Yeonmi Park's first Language Matching session with TNKR (2013-05-23)

2013-05-23: My colleague Eunkoo Lee and I organized a session connecting North Korean refugees with some native and fluent English language speakers. We had been planning this session for weeks, everything was in place. I happened to mention it to Prof. Park Sun Young yesterday--she immediately invited/strongly suggested/refused to take no for answer when she said we could use the newly opened Mulmangcho Research Center to hold the session instead of paying out of pocket for a large room at a TOZ Business Center.

Wow! Great. But to suddenly change the venue to a different part of town just about 24 hours in advance?

That's like changing the direction of the Titanic.

We originally had 19 volunteers and 13 NK escapers signed up. I think we had a total of 16 volunteers and 14 NK escapers. We might hold another session soon.

2020 reflections:

* This was Yeonmi Park's first Language Matching session. I had met Yeonmi months before. I knew that she was on Korean TV, but even then I didn't tag her or mention any specifics about her. Little did I know that a year later we would be working together closely to get her prepared to hit the international stage.

* At that time, we didn't even have an office. If we were using a name then, it would have been "English Matching." TNKR didn't come until much later in the year. As I wrote then, "We might have another session soon." This was truly based on demand from refugees asking for it. If they weren't asking for it, then we weren't going to continue.

* Where's Eunkoo Lee in the photos? At that time, Eunkoo Lee shy lady style, she would stand off to the side to translate rather than being at the center. Even when I mentioned to her to join me at the front, she would say, "That's okay!" These days, she has no problem with leading the Matching sessions. She is probably the one who took these photos. She was then working with a government agency, so she was not comfortable with being in too many photographs. It upsets the people worried about "Manels" or men who appear to dominate, but the reality is that Eunkoo had reasons not to be public.

* Notably of the other students at the session, one student is still in TNKR! That means he has truly seen TNKR gone from nothing to something over the past seven years. He has probably returned about 5 times. Another student rejoined us in 2016. She is now working, she is thankful to TNKR for being part of her English journey. She randomly contacted us recently to thank us, she says that every North Korean refugee she talks to already knows about us. Another student is an artist, playwriter, and radical activist against North Korea. I quoted him in one of my columns back in 2014 saying that the USA should assassinate Kim Jong-Un.

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Yeonmi's fundraisers for TNKR: https://give.lovetnkr.com/en/Yeonmi and

https://give.lovetnkr.com/en/fundraisers/Please-Donate-to-my-25th-Birthday-for-a-cause

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