Yeonmi Park specifically bothers me for this reason. She has it so easy by virtue of being from the DPRK and being willing to slander them

I totally get this but imagine how stupid and intellectually incurious you'd be. One of the most exciting things in life is learning new things and challenging your preconceived ideas. Reactionaries have no love for life's most stimulating intellectual pursuit.

I love to research and read and study! Academically, sure, but I really love to do it for fun on topics that interest me. I write big long essays to consolidate my learning for myself, but the greatest joy is leaving my bibliography as an ugly pile of unformatted slop at the end!

I used to lie and bullshit a lot as a teenager with low self esteem and honestly yeah, it's way easier in the short term. Sometimes you get publically embarrassed but I imagine a professional would just kill the part of their mind that cares about that.