TNKR, June 2015.
Our status at that time:
* I was working at Freedom Factory as the Director for International Relations.
* Eunkoo Lee was working full-time at the Korea Educational Development Institute, dropping into the office when possible sometimes.
* TNKR was just a project of Freedom Factory, not even yet an official organization.
* Our "office" was my desk," but we had started to claim the second desk that Eunkoo and others would share when they came into the office.
" We had just gotten our first intern.
* We had no money, at that time we began thinking that we could ask the volunteers and fans saying they love us so much if they could donate or fundraise.
* Why don't you have a more professional website?
The usual drive-by experts and commentators were asking things like:
"How do you spend your money?" My answer was first to laugh, then ask, "WHAT MONEY???"
"Why don't you do Skype?"
"Why don't you have classes at the office?"
"Why don't you expand to other cities?"
"I'd be willing to teach some, why don't you send them to me?"
"Why don't you hold parties or social gatherings for the volunteers?"
"Instead of just English, why don't you teach the refugees (fill-in-the-blank)?"
Plus, we had some conspiracy theorists and North Korea sympathizers targeting us, so much so that Freedom Factory was even named in a screed posted by the North Korea propaganda machine. Even then people were asking me if I was concerned that the North Korean government was targeting me, I would respond, "If they are, our office is so small that they may have trouble finding us."
We had started to attract some attention during 2014, but people were greatly exaggerating our strength, I guess they watch too much TV.
I had received some nice job offers back in the USA, but in Korea, I had people asking if I was a CIA agent, or part of some libertarian conspiracy, the North Korea sympathizers were targeting me, and some of the (mainly American correspondents) were asking if I was trying to be the Martin Luther King Jr of North Korea, etc.
