MBA Student's Book Tells a Harrowing Tale
Mike Kim (G'09), a financial planner from Chicago, imagined he would return from his two-week vacation in China well-rested and rejuvenated for another year of work. Instead, the young business owner returned to the states shaken, unable to forget the horror stories told to him by North Korean refugees and their children.
"I distinctly remember sitting across from clients talking about mutual funds, retirement plans and insurance while feeling completely disengaged by it all," says Kim of his 2001 trip. "The North Korean refugees I had met on my trip weighed heavily on my heart. At that moment I knew what I had to do – I had to go to China to help."
Leaving his business in Chicago, Kim moved to California to learn Mandarin and Korean, and to prepare himself for humanitarian aid work in China. On New Year's Day 2003, carrying little more than two duffle bags and a one-way ticket, Kim moved to the China-Korea border. He spent the majority of his first year getting to know North Koreans and their culture.
"As our friendships grew, I earned their trust," Kim says. "They opened up and shared their deepest secrets with me – things they had never told anyone else."
Kim shares these refugees' stories with the public in his new book, "Escaping North Korea: Defiance and Hope in the World's Most Repressive Country" (Roman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2008).
"I often sat with pen and paper and listened for hours to the North Korean refugees tell me their stories," Kim says. "Civilians and soldiers alike spoke of what North Koreans think of Americans and war with America … Children remembered the suffering they endured through the famine. Women and girls recalled their horrific experiences at the hands of sex-traffickers. Former political prisoners shared their memories of beatings, torture and executions in the gulags."
Kim's classmate in McDonough School of Business' MBA program says he is left with vivid images of the life that North Korean refugees face.
"Some stories are so shocking that there were times when I had to put the book down for a moment to digest what I had just read," says Steven Schuler (G'09). "Mike is modest about his accomplishments, so as a classmate I'm proud for him, both for his work directly with refugees … and for bringing attention to the situation."
One of the few Americans granted entry into North Korea, Kim came to know the isolated country and its people intimately.
"This is a story of heroes – of North Koreans … risking their lives to flee the world's most repressive dictatorship. And of a heroic young Korean American, the author, Mike Kim, who risked his own life for four years on the China-North Korea border," Mark Palmer, vice chair of Freedom House and the Council for a Community of Democracies, writes in the book's introduction. Palmer, a former U.S. ambassador to Hungary, sits on the Walsh School of Foreign Service's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy board.
Living on the China-North Korea border, Kim quickly learned of the hundreds of thousands of North Koreans fleeing to China in search of food and freedom via a 6,000-mile modern-day underground railroad through Asia. With increased security at embassies and consulates in China, Kim risked his own life leading North Koreans on the treacherous journey across the border to asylum in China. He spent four years working with the refugees on the Chinese border before returning to the United States.
"This is an inspiring yet tragic study of the brave few in North Korea who have chosen to vote with their feet to leave the earth's most repressive regime," says Victor Cha, director of Asian studies and D. S. Song-Korea Foundation Chair in Asian Studies and Government.
In addition to writing his book, which is available at the Main Campus bookstore, Kim also founded the nongovernmental organization Crossing Borders Ministries, which provides food, clothes, shelter and medicine to North Korean refugees in China. Since 2003, Kim's organization has established 25 refugee shelters and five orphanages near the China-North Korea border, and has saved hundreds of refugees fleeing for their lives.
"Through our shelters, children who might have ended up in gangs or brothels now have a chance at life … We stress education and encourage them to dream," says Kim. "By applying both humanitarian aid and faith effectively, Crossing Borders is, I believe, a model for the future."
Born and raised in Chicago, Kim graduated in 1999 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with dreams of attending business school. Now a full-time MBA student at the McDonough School of Business, Kim says he plans on returning to nonprofit work in the future.
"In moving to the China-North Korea border to help some of the most destitute people in the world today, I feel that I have been liberated," Kim says. "As much as I have taught them, they have taught me more … and in helping them, I have gained a greater sense of purpose and fulfillment for my own career."
