Book Review: While Time Remains by Yeonmi Park
Will we heed her warning and take action before it runs out?
While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector’s Search for Freedom in America by Yeonmi Park. Narrated by Maureen Taylor. Simon and Schuster Audio, 2023. 6 hours (approx.).
I ended my review of In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park with an addendum, in which I reported on Park’s dismay with Columbia University in New York. She told Fox News, “I thought America was different, but I saw so many similarities to what I saw in North Korea that I started worrying.” This, plus being mugged in Chicago, inspired her to write While Time Remains.
She goes into the details of the attack in chapter seven. While being robbed and assaulted, bystanders jeered at her. They claimed she was a racist because she resisted attackers who were black. She concludes:
This is the only contribution of the woke movement to American life: to reduce human beings to the color of their skin and determine whether or not they’re deserving of help, dignity or physical safety on that basis.
The similarities Park sees between wokeism and the North Korean regime - presently headed by Kim Jong Un - are striking. In the first place, North Koreans use land ownership in much the way the woke use racism in America. That is, if your ancestors owned land in North Korea then “the blood of an oppressor flows within you and you are forever tainted.” But if they were peasants you are said to have “noble” blood. Oppressed and oppressor make up the backbone of wokeism. It is also remarkably close to the concept of hereditary guilt or original sin that some, including Richard Dawkins, have noticed in woke ideology. Dawkins says, “Today’s original sins are slavery and colonial oppression. All white people are born in sin; the sin of their ancestors …”
But wait, it gets worse. At Columbia, Park admitted to liking the works of Jane Austen. A professor enlightened Park on the white supremacy and sexism inherent to the books of the English novelist. ‘“This is how we look for hidden systemic racism and oppression,’” the professor said. Interestingly, teachers in North Korea had a similar lesson plan. According to Park, they would warn the students that “‘... we must vigilantly look for hidden signs of infiltration by our enemies’” and that Americans were the cause of all North Korean problems. “You might not see or hear them, but the American bastards were everywhere, perhaps even in the air we breathed.”
A third example is worth quoting at length. Park writes:
In North Korea, it is not uncommon to see the well-fed son of a party official lambast a farmer on the brink of starvation for insufficient loyalty to the “dear leader.” In post-2016 America, it started to become possible for a white magazine editor or white film producer or white tech CEO to lecture a black construction worker or Latino small business owner who voted for Trump for his self-hatred or internalized racism.
She then adds that wokeism is a rhetoric style to cover for something else, namely:
a coercive system administered by governing elites that demands adherence to an ever-expanding corpus of basically random sets of laws and regulations designed to keep the lower classes in check.
Park’s repeated use of “elites” borders on the conspiratorial - a substitute for the mysterious “they” I always hear about. But corrupt officials do exist. It’s a fact detailed brilliantly in The Dictator’s Handbook. Indeed, the authors of that book show how a small band of “essentials” with lots of money can control a country. So, let’s not be too quick to dismiss her claims.
Beyond these North Korean parallels, Park offers other social critique. Most biting was her take on her postfeminist friends who, under that ideology, were forced to live lives of “comical hypocrisy.” Said hypocrisy is best exemplified by their approach to dating: marriage is antiquated, and children are a burden; but, also, why won’t men date me?
So, Park sees these problems and writes this book as a warning. I suspect she’s right; we are, evidently, heading down a very dangerous path. But what should be done about it? On that point Park has little to say. She wants people - particularly business tycoons like Jeff Bezos - to stand up to China. China, according to Park, enables the atrocities of North Korea and regularly enslaves their women. But so much money is tied up in Chinese markets that many business leaders and celebrities in a position to make a difference don't want to.
In an amusing anecdote (amusing, that is, for its darkness) Park recalls being invited to a speaking engagement presented by Bezos. A private plane would take her (and others) to the venue at a cost of over $100,000. She remembers that she had been sold into sex slavery for $300 and her mother for $65. “I was flying through the air for a price that could have purchased our freedom in an instant along with that of hundreds if not thousands of other North Korean women and girls in China.” To pour salt on the wound, the engagement was Bezos’ Campfire, held once a year to, among other things, inspire positive change in the world.
Park has been accused of being right-wing, but she says the accusation is tantamount to, you are disloyal to the one party. The party here is leftism, not to be confused with liberalism. The latter values individual rights like freedom of speech, religion and the market. The former centralizes rights into groups organized and directed by the state, according to Park. She says, “Liberalism values colorblindness, that the color of one’s skin determines and should determine nothing,” whereas leftists believe everything should be determined by race alone.
It is for this reason that I think we can all come together to heed her warning. It is true that - and Park acknowledges this - in a free democracy people can believe and advocate for whatever they want, even if it seems foolish to others. However, as she rightly points out, these authoritarian and racist ideas have been espoused by the people in control of major institutions such as government, universities and corporate media. A dire warning, indeed.
I noticed a few glaring typos. I don't usually fix them but leave them for all to see. But in this case, it was in the damn headline. Uhg! This is what happens when you rely on spell check. I've also have seen a few interested podcasts that are vaguely connected to the topics discussed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V57DNSF7y7Y
and one by Peter Boghossian (which I now can't seem to find).