- Today we're talking about the North Korean defector
that's been heralded as a hero,
but now appears to be getting exposed for her lies
and America's dirty little secrets
from the Baghdadi strike are starting to get exposed.
There's a lot to talk about with those two.
So buckle up your beautiful bastards.
Hit that like button and let's just jump into it.
Starting with, we need to talk about Yeonmi Park
because for those of you who do not know, she's a YouTuber,
an author, who has risen to prominence
as a human rights celebrity by sharing her story
as a North Korean defector
with the Washington Post even describing her
as one of the most famous North Korea defectors
in the world.
She is a very big deal, right?
She has more than a million subscribers on YouTube.
Her 2015 memoir "In Order to Live"
has sold over a hundred thousand copies.
And her new book, "While Time Remains",
published this last February
has already made tens of thousands of sales.
But also more recently,
Park has taken on this new role
of conservative commentator, right,
'cause in the past few years,
Park has taken aim at the US
comparing American liberalism and woke culture
to the dictatorship in North Korea
and claiming that America is on the path to tyranny.
With her largely drawing from her time as an undergrad
at Columbia and branding herself as the enemy of the woke.
And so of course, with branding like that,
right wing personalities have absolutely eaten that up
with Park becoming a multi-platform right wing media star
and appearing on some of the most popular
right-leaning podcasts but also Park's rise on the right
comes as she's been hounded for years
with accusations from journalists, experts,
and even other North Korean defectors,
that many of her stories just don't add up
with some of her tales ranging
from just being inconsistent
to just explicitly contradictory.
And while those allegations have been floating around
for years there's been renewed
scrutiny issues as she's become so popular.
And just this month,
Washington Post published an explosive investigation
that also found many inconsistencies with her claims, right?
With that article starting at the beginning
of Parks rise to fame as a teenage panelist
on the hit South Korean show,
"Now on My Way to Meet You,"
a docuseries about reunifying families
that have been separated during the Korean War.
And that being where Park first began sharing her history
saying she was born in a city that bordered China in 1993,
saying that her father was a member
of the ruling workers' party of Korea
who was sentenced to prison for smuggling metals
on the black market to support their family
with her eventually able to escape in 2007
when she was 13 years old, fleeing first to China
and then making her way to South Korea.
So definitely an intense and harrowing story
and there's no doubt about that
but it's the claims that she makes
about just how bad North Korea is
and how awful her life was there that have raised eyebrows.
Because as The Post explains,
while most of Parks "Now on My Way to Meet You" co-stars
recounted stories of deprivation.
She was dubbed Paris Hilton because of the tale she told
of her family's relative wealth in North Korea,
a lifestyle accessorized with imported Japanese fashion
and Chanel bags.
And then in 2014,
she gained much broader international attention
for a speech she gave at the One Young World Summit
in Ireland that went viral
and attracted over 80 million views.
And that is when everything began to change
with The Post writing,
"Experts on North Korea took note
of the strikingly different bio that emerged
when Park moved from reality TV
to the international human rights conference circuit, right?
Her Paris Hilton character was nowhere in that story
but is also echoed by a Korean studies professor
who told The Post, " she once presented herself
as the top 1% North Korea elite
so she didn't see any hunger or malnutrition
when she was living there,"
but then saying "she totally flipped the narrative
when she was on to these conferences."
And at the same time, it another expert who spoke
to The Post noting the Park shift in the narrative
didn't even match the stories of her own family,
with her mother describing access to not only food,
but other luxuries during an appearance on
"Now on My Way to Meet You" with Park's mother even saying
that her daughter Yeonmi couldn't even wrap her head
around the fact that some of the less privileged people
on the show even came from the same country she did.
Park for her part,
addressed this shift in her memoir by saying
that she just didn't want to talk about hardships
she went through during her childhood on South Korean TV
because she no longer even thought about it.
She also has previously claimed that some discrepancies
in her early interviews in America can be chalked up
to the fact that she wasn't fluent in English.
But a lot of people say even with that,
there are a lot of things that just don't add up
with The Post again,
for example, pointing to a 2014 article published
by The Diplomat by Mary Ann Jolley,
a journalist who had interviewed Park
for a documentary and who pointed
out numerous discrepancies with her claims, right?
According to Jolley, while Park told The Diplomat
that both her and her sister were left to protect themselves
at nine and 11 years old when their parents were jailed
saying "we couldn't go to school
we just go down to the riverside
and we can shower and wash our clothes there,"
and then we go to the mountains and get the grass to eat,
adding that she ate wild foods like grass
or sometimes dragonfly,
just anything I could eat at that time.
