In an eye-opening expose, Yeonmi Park—a name that has become synonymous with the North Korean defector movement—recently divulged startling details about her homeland’s concealed operations. She opened up about how North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong-un, annually selects 25 virgin girls for his “Pleasure Squad”. Yeonmi, who is now a prominent YouTuber, author, and American conservative activist, escaped the iron-clad grips of the hermetic kingdom as a youth. Sharing her harrowing experiences and insider knowledge, she sheds light on the dark corners of the North Korean regime.
Park revealed that the selection criteria for the squad hinge on the girls’ political allegiance and their looks. Speaking to The Daily Star, she recounted her own encounters with the selection process, having been scouted twice only to be declined due to her “family status”. “Once they find some pretty girls, the first thing they do is check into their family status – their political status,” Yeonmi stated, detailing the exclusion of candidates with family members who had defected from North Korea or had ties to South Korea or other countries.
The search for these girls often leads officials to schools where they scrutinize classrooms and playgrounds to identify potential recruits. Once selected, the young women are subjected to stringent medical examinations to certify their virginity. Any blemish, even a minor scar, could disqualify them from joining the squad. The vetting process is rigorous and unforgiving, seeking to find the ‘perfect’ candidates for the regime’s upper echelons.
Upon clearing all evaluations, Park stated that a chosen few are relocated to Pyongyang to begin their service for Kim Jong-un’s indulgence. The “Pleasure Squad” is systematically compartmentalized into three distinct groups: one for massage, another for performing arts like singing and dancing, while the third group is reserved for sexual interactions with the dictator and other select men. “They have to learn how to please these men; that’s their only goal,” Park remarked, elucidating on the singular focus placed upon these women’s roles within the squad.
The proverbial curtain falls on the members of the “Pleasure Squad” as they reach their mid-twenties, whereupon they are generally married off to Kim Jong-un’s bodyguards, marking the end of their service. Park underscored the unsettling inception of the “pleasure squad” by Kim Jong-un’s predecessor and father, Kim Jong-il. The older Kim had been convinced that sexual relations with young girls would grant him eternal youth, a belief that evidently had a hand in shaping the destiny of countless North Korean women.
Kim Jong-il’s legacy included the peculiar inheritance of the “pleasure squad”, stemming from an attempt to appease his father, Kim Il-Sung—Kim Jong-un’s grandfather. Park narrates, “He thought ‘If I pick some pretty girls, and place them where my father Kim Il-Sung stays, he might find that very pleasurable.’ So he picked beautiful women and put them in resorts that Kim Il-Sung visited.” This unconventional move touched Kim Il-Sung, who appreciated his son’s attention to his comfort, and as Park details, resulted in Kim Jong-il being named his successor.
Kim Jong-il’s departure from the world stage in 2011, at the age of 70 to a massive heart attack, did not mark the end of the “pleasure squad”, as the practice appears to persist under the current leadership. Park’s revelations have given the international community insight into the disturbing customs still being enforced within North Korea, underpinning the human rights abuses that are all too familiar in the secretive state.
Yeonmi Park’s defiant voice continues to resonate across the globe, telling a story of survival and shedding light on the oppressive darkness of the North Korean regime. Her courage in speaking out not only unveils the eerie reality behind the dictatorship’s closed doors but also urges the international community to keep a vigilant eye on the plight of those still silenced within North Korea’s borders.
