Park made her media debut in 2011 on the show Now On My Way to Meet You, where she was dubbed "Paris Hilton" due to her stories of her family's wealthy lifestyle.

[3] During the 2020s, she became a conservative political commentator in the American media through speeches, podcasts and the 2023 publication of her second book, While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector's Search for Freedom in America.

Political commentators, journalists and professors of Korean studies have criticized Park's accounts of life in North Korea for inconsistencies,[8][9][10] contradictory claims, and exaggerations.

[13] Park's father was a civil servant who worked at the Hyesan town hall as a member of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea and supplemented his income by smuggling goods from China.

[24] Park says that in February 2009, after spending two days at a Christian shelter in Qingdao, she and her mother traveled through the Gobi Desert to Mongolia to seek asylum from South Korean diplomats.

Park later said in an interview with Jordan Peterson that she believed the guards were toying with them since Mongolia's official policy on North Korean refugees is to deport them to South Korea.

[3][28] According to media academic Richard Murray, Park's ability to speak English, coupled with her being a young, attractive woman, contributed to her rise in popularity with journalists.

"[33] After her memoir's publication, Park "began presenting a far more harrowing description of life in North Korea than she had shared with South Korean TV fans", according to The Washington Post.

[13][3] The Diplomat also published a response from Park, in which she said that the discrepancies in her stories came from her limited English skills at the time, adding that her "childhood memories were not perfect" and that she had begun to review her accounts more often with her mother.

[15] Vollers wrote that she had noticed Park's jumbled recollections, but attributed them to her not yet being fluent in English, to having been trafficked in China and changing details in her story to avoid revealing her secret, and to the effects of survivor trauma on memory processing.

Will Sommer wrote in The Washington Post, "scholars on North Korea who are skeptical of Park say she's symptomatic of a booming market for horror stories from the cloistered nation that they believe encourages some "celebrity" defectors to spin increasingly outlandish claims".

[24] Other North Korean defectors and scholars have expressed concern that the tendency of "celebrity defectors"[14] to "spin increasingly outlandish claims" under "pressure to serve up a dramatically compelling account of their previous lives" will "overshadow genuine concerns about the dire state of human rights there"; these documented abuses include "rape, murder and forced abortions ... forced sterilization, executions and 'arbitrary' detentions as part of a long array of 'significant human rights issues' in the country", according to The Washington Post.

In response, Park wrote, "And there are mountains you can even see on Google Earth – maybe you call them big hills in English – outside of Hyesan that we crossed to escape.

[13] Experts, including Shi-eun Yu, who worked with North Korean defectors for many years, and Kim Hyun-ah, were both highly skeptical of this story.

[13] During a 2021 interview with Joe Rogan, Park claimed that in August 2020, during the George Floyd protests in Chicago, three African-American women attacked and robbed her and her son.

[3] During an interview with podcaster Tim Pool, Park said that North Koreans do not have words to describe romantic love outside of admiration for the ruling Kim family.

B. Abram called Park's claim "totally ludicrous" and noted the large number of love songs popular in North Korea.

[41] In a separate interview, Park was told that a train engine alone can weigh 100 to 200 tons, close to the weight of the Statue of Liberty or an adult blue whale.

[42] Park's claims that human corpses commonly float down North Korean rivers were criticized by Swiss businessman Felix Abt, who lived and worked in the DPRK for seven years.

"[27] She has stated that the Jangmadang (the black market of North Korea), will transform or develop the country's society by providing access to outside news media and information.

According to Park, "If I ever return to a reformed North Korea, I will be thrilled to meet my peers as we attempt to bring wealth and freedom to people who were forced into poverty by the Kim family dynasty.

[53] Park has told the story of her defection at several well-known events, including TEDx in Bath, the One Young World summit in Dublin,[5] and the Oslo Freedom Forum.

[3] According to the conservative media outlet Campus Reform, in 2023 students at Syracuse University tore down posters advertising a speech by Park, and used online platforms to accuse her of lying.

[3] In November 2023, Park was paid to give a speech at Wake Forest University at an event hosted by the conservative group Young Americans for Freedom.

[4] Yeonmi Park's first book was her memoirs titled In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom (2015), which was published in the United States by Penguin Press.

It was created as a collaboration between Park and the veteran ghost writer Maryanne Vollers, who had previously worked with notable public figures including Hillary Clinton and Ashley Judd.

[3] Park's second book, While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector's Search for Freedom in America (2023), included a foreword written by the conservative commentator Jordan Peterson.

[3][4] It was published in the United States by a "conservative imprint of Simon & Schuster", according to The Washington Post,[3] which says it contains allegations of censorship and cancel culture on American college campuses, "warning that America is on the verge of liberal dictatorship".

[1] In the acknowledgements, Park thanks a variety of American conservative media personalities, including the YouTuber Dave Rubin and Emma-Jo Morris, who is the editor for Breitbart News.

[3] Park's spokesperson and literary agent, Jonathan Bronitsky, is the former chief speech writer for William P. Barr, the 2016–2020 Trump administration's attorney general.