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| Bronze statues at the Grand Monument on Mansu Hill in Pyongyang, North Korea / gettyimagesbank |
By Cherie Yang
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It is an entertainment show, so I didn't have to talk about my personal story.
It was fun until everything got serious when another panelist on the TV show was sent back to North Korea.
The North Korean regime had apparently kidnapped her and taken her back to North Korea. She was spotted later on North Korea's state-run TV denouncing the people of South Korea.
North Korea showed footage from the show where I appeared as a panelist.
My mom saw my face was on North Korean TV. She begged me not to talk about North Korea, because we still have relatives living there.
As a result, I abruptly pulled the plug on my TV career.
There are two main reasons that I am now starting a YouTube channel.
One, I have the support of my family.
My mom and sister have changed. They now support me speaking out publicly. One, my grandmother passed away, but my mother couldn't even attend the funeral. Recently, her younger sister was sent to prison, where she was cruelly tortured.
Now her sister is in a serious condition.
It is only with support from my mom and sister that I can be here talking publicly about North Korea.
Two, while I've been living in the United States, I found out that many Americans don't know very much about North Korea.
Even if they know where North Korea is located on our planet, they don't really know what's happening there. When I see YouTube videos of Westerners on tours to North Korea, it seems like they think they understand North Korea and believe what they have seen represents the true North Korea.
The North Korean regime doesn't want to show foreigners the real North Korean system. You are naive if you think you understand North Korea because of a tourist trip.
Therefore, I would like to communicate with people directly to help them understand North Korea better, and to know what is really happening inside the North.
My family was loyal to the regime, but the regime turned my father and myself into traitors.?
My first introduction to this was when I was 10 years old, when I saw my father, a loyal North Korean, be accused of being a traitor. They sent my father to prison, and he suffered for the rest of his life from the aftereffects of imprisonment. They gave us no choice but to escape from North Korea. My father died during our arduous journey to freedom.
I put my life at risk to search for freedom because it was a worthy pursuit. I am now a free person, but my relatives, friends, and 25 million North Koreans are still trapped in North Korea.
They live as slaves to the dictator, with their rights being violated every day by him.
Freedom for North Koreans is possible. We need more people to care about them and let the world know about the brutality of the Kim regime.
I want my channel to be a space to communicate and share our thoughts about North Korea.
I can't do this alone. Please join me, let me know your thoughts and questions. Let's talk about North Korea and see what we can do together to make a change in the lives of North Koreans.
Cherie Yang was the 2017 winner of the 5th English speech contest by Freedom Speakers International (FSI), she gave a TEDx Talk in the UK in 2017, and she now runs two YouTube channels, Dear Cherie and Cherie from North Korea.
Her remarks were edited by Casey Lartigue, co-founder of Freedom Speakers International.
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