The Korea Times
amn_close.png
amn_bl.png
National
  • Politics
  • Foreign Affairs
  • Multicultural Community
  • Defense
  • Environment & Animals
  • Law & Crime
  • Society
  • Health & Science
amn_bl.png
Business
  • Tech
  • Bio
  • Companies
amn_bl.png
Finance
  • Companies
  • Economy
  • Markets
  • Cryptocurrency
amn_bl.png
Opinion
  • Editorial
  • Columns
  • Thoughts of the Times
  • Cartoon
  • Today in History
  • Blogs
  • Tribune Service
  • Blondie & Garfield
  • Letter to President
  • Letter to the Editor
amn_bl.png
Lifestyle
  • Travel & Food
  • Trends
  • People & Events
  • Books
  • Around Town
  • Fortune Telling
amn_bl.png
Entertainment & Arts
  • K-pop
  • Films
  • Shows & Dramas
  • Music
  • Theater & Others
amn_bl.png
Sports
amn_bl.png
World
  • SCMP
  • Asia
amn_bl.png
Video
  • Korean Storytellers
  • POPKORN
  • Culture
  • People
  • News
amn_bl.png
Photos
  • Photo News
  • Darkroom
amn_NK.png amn_DR.png amn_LK.png amn_LE.png
  • bt_fb_on_2022.svgbt_fb_over_2022.svg
  • bt_twitter_on_2022.svgbt_twitter_over_2022.svg
  • bt_youtube_on_2022.svgbt_youtube_over_2022.svg
  • bt_instagram_on_2022.svgbt_instagram_over_2022.svg
The Korea Times
amn_close.png
amn_bl.png
National
  • Politics
  • Foreign Affairs
  • Multicultural Community
  • Defense
  • Environment & Animals
  • Law & Crime
  • Society
  • Health & Science
amn_bl.png
Business
  • Tech
  • Bio
  • Companies
amn_bl.png
Finance
  • Companies
  • Economy
  • Markets
  • Cryptocurrency
amn_bl.png
Opinion
  • Editorial
  • Columns
  • Thoughts of the Times
  • Cartoon
  • Today in History
  • Blogs
  • Tribune Service
  • Blondie & Garfield
  • Letter to President
  • Letter to the Editor
amn_bl.png
Lifestyle
  • Travel & Food
  • Trends
  • People & Events
  • Books
  • Around Town
  • Fortune Telling
amn_bl.png
Entertainment & Arts
  • K-pop
  • Films
  • Shows & Dramas
  • Music
  • Theater & Others
amn_bl.png
Sports
amn_bl.png
World
  • SCMP
  • Asia
amn_bl.png
Video
  • Korean Storytellers
  • POPKORN
  • Culture
  • People
  • News
amn_bl.png
Photos
  • Photo News
  • Darkroom
amn_NK.png amn_DR.png amn_LK.png amn_LE.png
  • bt_fb_on_2022.svgbt_fb_over_2022.svg
  • bt_twitter_on_2022.svgbt_twitter_over_2022.svg
  • bt_youtube_on_2022.svgbt_youtube_over_2022.svg
  • bt_instagram_on_2022.svgbt_instagram_over_2022.svg
  • Login
  • Register
  • Login
  • Register
  • The Korea Times
  • search
  • all menu
  • Login
  • Subscribe
  • Photos
  • Video
  • World
  • Sports
  • Opinion
  • Entertainment & Art
  • Lifestyle
  • Finance
  • Business
  • National
  • North Korea
  • 1

    South Korea speeds up full-fledged deployment of US anti-missile battery

  • 3

    Kyochon heralds 30,000 won fried chicken era

  • 5

    Sex, drugs, and The Glory

  • 7

    Yoon's labor reform drive sputters due to controversy over lengthening workweek

  • 9

    N. Korea holds general meeting of Olympic Committee

  • 11

    Firstborns account for record-high 63% of newborns

  • 13

    North Korean refugee escape class of 2011

  • 15

    Chun Doo-hwan's grandson to apologize to victims of Gwangju massacre

  • 17

    Bank failures and rescue test Yellen's decades of experience

  • 19

    Major union holds rally in downtown Seoul

  • 2

    Do Kwon, Korea's crypto 'genius' turned disgraced fugitive

  • 4

    Montenegro charges crypto fugitive Do Kwon with forgery

  • 6

    INTERVIEWHow ATEEZ achieved worldwide success

  • 8

    Cha Jun-hwan wins historic silver at figure skating worlds

  • 10

    Horace N. Allen: Joseon's foreign royal physician

  • 12

    Apple Pay service limited by lack of NFC terminals

  • 14

    Korean police search for 2 Kazakhstanis who fled airport

  • 16

    Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, prophet of the rise of the PC, dies at 94

