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I've been a journalist for 32 years,

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and I'm going to tell you about the saddest story 
that I've ever heard.

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Inside Camp 14, 13-year-old inmate 
named Shin Dong-hyuk

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betrayed his family.

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It was late at night, 
he was supposed to be asleep

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but he heard his mother and brother

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talking about a plan 
to escape from the camp.

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The rules of Camp 14 are clear.

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If you try to escape, you'll be shot.

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If you hear someone talking about escape

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and you fail to report it, you'll be shot.

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Shin got out of bed, 
told his mother he had to pee

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walked outside and found a guard.

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While he was snitching, 
he asked for more food

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and easier work.

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About seven months later --

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about seven months later,

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he was taken to the execution grounds in the camp.

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A place that he'd gone to twice a year

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ever since he was five years old.

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There, the entire camp was assembled.

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There were about 20,000 people 
in Camp 14 at the time.

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He was taken to the front, 
and he witnessed

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the shooting death of his brother, 
and the hanging of his mother.

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Before his mother died, 
she tried to catch his eye.

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He refused to look at her.

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For the next 10 years, 
he felt no guilt

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for his role in the death 
of his brother and mother.

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In concentration camps survivor stories,

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there is a conventional narrative arc.

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The protagonist is taken away
by security forces

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from a comfortable home 
and a loving family.

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The most famous of these stories, 
I'm sure most of you've read

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is by Elie Wiesel, it's called "Night."

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In the book, he writes that, 
after his entire family perished

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in the Nazi death camps, he was alone.

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Terribly alone. In a world without man,

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without God, without love, without mercy.

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Shin's story is even darker.

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Words like love, mercy, family --

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for him had no meaning at all.

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God did not disappear or die. 
Shin had never heard of him.

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In "Night," Wiesel writes

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that an adolescent's knowledge of evil 
should come from reading books.

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In Camp 14,

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Shin saw only one book, 
a Korean grammar

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in the hands of his teacher. 
A man who wore a uniform,

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had a gun on his hip, 
and who beat one of Shin's classmates

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to death with a chalkboard pointer.

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Shin did not abandon

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civilization and descend into hell.

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Uniquely among all
the concentration camp survivors

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we know, he was born there. 
He accepted its rules.

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He regarded it as home.

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In a very real way, 
Shin was a creation

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of the guards in Camp 14. 
They were quite literally his breeders.

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They chose his parents, 
who were young adults in the camp

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and they ordered them 
to have sex.

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He was raised mostly by the guards. 
He had a very bad relationship with his mother.

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But he was raised by the guards,

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to snitch on his parents, 
and to snitch on his friends.

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It was a long playing behavioral experiment

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run by the security apparatus of North Korea.

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And, it continues to this day. 
The rules are very simple.

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The more you snitched, 
the more you ate.

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Let me ask you, 
how many of you knew

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before I started talking, that there are 
concentration camps in North Korea?

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That's good.

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Well, there are about six of them. 
Between four and six.

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135,000 to 200,000 people
are in them right now.

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Half of them are the relatives

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of perceived political enemies of the state.

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The relatives.

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The way justice works in North Korea, 
there's collective punishment.

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If I were to say that the leaders 
were stupid and corrupt

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my kids and my parents 
would go with me to a camp

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like Camp 14, and eating a diet of corn, 
cabbage and salt, we would all be worked to death.

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These camps have existed for half a century.

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They're clearly visible on Google Earth, 
you can see them on your Smartphone.

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North Korea continues to deny,

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officially deny that they exist.

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North Korea didn't invent these camps. 


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They were invented 
in this form by Stalin.

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But, when Stalin died
in the former Soviet Union,

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the camps died out too.

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In North Korea however, the camps 
have survived the death of founding dictator,

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they've survived the death of his son,

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and they're thriving now
with the third generation

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of totalitarian leadership, Kim Jong Un.

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Who's about 28, 29 years old. 
Coincidentally, he happens to be

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about the same age as Shin.

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But you can see from this slide 
the camps have existed

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twice as long as the camps
in the Soviet Union,

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about 12 times as long as the camps 
in Hitler's Germany.

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And the reason North Korea 
seems to have lost none of its appetite

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for being cruel to its own people.

