He began to hear from fellow students, who had been chosen to study in other communist countries, share stories of the outside world.

They were picked up on the other side of the border by a car, as arranged by his father, and the whole family flew on false passports to South Korea.

[1][6] In April 2015 Park was detained, as protestors clashed with South Korean police over their attempts to airlift thousands of copies of The Interview into North Korea.

[7][8] In July 2020, Park authored an op-ed in The Washington Post, alleging harassment by the Moon Jae-in administration.

He wrote that his home address had been leaked, his bank accounts investigated, and that he had been banned from international travel by the South Korean government in response to his human rights advocacy.

Park's supporters noted that the Moon administration's actions appeared to conflict with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, of which South Korea is signatory.

[11] According to The Wall Street Journal, supporters of the balloon campaign say that it "is one of the most effective tools for change inside North Korea, where information about the outside world is highly restricted".

[12][13] In September 2011, a North Korean defector called Ahn was arrested in Seoul by members of the National Intelligence Service on his way to meet with Park, referred to as "Enemy Zero" by the Pyongyang regime.

[11] The Independent of London noted that Ahn "could face the death penalty" under South Korea's National Security Law, but he ended up being sentenced to four years in prison.

The Independent also pointed out that the assassination plot was “reminiscent of the Cold War killing of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov, who was stabbed with a ricin-tipped umbrella in London in 1978.”[11] In an interview in June 2020 with Foreign Policy, Park said, "It is said that the tree of peace lives off blood and that freedom is not free.

[17][18] He was charged on November 25, 2020, with beating and throwing bricks at producers and crew from the Seoul Broadcasting System on June 23.

[19][20] In May 2013, Park was presented with the Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent by the Human Rights Foundation.