It really is that bad: A powerful speech on North Korea

It really is that bad: A powerful speech on North Korea: “One challenge I always have when I speak about North Korea is I run out of adjectives for how bad things are. And many of you that follow policy or human rights situations oftentimes get jaded with numbers,” Hong begins, speaking at an event for Melanie Kirkpatrick’s book Escape from North Korea: The Untold Story of Asia’s Underground Railroad, sitting between Kirkpatrick and Joseph Kim, a young escapee whose journey her book chronicles. “It’s very easy for us to write off bad things because we just assume these are bad things that happen ‘over there,’ and many times they don’t necessarily affect us. And the challenge with North Korea in particular is that things are so bad on such a scale and scope that it sounds fake. It sounds unfathomable, it’s impossible to really comprehend.”