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They're just as cruel now 
as they were 50 years ago.

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The camps are operated 
in almost exactly the same way.

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Shin's story is the case study in that cruelty.

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He's the only person,

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the only person so far, 
born and raised in those camps

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to get out and tell the story.

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But, his story is more than just a tale
of state-sponsored sadism.

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It is an escape adventure, 
and it's a story about the resilience

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of the human spirit.

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The guards in Camp 14
spent 23 years trying to turn Shin

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into a blinkard, malleable slave 
and they failed.

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They failed because he was very lucky 
when he was 23.

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A newcomer came to the camp, and this was 
an individual who had been raised in Pyongyang.

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A member of the elite.
He'd been educated in the former Soviet Union.

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Shin's job, was to teach Park, 
that was the guy's name,

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how to fix sewing machines 
in the uniform factory.

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Shin was also supposed to snitch on Park, 
to find out what he thought

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about the leadership, 
and then report to his superior.

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For the first time in his life,
though, instead of snitching

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Shin listened to what Park had to say.

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Park told him --
broke the news to him

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that the world was round, 
which was news to Shin.

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He told him that the United States,

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South Korea and China existed.

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But, he also said, and this is 
what got Shin's interest --

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He said, "If you get out of here,
if you get out of this camp,

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and went to China, 
you could eat grilled meat".

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That's what interested Shin. 
(Laughter)

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He started dreaming about grilled meat.

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Within a few weeks he asked Shin --

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Shin asked Park 
to escape together.

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Park agreed.

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On January 2nd, 2005

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they went for the fence. 
The electric fence.

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The electrified fence 
that surrounds the camp.

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Shin was supposed to be the Mr Inside Guy
in this escape attempt.

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He was supposed to get to the fence first, 
then Park having more knowledge

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of the outside world, 
would lead them to China.

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Unfortunately, as they ran towards the fence, 
on a snowy cold evening up in the mountains,

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Shin slipped and fell on his face

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and Park got to the fence first.

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He was electrocuted on the fence. 
Shin did not hesitate, though.

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He crawled over 
Park's smoldering body and ran off.

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The Mr. Outside Guy on that escape attempt

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unfortunately was dead on the fence.

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But Shin still, through a combination of luck,

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keeping his mouth shut, and being shrewd, 
he found his way out of North Corea in 30 days.

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In a year-and-a-half 
he'd found his way across China

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and found his way to South Korea.

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Two years later he was living 
in Southern California.

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Eating at In-and-Out Burger, which he still says 
it's the best burger in the US.

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(Laughter)

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And he was working for LiNK, 
'Liberty in North Korea'

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as a Human Rights volunteer.

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But, he's not been a very happy person 
outside the camp.

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He's struggling to understand 
what it means to be free.

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He says that he's physically outside, 
but not psychologically outside barbed wire.

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One of the things he told me is

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that he's evolving from being an animal 
into trying to be a human being.

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But it's going very, very slowly.

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Very slowly. He still has dreams

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about his mother's death.

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What's terrifying though is that Shin's story 
is not an isolated tale of horror.

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The two other big adjustment problems 
that are going on, or that will soon go on.

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There are 24,000 North Koreans 
now living in South Korea.

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Almost all of them have come there 
in the past 12 years.

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Almost all of them have been examined 
by government psychiatrists and psychologists

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in South Korea who say that, 
virtually all of them are clinically paranoid,

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a useful adjustment for life in North Korea, 
a place that crawls with security agents

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but they have a very difficult time 
adapting to modern life.

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They have a hard time distinguishing 
between criticism and betrayal.

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And, there are 24 million people in North Korea
who, if that state ever collapses

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will have to go through 
the same adjustment problems.

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And no one is thinking that North Korea 
is on the verge of collapse,

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but totalitarian systems don't last forever.

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And, someday, all of those people 
will have to go through a version

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of what Shin has gone through.

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Now, the reason Shin told me his awful story

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was because he wants you to know

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that these camps are still in operation.

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They're still breeding children. 
They're still teaching them to betray their parents.

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He doesn't believe that knowing about this 
is going to overthrow North Korea.

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But, he went through the humiliation 
of telling me his story

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and he's traveling the world talking about it,

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because he believes that knowledge 
is better than ignorance.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)