- Mike Kim
-
Mike Kim 
Born December 11, 1976 Nationality Korean-American Occupation Consultant, Author, Public Speaker Mike Kim (born December 11, 1976) is an author, consultant, NGO founder, and North Korea specialist based in Washington DC. He is a Korean-American who, in 2003, moved to the China-North Korea border and founded Crossing Borders, a nonprofit dedicated to providing humanitarian assistance to North Korean refugees. He is the author of the Wall Street Journal featured book Escaping North Korea: Defiance and Hope in the World’s Most Repressive Country, a current events memoir published in 2008 by Rowman & Littlefield, about his experiences at the China-North Korea border helping North Koreans. Kim is represented by the Hollywood agency William Morris Endeavor and they are developing a movie based on his book and his time at the China-North Korea border. The book has been translated into Turkish and the Polish translation will be released in 2012.
Contents
Crossing Borders
On New Year's Day 2003, Kim gave up his financial planning business in Chicago, Illinois and left for China on a one-way ticket carrying little more than two duffle bags. While living near the North Korean border, he operated undercover as a student of North Korean taekwondo, training under two North Korean masters —eventually receiving a second-degree blackbelt.[1] He founded Crossing Borders, a nonprofit dedicated to providing humanitarian assistance to North Korean refugees. In his book, he estimated that during his time on the field over 60% of female defectors were victims of sex trafficking. The organization has been a regular contributor to the State Department's Annual Trafficking in Persons Report and has testified at a congressional hearing on the topic of combating human trafficking in China.[2]
Media and Events
Kim frequently appears in the media: He was a guest on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and has appeared in The Wall Street Journal and on CNN Anderson Cooper 360. He has been interviewed by major international media groups such as CNN, BBC, Reuters, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Yonhap News Agency, The Korea Times, The Korea Daily, and Korean Broadcasting System.
Escaping North Korea: The Movie
After the interview with Jon Stewart, there was interest from Hollywood in turning Escaping North Korea into a motion picture and Kim received offers for the option for the book. The book-to-film project is now represented by the Hollywood agency William Morris Endeavor and is in development,[3][4] with a team working on the script. Kim attended the 2010 Pusan International Film Festival and met with leading South Korean distributors, producers, directors, and actors to discuss his vision for the film. He has also been meeting with high-level South Korean government officials explaining the movie's importance in promoting the Korean image and brand abroad.[5]
Career After China-North Korea
Kim received his MBA from Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business.[6] He is also a 1999 graduate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In interviews, Kim has referred to Ambassador Mark Palmer as a mentor and a person who has deeply influenced him by his example of working effectively in the business, nonprofit, and government sectors. Palmer wrote the foreword to Escaping North Korea and commented, “This is a story of heroes. Of North Koreans increasingly and courageously evading the dictates of the system at home to survive and 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 to help them."
In June 2010, Kim was voted in as a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Kim is a consultant based in Washington DC and continues his book and public speaking tour, while working on the book-to-movie project. His most recent projects involve consulting on international counter sex trafficking initiatives and on North Korea related projects.
References
- ^ Melanie Kirkpatrick, "Fights and Flight", The Wall Street Journal
- ^ Testimony before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China
- ^ http://www.koreadaily.com/news/read.asp?page=3&branch=CH&source=CH&category=&art_id=1006231
- ^ http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=100&oid=001&aid=0003775292
- ^ http://news.donga.com/3/all/20101013/31839620/1
- ^ Mike Kim Website
External links
Categories:- University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign alumni
- Georgetown University alumni
- American investigative journalists
- American people of Korean descent
- American writers of Korean descent
- 1976 births
- Living people
- American journalists of Asian descent
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