But on a previous interview with BBC radio,
she had said that when her parents were imprisoned,
her sister lived at her uncle's house
while Park herself was sent to live at her aunt's house
in the countryside for three years.
And when asked about the hardship she experienced
during another interview around the same time,
she made zero mention of grass and dragonflies
instead saying she could afford two meals
but also comparing that to people who lived on the streets
and "eat everything"
and even going as far as to assert
that her hardships were nothing comparatively.
And that also seemingly backed up by her mom
during her "On my Way to Meet You" appearance.
And another key thing there,
the host of the show even noting
that when people talked about
struggling to eat or eating grass,
Park would say, oh, that never happened.
And asked her mother why that was, to which she responded,
"we were not to that extent.
We were just never in a position where we were starving."
Park has also made numerous claims
about executions in North Korea that have been questioned
and even directly refuted, right?
She previously said she saw her friends mother executed
in a stadium for watching a Hollywood movie.
Sometimes when she told the story
she said it was a South Korean DVD, not a Hollywood movie.
But also beyond that discrepancy,
other defectors even told The Diplomat
that not only were there never executions
in the stadium that she was talking about
there weren't even any executions happening
in the city that she lived in
during that time period she described,
with one woman who defected from the same city
as Park a few years after telling The Diplomat
"how can you be executed for watching an American film?
It sounds ridiculous even saying it.
That has never happened before."
Other defectors also confirming that as did Andrei Lankov
who is one of the leading authorities on North Korea
having studied there in the eighties,
taken multiple research trips
and interviewed hundreds of defectors.
And while both he and the other defectors said
that people could go to jail for watching Western movies
they wouldn't be executed.
Lankov telling the outlet that the kinds of crimes
that usually result in public executions are murder,
large scale theft, especially of the government property,
sometimes involvement with large scale smuggling
operations including human trafficking.
And that's also not Park's only account of executions
that Lankov has disputed, right?
As recently as 2021, she went on Joe Rogan's podcast
where she made more claims about public executions.
- And what are the crimes
that you could be sentenced to death for?
- It's as as little as so in North Korea
every room has to have a portrait of Kims,
and the inspector comes out of nowhere
in the middle of night and then touch the portraits.
If they see any dust, they say,
your loyalty is not high enough,
and then you can get executed
and sent to prison camp, three generation of your family.
- Lankov told The Post that this is a distortion
of something that happens in North Korea
where citizens are forced to have
self-criticism sessions where they confess failings
and sometimes due to pressure they resort to sharing
minor offenses that will let them off
with minor punishments like not properly maintaining
their shrine to the Kims.
But he said Park is seriously exaggerating
and her description would be the equivalent
of telling North Koreans that Americans can be executed
for a speeding ticket.
And there are also other smaller claims too
like Parks repeated claims that North Koreans
don't have maps of the world
and that they don't have to learn simple math
like one plus one equals two.
With Lankov noting that pictures
of elementary school textbooks prove that's just not true.
And Parks seemingly false stories have now gone
beyond just North Korea
and veered into hot button issues in America right?
For example, during her interview with Rogan,
Park claimed that she got punched and robbed
by three black women during the George Floyd protest
in 2020 when she was in Chicago.
- I was trying to catch and call the police
and these people on the street,
the bystanders of white people calling me, I'm a racist,
telling me that the color of skin doesn't make them a thief.
And I became a.
- Wait a minute, wait a minute.
So you got robbed by these three black women
- And I got punched.
- You got punched and robbed.
- [Yeonmi] It's a violent, yeah.
- And so you called the police and who.
- I tried to call him and they to prevent me
not calling the police.
- Who was trying to tell you not to call the police?
- It's all the people on the street,
the Michigan Avenue.
- That watched it?
- [Yeonmi] Yeah.
- People that saw the crime.
- Yeah.
- Where they're going on to say the police later got footage
of the three black women because they used her credit card
and adding.
- Of course they're not gonna prosecute
these girls, right?
There's so much crime in Chicago,
they're not gonna prosecute somebody who drops.
And that's when I was thinking this country lost it.
- But according to a Chicago police statement obtained
by the Daily Mail, Park wasn't robbed by three women
but rather a woman and a man
which is arguably a weird thing to change.
And also the female suspect was prosecuted,
being charged with a crime, pleading guilty,
and serving two years in prison
but even Park herself acknowledging
that the female robber was prosecuted
in her most recent book and understand everything
that we're talking about.
It's, I don't even wanna call it
a greatest hits or a highlight reel.
These are just some of the things
in a much bigger situation.
And so if you wanna dive deeper
I'll link to articles down below.
But you have this all around bizarre situation
and you have people going, well why do this?
But well, there the answer would be like
it is for most stories, clout and or money, right?
