HONOLULU – Raising awareness, sending information into North Korea and helping refugees trapped in China in inhumane living conditions should be the priorities for improving the North’s human rights situation, a famous defector said Tuesday night.

Yeonmi Park, who escaped North Korea in 2007, told an audience at the Mamiya Theatre in Honolulu of her experiences in North Korea, highlighting everyday differences in life. This included electricity that does not last 24 hours a day and a lack of public transportation in areas outside the capital Pyongyang, but deeper differences in how people thought.

Following her defection to South Korea,