack. Maybe
we should have a show just on creating culture in your neighborhood. Yeah, yeah. Does that look like
what does that look like? How do you do that? Yeah, great. Cool. Yeah, yeah. So anyways, it's, it's a book I highly recommend to you. And in fact I've heard you should go out and get both of her books and really should read them in order the first one has a lot more to do I haven't read that yet. But it has a lot more to do with her growing up in North Korea and this one is more of her experience in the United States. If you want to learn more about the woke worldview that now is dominating in our in the west and kind of in our institutions. This is a fantastic book to read it gives you incredible perspective on what that worldview is what's behind it how it's connected to Marxism going all the way back to people like Stalin and Marx himself so anyways, great guys great discussion and yeah, just again urge you to just you know, to pick this book up listen to to Yan, Mian podcasts and, and use this as a great opportunity to kind of sharpen your own thinking. All right, well, thanks for thanks for listening to another episode of ideas have consequences. This is the podcast of the disseminations.
Thank you so much for listening. A couple of things before we wrap up today. Firstly, make sure to stay tuned here on ideas have consequences as we have some really exciting guests coming up as well as topics and those guests include Nancy Pearcey, Brian fikkert and Tom maskel. In the discussion topics vary from the redefinition of love to Pride Month Christian nationalism toxic masculinity in a worldview approach to poverty fighting, I am sorry that those topics are a little bit negative, but they are some of the most prevalent ideas that we see around the world today. So we are going to try to address those and their consequences here on the podcast. Secondly, if you'd like to learn more about Yomi Park in her book while time remains a North Korea defectors search for freedom in America, head to this episode's landing page, which I have linked down in the description below. On that landing page, you can also see her other book in order to live a North Korean girl's journey to freedom as well as other podcasts, interviews with her and other resources that we hope will help you dive deeper into today's topic on the power of ideas to shape cultures and even nations. Ideas have consequences is brought to you by the disciple nations Alliance. To learn more about our ministry you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and now Twitter or on our website which is disciple nations.org. Thanks again for listening and we hope you join us here next Tuesday on ideas have consequences.