  • 18

    Kakao seeks to bolster SM's global presence as new owner

  • 20

    Foreign minister hosts Iftar dinner for Muslims in Korea

Close scrollclosebutton

Close for 24 hours

Open
  • The Korea Times
  • search
  • all menu
  • Login
  • Subscribe
  • Photos
  • Video
  • World
  • Sports
  • Opinion
  • Entertainment & Art
  • Lifestyle
  • Finance
  • Business
  • National
  • North Korea
Opinion
  • Yun Byung-se
  • Kim Won-soo
  • Ahn Ho-young
  • Kim Sang-woo
  • Lee Kyung-hwa
  • Mitch Shin
  • Peter S. Kim
  • Daniel Shin
  • Jeon Su-mi
  • Jang Daul
  • Song Kyung-jin
  • Park Jung-won
  • Cho Hee-kyoung
  • Park Chong-hoon
  • Kim Sung-woo
  • Donald Kirk
  • John Burton
  • Robert D. Atkinson
  • Mark Peterson
  • Eugene Lee
  • Rushan Ziatdinov
  • Lee Jong-eun
  • Chyung Eun-ju and Joel Cho
  • Bernhard J. Seliger
  • Imran Khalid
  • Troy Stangarone
  • Jason Lim
  • Casey Lartigue, Jr.
  • Bernard Rowan
  • Steven L. Shields
  • Deauwand Myers
  • John J. Metzler
  • Andrew Hammond
  • Sandip Kumar Mishra
Mon, March 27, 2023 | 12:49
Casey Lartigue, Jr.
Comrade, do you have a dissenting opinion?
Posted : 2021-07-08 17:01
Updated : 2021-07-08 17:01
Print PreviewPrint Preview
Font Size UpFont Size Up
Font Size DownFont Size Down
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • kakaolink
  • whatsapp
  • reddit
  • mailto
  • link
By Casey Lartigue Jr.

North Korean refugee Yeonmi Park did it again, this time she went viral because of her comments about political correctness at Columbia University. While some people honestly analyzed her words, some of her loudest critics inadvertently made her case for her with their vitriolic responses.

As a disclaimer, I first met Yeonmi in 2012, worked closely with her in 2014 when we hosted a podcast together, and I was her mentor for her One Young World speech that got international attention. My opinions obviously here are my own, not hers.

Over the years we have talked about what she was going through at Columbia, and I shared my own experience as a student at Harvard. Several North Korean refugees have told me that they felt liberated to be able to speak their minds after going through round-the-clock brainwashing and self-criticism sessions in North Korea.

When they began sharing their stories as free people, however, it didn't take long them for people to hit them with ad hominem attacks, trifling comments and even death threats. Additionally, North Korean refugee women receive numerous dirty and threatening messages from perverts.

Several of the refugees have asked me why they receive such vitriol from people. My explanation: in North Korea, if others don't like what you say or do, they can report you to the authorities. In the U.S., South Korea and other countries, people are free to blog, gossip and spread rumors, set up YouTube channels, try to "cancel" you, destroy your career or business, and even make death threats, but they usually can't call the police. Dogs rarely bark at parked cars, so one could take the complaints as compliments.

In response to Park saying that classmates and professors had tried to shut down her opinions, those who consider themselves "woke" responded by acting like extremists, trying to shut her down.

I'm not entirely surprised about Park not fitting in with those classmates and professors who are more conformist than curious. She entered Columbia at the age of 22 or 23, but her age should be measured in dog years. Shortly after she had escaped from North Korea at the age of 13 she witnessed her mother being raped by a Chinese broker. Later, they were both later sold to Chinese men.

She was a bestselling author by the age of 21 when many of her college classmates were probably taking the SAT. She was making a trade-off that her classmates may never have. She could have spent the last four years traveling around the world giving speeches and selling her book, rather than studying at Columbia.


She is a
striver who barely went to school when she was in North Korea. In South Korea, she mostly studied at libraries and on the internet before she was accepted into college in South Korea, after getting her GED.

Conformity on college campuses is not something that only Park has experienced. I have heard from and about many strivers about their struggles in classrooms with college students more interested in shutting them down rather than in exchanging ideas.

A friend of mine who first entered Harvard at the age of 21 and then returned when he was 25, after serving in the army, often clashed with classmates. He returned later for grad school, and says that things only got worse. There would be a "chill" in the room whenever he disagreed with a classmate or professor. I then characterized it as being like communist party leaders of a purge asking, "Do you have a dissenting thought, comrade?"

