The New York Post:
A North Korean defector who attended Columbia University says she sees similarities between the indoctrination in anti-Western sentiment and political correctness in American schools and those in the brutal dictatorship from which she escaped — adding that at Columbia, “they are forcing you to think the way they want you to think.”
Yeonmi Park was 13 when she and her mother fled North Korea in 2007, a voyage that took them to China and into the hands of human traffickers before being rescued by Christian missionaries.
They ended up in South Korea, and Park, now 27, transferred from a school there to Columbia in 2016.
“I expected that I was paying this fortune, all this time and energy, to learn how to think. But they are forcing you to think the way they want you to think,” Park told Fox News. “I realized, wow, this is insane. I thought America was different but I saw so many similarities to what I saw in North Korea that I started worrying.”
She was scolded by a university staff member during orientation when she acknowledged enjoying classic literature like Jane Austen.
“I said, ‘I love those books.’ I thought it was a good thing,” she said.
“Then she said, ‘Did you know those writers had a colonial mindset? They were racists and bigots and are subconsciously brainwashing you,’ ” Park said, recalling what she was told.
Her classes were filled with anti-American sentiment, she said, that reminded her of life in North Korea.
Park said North Korea students were constantly informed about the “American Bastard.”
“The math problems would say, ‘There are four American bastards, you kill two of them, how many American bastards are left to kill?’ ” she recalled.
