Speaking to pupils at a John Locke Lecture in March, JiHyun Park recounted the harrowing tale of her two attempts to escape the country of her birth. Her first attempt, in 1998, resulted in her discovery and forced repatriation; her second attempt in 2004 entailed a swim across the Tumen River, which divides North Korea and China to the West, whilst being shot at by soldiers. In 2008, after ten years of attempting to flee and with the help of the UN, she was granted asylum seeker status in the UK, where she now lives with her family.

During her talk, JiHyun, who in 2021 stood to become a Conservative councillor in Bury, and last year penned a memoir, The Hard Road Out, explained how 5,000 years of shared history in the Korean peninsula collapsed in 1948, with the Kim ‘family business’ then rising to power. Now, in a country in which women’s rights is not a concept and the population is under constant surveillance, she highlighted that two primary emotions exist – happiness and hatred – the latter symbolised by the dislike of the West, which is a crucial part of the party’s ideology. Identifying the different components of the regime, she spoke of how North Korean citizens are victims of cultural genocide; the ruling party destroyed the country’s heritage and the population was left stateless and enslaved, and stripped of the ability to travel even within their own country.

Focusing on education, Park described how everything she learned in school was driven by the ideologies of the state party and based on a fictional story of the country’s history. Members of society faced daily tests to assess their knowledge of this adopted history, with the party exercising their authority if people failed to remember the false facts. JiHyun recalled that whilst she was studying, pupils who did not achieve a top grade in the leader’s history class would not get into university, even if they had the best grades in other subjects such as science or maths.

Like so many others, JiHyun also suffered from hunger and lost family members to starvation. When she was growing up in the 1980s, North Korea was on the cusp of a devastating famine, which came to be known as the ‘Arduous March’, with millions dying of starvation in the 1990s. Before she defected from the country, the party was rationing food to a devastating extent, with older women being given far less to eat than men and young people.

Concluding her address, JiHyun invited pupils to reflect on their own education and their rights, and to not take them for granted.

Reflecting on the talk, Alice (Sixth Form, MM) said: “It was extremely important to hear from JiHyun Park about the inner workings of the totalitarian North Korean regime, as well as her experiences, including her tumultuous escape. It is often too easy to forget about the human aspect of regimes, what the individual must feel deeply indoctrinated and imprisoned by the regime, and the slow, difficult process of learning to start over, as a recognised human being with rights, in a new country. Pressing questions were raised surrounding the Republic’s future, whether there are signs that the next generation might grow disillusioned or if, especially due to restrained international involvement, the situation will stay the same. Heartfelt thanks to JiHyun Park for sharing her powerful experience.”

Cheryl (Sixth Form, CC) said: “We learned about the mechanism of totalitarianism in North Korea: the way the government divides the people against each other and persecute language resembles the dystopian vision of George Orwell’s 1984. It was so important to hear from JiHyun Park because her first-hand account narrates vividly a humanitarian atrocity mostly overlooked by the West. What she has been through is a story of terror, resilience and strength.”