There's a lot of direct and indirect money to be made
with engagements and ongoing work
with right-wing groups obviously as her star rises
and she goes on these shows and they're clipped
and more people find out about her,
more people are more inclined to, you know
buy her book and things like that.
But also you get examples like direct payments
where they're telling reporters
she made $6,600 a month working with conservative group,
Turning Points USA
and that was just one engagement.
There's also a thing that I wanna mention.
I do not want anything in this
to seem like I am pro North Korea.
Fuck The Kims, those murderous monsters,
but my feelings need to be based in reality.
And that's also what you have experts saying
that spreading false or exaggerated claims
about North Korea not only undermines
the real stories of other defectors
but it also hurts the actual people who live there
under the regime because it overshadows actual concerns
about human rights in the country.
With another expert saying she basically
just acts as a mirror for conservative audiences
to look into and having all their fears about liberals
turning America into an authoritarian hellhole
reflected right back at them.
And those are actually all points
that have been repeatedly made by people like Hasan Piker,
a political commentator who also notably talked about Park
a number of times over the last few years
with him continually calling her a grifter,
saying that while there is a market in America
for North Korean defectors who want to share
their real traumatic experiences in an oppressive country,
Park takes it to a whole other level.
- And there are plenty of very real harrowing realities
from North Korea obviously.
So there's truth to it as well.
But you get bored after a while of hearing the same (beep).
So what she does instead that I think is like pretty smart
is she'll turn around and basically say like,
in America is just like North Korea because of liberals.
- It literally minimizes the experiences that people living
under the brutal regime, the brutal Kim Jong Un regime.
This person is literally a grifter.
There are a lot of defectors that do this, you know,
props to them, they escaped and now they wanna make money.
And there is a massive audience
of (beep)idiots that are like, hell yeah brother,
in North Korea, they, you're right brother
they're just (beep), you know, the worst place.
They all wanna kill us.
They all wanna murder us brother.
Yeah, (beep) yeah, like we should glass North Korea.
And this is all that this is to just like
give people that fuel to feel that way.
- But with all that's been said and shared
I now gotta pass the question off to you.
What are your thoughts here?
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And then now nearly four years after everything went down
we're still learning more dirty details
about the US raid on the Syrian compound
of ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, right?
You might remember in the announcement of Baghdadi's death
Trump and his military presented the operation
as this flawless, outstanding victory.
- He died after running into a dead end tunnel whimpering
and crying and screaming all the way.
He died like a dog.
- But subsequent reporting
and Pentagon documents obtained by NPR
show that the operation probably wasn't as clean
as he'd like to admit.
Or while the president watched the raid unfold
from thousands of miles away
a Syrian man by the name of Barakat, Ahmed Barakat,
was enjoying what he thought was a normal night.
With him telling NPR he and two of his friends were working
as agricultural laborers at an olive press.
They were driving him home a claim
that's also been backed up by a nonprofit
that has a receipt showing Barakat was transporting olives
to an olive press in the days leading up to this one
as well as seven relatives of the friends
who said the two men operated a van service
and had no connection to any armed group.
And so they happened to take the shortest route
to Barakat's Village which leads them
through a neighboring village on the way
with him saying we had pumpkin seeds
and brought coffee on the road and were having fun.
But they had no idea Baghdadi
was hiding in a compound up the road,
nor that the US special forces
were in the middle of a raid on that compound.
So when a missile suddenly strikes their van,
their startled with Barakat saying
there was nothing suspicious at all,
there was nothing ahead of us on the road.
Suddenly I felt something hit us.
"I didn't know what was going on
I was just trying to escape death."
And so they rush outta the van, they begin to flee,
but one of the friends falls
with his leg filled with shrapnel,
Barakat then takes the other wounded friends in his arms.
He has his emotional final moment
with him recalling, "he told me, I am dying.
I told him, no, just say God's name.
And I held him in my lap."
And then as he's cradling this man
another airstrike lands killing both friends.
So Barakat runs for cover and he survives.
But his right and left hand have been badly injured
with him later getting surgery to remove shrapnel
from his left arm and partially amputate his right.
But according to one advocacy group
he can no longer afford physical therapy sessions
and his injuries prevent him from working
to feed his five young children.
And him saying, "we're farmers,
I make less than a dollar a day.
Now I'm handicapped and my two friends are in their graves."
Now after that raid
the US military took responsibility for the attack
but claimed that the men were militant unaffiliated
with ISIS in a van that displayed hostile intent.
And in 2020 the Pentagon cleared its troops
of any wrongdoing and deemed the victim's families
ineligible for compensation saying in its internal report
that the American troops exchanged fire
with combatants at an intersection
and then noticed the van approaching the same spot
and claiming they fired warning shots
but the van just kept coming, so they neutralized it.
