Yeonmi Park, an author and human rights activist who defected from Hyesan, North Korea, spoke at Turning Point USA’s “Freedom isn’t Free: The Price of Freedom” event at San Francisco State University’s Seven Hills Conference Center today.

Park, who received a standing ovation from a crowd of around 100 people, shared her story about struggles living in North Korea, her journey between different countries before arriving in the U.S. and her perspectives on communism. Park has published two books, “In Order To Live” in 2015 and “While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector’s Search For Freedom In America” in 2023. 

“The region divided people, even though it began with the idea of creating the most equal society, the socialist paradise,” Park said. “Nobody’s poorer, nobody’s richer. After reaching power, instead of creating this equal society, those Koreans divided into 51 different caste systems.” 

Prior to Park’s speech, Takumi Sugawara, TPUSA’s SFSU chapter president, gave a brief opening speech and asked the audience for a moment of silence to honor the death of Charlie Kirk. Park’s appearance was the first event hosted by the SFSU chapter since Kirk and Riley Gaines’ last appearance, as well as Kirk’s death. While there were no protests outside of the conference center, TPUSA kept security tight with metal detectors and police officers at the entrance. According to Sugawara, their security policy has been kept the same since their event with Chloe Cole last year. 

One event attendee, Logan Espino, a chapter member of the TPUSA of Los Medanos College, was touched when Park spoke about her time as a sex slave in China and how rare it is for North Korean people to defect. 

“If the only way to get yourself out of a tyrannical situation is to essentially sell yourself into slavery, I think that should be a harrowing experience that we can all learn from,” Espino said. “That should at least leave a little bit of credit to her words as far as what tyranny can do in human society.”

Another aspect of Park’s speech that Espino resonated with was her emphasis on education, freedom of information and the importance of doing your own research. When asked about Park’s advice for raising the next generation of children, she immediately mentioned to get them off social media.

“Her emphasis on that was really, truly important, especially in the modern age where a lot of our information is fed to us not by the government, but through our phones,” Espino said. “With the algorithmic thinking that Instagram, Facebook, all these things do, we’re getting fed information we want to hear, not contradictory opinions to the things that we may or may not believe.”

Park’s profile as TPUSA’s newest contributor in 2023 says she refers to herself as an “enemy of the woke.” During the Q&A section of the event, Park defined in her own words what “woke” means.

“For me, the woke are the people who believe in this kind of environment [where] they believe in free housing, free education,” Park said. “The people who are woke believe that they are the only one who is entitled to have a voice, and anybody who has a different opinion, they can’t [have a different opinion].”

Sugawara said Park’s advocacy against communism aligned with the conservative community at SFSU. 

“What resonates with us conservatives is her fight for freedom and fight against communism,” Sugawara said. “We fight for free speech, and it cannot be successful under communism or dictatorships.”

Jared Arpa, an SFSU alum, said he liked hearing about Park’s story of survival and learning about other audience members’ perspectives after her speech. 

“I learned that a lot of people here resonate with her story because of their family members who have maybe had to assimilate,” Arpa said. 

TPUSA, a conservative nonprofit organization now run by Kirk’s wife, Erika Kirk, works to educate young people on conservative ideologies like limited government, free markets and freedom, according to their website. However, in the past, when the SFSU chapter has organized events on campus, they have faced criticism for targeting marginalized communities and faced counterprotests.

“I love what Turning Point stands for and what they were doing, especially asking the American youth to embrace ideas of conservatism,” Park said. “I want to work with people who have common ground like me.”