Yeonmi Park on Joe Rogan Parodies

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About

Yeonmi Park on Joe Rogan Parodies refers to a series of memes parodying North Korean defector Yeonmi Park's August 2021 appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast The Joe Rogan Experience. In May 2023, various internet creators began to satirize Park's accounts of life under the North Korean regime due to the purported bizarre nature of her stories. The format is used to create memes that reference national or regional stereotypes, and often culminate in Joe Rogan saying, "Wow…"

Origin

Yeonmi Park is a North Korean defector whose family escaped from North Korea to China in 2007. She currently lives in the United States and is a contributor to Turning Point America. Park also runs a YouTube channel titled, "Voice of North Korea by Yeonmi Park."^[1] Park has made a career out of sharing her harrowing accounts of life under the North Korean regime, but some critics have pointed out inconsistencies in her stories and noted her background as a wealthy and high-ranking government family in North Korea.^[2]

On August 3rd, 2021, Yeonmi Park went on the Joe Rogan Experience (JRE) podcast to discuss her life under the North Korean regime and her escape into China in 2014. She discussed seeing a boy "begging for food" while his organs were hanging outside his body.^[3] The video gathered over 3.7 million views in two years (seen below, left). In another interview segment, she outlines her escape from North Korea into China in which she describes being sold into sex slavery.^[4]

The earliest known parody of Yeonmi Park's interview with Joe Rogan was posted to 4chan's /pol/^[5] board on August 15th, 2021 (seen below).

Spread

In May 2023, a series of videos featuring Yeonmi Park doing interviews in which she relays bizarre stories from her life under the North Korean regime drew the attention of her critics, who began sharing parodies of her interview with Joe Rogan. On May 4th, 2023, Twitter^[6] user @kimilsungist posted a parody of Park's interview with Rogan, gathering over 140,000 likes in 10 days (seen below, left). On May 5th, Twitter^[7] user @DavidLeftyMA posted a similar tweet, gathering over 900 likes in a similar timeframe (seen below, right).

On May 8th, 2023, Twitter^[8] user @beigepilled posted a parody of Park's JRE interview, gathering over 7,000 likes in 10 days (seen below, left). On May 9th, Twitter^[9] user @TitoMahalo posted a similar parody tweet, gathering over 1,800 likes in roughly a week (seen below, right).

Internet users also began posting parodies of Yeonmi Park interviews where Joe Rogan was substituted for another interviewer. On May 6th, 2023, Twitter^[10] user @blandCinema posted a meme parodying a conversation between Park and Bill Maher, gathering over 5,000 likes in 10 days (seen below, left). On May 12th, Twitter^[11] user @JUNlPER posted a meme featuring Park and Sean Evans from Hot Ones, gathering over 14,000 likes in five days (seen below, right).