Charges of anti-intellectualism aren't new. Thomas Sowell, a high school dropout who later served in the Marines, entered Harvard University at the age of 25. He graduated from Harvard in 1958, then got a master's degree from Columbia in 1959. He has written about Harvard that "smug assumptions were too often treated as substitutes for evidence or logic." He described Columbia as "a sort of watered-down version of Harvard, intellectually."

As a student at Harvard, I often encountered students who were quite tolerant ― until they disagreed with you. The sensitive minority students at the Harvard Graduate School of Education even held at least one meeting trying to figure out what to "do" about me. I informed the intellectual jacket-pulling students and professors trying to slow me down: I was paying and borrowing money to be at Harvard, so I was a student there to learn, not to be a parrot.

Park and other North Korean refugees may have thought they had left conformist comrades and criticism sessions behind when they escaped from North Korea. It turns out that the conformist comrades were also waiting for them in freedom, also asking, "Comrade, do you have a dissenting thought?"


Casey Lartigue Jr., co-founder of Freedom Speakers International (FSI) along with Eunkoo Lee, is the 2017 winner of the "Social Contribution" prize from the Hansarang Rural Cultural Foundation and the 2019 winner of the "Challenge Maker" award from Challenge Korea. He can be reached at CJL@alumni.harvard.edu


 
Top 10 Stories
1South Korea speeds up full-fledged deployment of US anti-missile battery South Korea speeds up full-fledged deployment of US anti-missile battery
2Firstborns account for record-high 63% of newborns Firstborns account for record-high 63% of newborns
3Apple Pay service limited by lack of NFC terminals Apple Pay service limited by lack of NFC terminals
4Chun Doo-hwan's grandson to apologize to victims of Gwangju massacre Chun Doo-hwan's grandson to apologize to victims of Gwangju massacre
5Kakao seeks to bolster SM's global presence as new owner Kakao seeks to bolster SM's global presence as new owner
6Foreign minister hosts Iftar dinner for Muslims in Korea Foreign minister hosts Iftar dinner for Muslims in Korea
7Busan aims to win hearts of developing nations in Expo 2030 bid Busan aims to win hearts of developing nations in Expo 2030 bid
8From mines to mobility: 140-year-old partnership between Germany and Korea From mines to mobility: 140-year-old partnership between Germany and Korea
9Samsung chief inspects production plants in China for first time in 3 yearsSamsung chief inspects production plants in China for first time in 3 years
10[ANALYSIS] Tesla, BYD's price cuts unnerve LGES, Samsung, SK ANALYSISTesla, BYD's price cuts unnerve LGES, Samsung, SK
Top 5 Entertainment News
1Kim Min-gyu, Go Bo-gyeol bid farewell to 'The Heavenly Idol' Kim Min-gyu, Go Bo-gyeol bid farewell to 'The Heavenly Idol'
2Han Suk-kyu on return of 'Dr. Romantic' with Season 3 Han Suk-kyu on return of 'Dr. Romantic' with Season 3
3Kim Nam-gil to embark on Asia fan-meeting tour Kim Nam-gil to embark on Asia fan-meeting tour
4[INTERVIEW] How ATEEZ achieved worldwide success INTERVIEWHow ATEEZ achieved worldwide success
5Two curators to lead Korean pavilion at Venice Art Biennale in 2024 for first time Two curators to lead Korean pavilion at Venice Art Biennale in 2024 for first time
DARKROOM
  • Turkey-Syria earthquake

    Turkey-Syria earthquake

  • Nepal plane crash

    Nepal plane crash

  • Brazil capital uprising

    Brazil capital uprising

  • Happy New Year 2023

    Happy New Year 2023

  • World Cup 2022 Final - Argentina vs France

    World Cup 2022 Final - Argentina vs France

CEO & Publisher : Oh Young-jin
Digital News Email : webmaster@koreatimes.co.kr
Tel : 02-724-2114
Online newspaper registration No : 서울,아52844
Date of registration : 2020.02.05
Masthead : The Korea Times
Copyright © koreatimes.co.kr. All rights reserved.
  • About Us
  • Introduction
  • History
  • Contact Us
  • Products & Services
  • Subscribe
  • E-paper
  • RSS Service
  • Content Sales
  • Site Map
  • Policy
  • Code of Ethics
  • Ombudsman
  • Privacy Statement
  • Terms of Service
  • Copyright Policy
  • Family Site
  • Hankook Ilbo
  • Dongwha Group