But then NPR sued the Defense Department
for a copy of that report.
And once they obtained it,
they found the story was a lot more complicated.
When US ground troops first spotted the van
headed towards them, it was some 1100 feet away,
but then they let it traverse about half that distance
without doing anything to ward it off.
Then a US aircraft, most likely an attack helicopter,
fired warning shots on the road about 50 or 60 feet
in front of the vehicle.
Which means even if the van had been moving
just 15 miles an hour it would've only given them
two or three seconds to react
before getting hit by the gunfire
which then is even harder when you remember
that all of this happened around midnight
and the driver probably didn't know
where the gunfire was coming from.
And with this, a military official claimed at the time
that initial reports were that the van
had fired on US helicopters.
But in a declassified email the next year,
an official said that actually no gunfire
had come from the van.
Also, according to the report,
an aircraft pilot thought they saw more explosions
come from the van after the strike
indicating that it contained weapons or explosives.
But then the Pentagon found that in retrospect
it couldn't determine what the explosion was.
And Barakat claims that they had no weapons.
Plus there was no indication
that any investigators went down to the site.
And this, even though there appeared to have been some doubt
within the DOD itself as to whether the victims
were actually militant with an analyst in the report
recommending that officials compile an intel dossier
that quote "further addresses the characterization
of the individuals killed and injured
as unlawful enemy belligerents."
But as of March, a military told NPR
there was no record of such a document ever being produced.
And despite all this reporting from NPR
the Pentagon dismissed the allegations
and questioned the veracity of its sources
but also it apparently never contacted Barakat
or any of the dead men's relatives itself.
And so as of right now, it looks like those affected
by this tragedy still likely won't get a smidgen of justice.
And their suffering's just been overshadowed
by the celebration of Baghdadi's downfall.
And unfortunately for the US military
this is kind of just par for the course, right?
If you take the time to look
you see this story happen over and over again.
Very famously, during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan,
a drone launched what the Pentagon called
a righteous strike on a vehicle
believed to be carrying an ISIS bomb toward the airport.
But as it later admitted,
after media reports cast doubt on that,
the car actually just held 10 civilians
including seven children, all of whom died.
And just like with a situation with the Baghdadi raid,
no one was held accountable.
You also have an especially horrific example
from March of 2019 when a US fighter jet
dropped a 500 pound bomb on a large crowd
of women and children huddled against a river bank
with the jet swooping back in to drop
two more 2000 pound bombs on the survivors
killing some 80 people in total.
But the Pentagon only acknowledged four civilian casualties
claiming 16 were fighters.
And the rest were unknown,
partly because women and children
in the Islamic state sometimes took up arms.
And as soon as that happened,
people within the DOD immediately knew
something had gone wrong.
But the Pentagon never publicly acknowledged it
until The Times broke the story
with the outlet reporting that after
a legal officer flagged this as a possible war crime
the military sought to cover up what happened
at every step of the way, downplaying the death toll,
delaying, sanitizing and classifying reports,
bulldozing the blast sight
and failing to notify top leaders.
And unfortunately,
while the high death toll there was exceptional,
the deadly bombing of civilians wasn't right,
'cause you have The Times and other outlets
extensively documenting how the military
has repeatedly killed unarmed people
believing that they were militants,
yet never learning from its mistakes
and showing how confirmation bias
often leads commanders to misinterpret data.
Like when people are seen rushing
toward a fresh bombing site,
the Pentagon assumes they're ISIS fighters
not civilian rescuers.
Or at times where multiple men
appear to be moving in formation,
which signals an imminent attack,
are actually just guys on motorcycles
or when it's seen as no civilian presence being detected
when in fact commanders don't understand
that families are sleeping through the daytime Ramadan fast
or sheltering inside to avoid the heat or fighting outside.
And the unfortunate thing is,
it's impossible to know exactly how many civilians
have been killed this way
because the Pentagon often undercounts them
even in classified reports.
And as far as the deaths they do acknowledge,
they usually just blame them on fog of war
where they spin them as regrettable
yet unavoidable mistakes.
And ultimately, when we talk about stories like this,
people kind of land in one of two camps.
Either you have people demanding
that the Pentagon tighten its rules and procedures
to make fighting more clean
or they argue that wars are inherently dirty.
So we just kind of need to accept that cost.
So obviously it's easier to accept that cost
when it's not your family that's been blown up
and that is where this Sunday dive
into the news is gonna end.
But do not worry because for more news you need to know,
I got you covered right here.
You can click or tap or in those links down below.
And because as always, my name's Philip DeFranco,
you've just been filled in.
I love your faces and I'll see you right back here tomorrow.