N. Korean defector's video continues to go viral

By KH디지털2

Published : March 21, 2017 - 16:33

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A video of a North defector's emotional speech has gained tremendous interest from the globe most recently on Facebook, reaching more than 80 million views, a US broadcaster said Tuesday.

Park Yeon-mi, along with her mother, escaped North Korea to China in 2007 at 13 and settled in South Korea in 2009. She rose to global prominence after delivering a speech on how she escaped her mother nation at the One Young World Summit in Dublin in October 2014, an international forum for young leaders from around the world to find solutions to pending global issues. Park is now an activist to promote human rights in the North.

Park Yeon-mi at a human rights conference in Geneva on Feb. 24, 2015. (Yonhap)

"The three-year-old video has received 81 million views since it was republished on the 'Higher Perspective' Facebook page on March 12," Voice of America said. The video has already been watched by tens of millions of people via YouTube.

In the speech, she shocked the world by saying she saw her mother raped by a Chinese broker on the first day of their escape to China.

Park said her mother sacrificed herself in order to protect her, and claimed, "About 70 percent of female North Korean defectors in China become crime targets, or are sold for a mere US$200."

She also recalled her time in the North. At nine years old, Park said she watched her friend's mother being publicly executed for "watching a Hollywood movie."

The heart-wrenching speech made her one of the BBC's 100 Women in 2014.

Park is known to have gotten a green card in the United States and is now studying at Columbia University in New York. (Yonhap)

N. Korean defector's video continues to go viral

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