As an avid listener and fan of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, I would recommend listening to any episode. However, there is one recent episode in particular that I feel must be shared.
Yeonmi Park, as described by her Wiki page, is a North Korean defector and activist whose family fled North Korea to China in 2007 and settled in South Korea in 2009, before moving to the United States in 2014. Her family turned to black-market trading during North Korea's economic collapse in the 1990s. Her father was sent to a labor camp for smuggling. They fled to China, where Park and her mother fell into the hands of human traffickers and she was sold into slavery before escaping to Mongolia. She is now an advocate for victims of human trafficking in China and works to promote human rights in North Korea and around the globe.
It’s obvious that Yenomi had an incredibly difficult life in North Korea, but what that Wikipedia description leaves out are the horrifying details she discusses on the podcast. I want people to go and listen for themselves, so I’m not giving away any spoilers.
What I will mention, however, is Yeonmi’s response to our ‘problems’ here in America. She can’t comprehend our silly ‘first-world problems’ that we take so seriously.
Let’s think about some of the ‘problems’ many of us have in our daily lives…
- Our Amazon package arrives a day late
- Having bad cell phone service
- Waiting in line at a fast-food restaurant
- Getting yelled at by the self-check-out automated voice for unexpected items in the bagging area
- Having our order messed up at a restaurant
- Not being able to listen to YouTube while our phone is locked
- Running out of hot water in the shower
-Not getting enough likes on a social media post
- Pouring a bowl of cereal only to find out there’s no milk in the fridge
To a girl who grew up in the dictatorship of North Korea, where their daily problems involve life or death, our problems are incredibly ridiculous.
The vast majority of us can go about our day without having to truly worry about being trafficked, raped, murdered, or put into labor camps. We don’t have to go searching for food every day in hopes of finding a wild snake or rat to eat. We can drive to the nearest McDonald’s and get more food than we need for less than $15. We have the freedom to say what we want, wear what we want, and be who we want. We can say, “man, I can’t stand our president. We need a new one,” without the government executing us and our families. We can choose where we work, what kind of businesses to run, and how we spend our money.
These ‘basic’ freedoms that we all take for granted here in the United States are not even on the radar of people living in places like North Korea. We Americans need to understand how incredibly lucky we are to live in such a great place and how foolish many of our problems are.
I highly encourage you to listen to this podcast and still try to complain that the waitress hasn’t brought your side of ketchup yet.
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