North Korean defector told she doesn’t ‘understand oppression’ fires back

Cornerstone University, a Christian school in Michigan, is holding an anti-communist event, bringing in scholars and survivors of oppressive regimes.

Dr. Gerson Moreno-Riaño, the president of Cornerstone University, said the school chose the theme months ago, as it saw public opinion across the country sway toward communism and socialism. The Oct. 1 event is titled, “Why Not Communism? A Wisdom Conversation on Freedom, Faith and the Future of America.”

“Frankly, we became alarmed and concerned because the history of communism, socialism is a dark one,” Moreno-Riaño told Fox News Digital.

“We thought we need to step up as a university committed to educating men and women for our country and really inform the community, educate the community and our students and the country at large about the moral bankruptcy of communism and socialism,” he added.

The university is located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which sits in Kent County, an area where Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed won more than 61% of the vote in the primary, according to state records. El-Sayed famously campaigned with controversial Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who defended communism as the “honorable end goal” of socialism, giving the event added relevance.

The event speakers include Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon; Dr. Gary Saul Morson, a scholar of Soviet communism; Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution survivor Xi Van Fleet, and North Korean defector Yeonmi Park.

“Yeonmi Park’s story is incredible, as a defector of North Korea. Xi Van Fleet, her time in a labor camp in China. And what they saw, what they experienced, what they witnessed is absolutely essential, because there are certain similarities between what happened in North Korea and is happening there now, what happened in China during Mao Zedong and thereafter, similarities between what happens there in those revolutions and what’s happening here has been happening here for several years,” Moreno-Riaño said.

Park told Fox News Digital that communism is on the rise among students who learn about it “in a very nice classroom with the air conditioning running,” while she experienced oppressive regimes firsthand.

“I had to live through [a] real socialist government every day until I escaped from North Korea,” Park said. “And I know it is not nice when it is actually enforced [in] real life. Many people think it’s [an] amazing thing as a theory, and they have no idea if we do bring this policy in our government, what that’s going to [do to] our local population.”

Growing up in North Korea during the devastating famines of the 1990s, Park experienced hunger, severe poverty and political persecution. At age 13, she escaped with her mother across the frozen border river into China, where they experienced human trafficking. After her mother submitted to sexual assault to protect Yeonmi from smugglers, both were sold into trafficking rings.

After two years of exploitation and hiding from Chinese authorities, Christian activist networks helped them cross from China to Mongolia, where they secured political asylum, and later gained their freedom in South Korea.

Park told Fox News Digital that while in the U.S. she has had students who are unaware of her background tell her that she does not “understand oppression” because she is Asian. Park added that they refer to her as a “White-passing person.”

“They have no idea that I was, at 13 years old, being sold as a sex slave in China for two years of my life. I do understand oppression,” she said.

Park insisted that American students often take their freedom for granted and do not have a full understanding of global realities.

“Most people are not free right now in the world. More than 70% of humanity right now live under authoritarian governments,” Park told Fox News Digital, likely referencing data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute. V-Dem’s most recent report estimates that 74% of the world’s population lives under autocracies.

She added that having freedom is “a very special thing” and she doesn’t “want us to lose this amazing country, because if America falls, we do not have a place to escape to.”

“For me, I was fortunate that I had a country to escape to from North Korea to America, but if we lose this country, we are all going to die, actually,” she said.

For Moreno-Riaño, the defense of freedom is directly tied to Cornerstone University’s Christian identity. He explained to Fox News Digital that the principle of liberty was, in his view, “at the bedrock” of the Christian faith.

“I mean, we believe that the gospel sets us free. So, liberty and freedom are at the core of our Christian faith through the gospel of Jesus Christ,” he said.

“We believe this basic Christian principle called the Imago Dei, that we’ve been created in His image, means that for us to flourish, you have to have a condition of freedom and liberty. It’s absolutely essential,” he added.

Ultimately, Moreno-Riaño hopes to encourage students to take action and to resist the urge to “sit on the sidelines watching.”

“As people of faith, Christians here at Cornerstone University, we want our students to be involved to be great citizens, modeling their faith and modeling what it means to be a great citizen of our great country. That to me is the ultimate outcome for not just the students, but even for the community at large who will come to the event,” he said.