2017-02-14 North Korea is still breaking hearts

North Korea has been breaking hearts and families for decades. The Hwang Won family has been waiting since 1969 for him to be returned from North Korea. He was one of the 50 people on Korean Air flight YS-11 on December 11, 1969. After international protests, 39 of the 50 passengers were returned to South Korea on Valentine's Day 1970, but 11 of the people were held in North Korea and unable to contact their families (except one tightly controlled case briefly at a small family union session between the two countries).

His son, Hwang In-Cheol, was two years old when his father was abducted to North Korea. He has been campaigning to have his father and the others returned. Mr. Hwang held a press conference in the morning then an event at the TNKR office to raise awareness about the case. You can't change the world but you can let Mr. Hwang know that you support his effort to have his father returned.

Meeting agenda:

Program, Feb 14th, 2:00 pm

(1) Opening, Hwang In-Cheol (The significance of the event)

(2) Watch news clip (Daehan News 764, Return of 39 KAL passengers)

(3) Speaker 1: Kim Seok-Woo, former Vice Unification Minister

(4) Speaker 2: Casey Lartigue, TNKR International Director

(5) Speaker 3: Hwang In-Cheol

(6) Petition introduction (Young-Min Kwon)

(7) Signing ceremony (Signed first by Mr. Kim Seok-Woo)

(8) Speaker 4:Professor Kim Seok-Hyang, Ewha Woman's University

(9) Closing: Hwang In-Cheol & Casey Lartigue

Helping North Koreans 'strike the blow' (Korea Times)

H ave you ever engaged in action not because you were sure it would change the world, but to satisfy your own heart? That, I emailed to an American friend, is why I have joined the effort to help North Koreans who are trying to escape from their homeland. I can’t change the direction of policy in North Korea or China but I can row the boat I am sitting in rather than lamenting that I can’t steer the yachts somewhere else. So I have tried to do what I can: Attending protests in front of the Chinese embassy in Seoul (and I plan to do so when I visit America in April); donating money to the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights ( www.nkhumanrights.or.kr ); educating myself, writing articles and emailing friends; and, as a member of the board of trustees, I recently submitted a resolution to the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association (FDMHA) in Washington, D.C., to try to call attention to the plight of North Koreans. Our organization’s missi...

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2020-04-26, TNKR Matching session #102 The Teach North Korean Refugees Global Education Center (TNKR) humbly began in March 2013 with 5 tutors and 5 NK refugees being matched together. We held that first session at a TOZ business center in Gangnam. Seven years later, TNKR has now matched 455 North Korean refugees with 1,027 tutors, coaches, and mentors. Today we held our 102nd Language Matching session at our slightly expanded office near the Sangsu Subway Station. Instead of just being something that Casey and Eunkoo did short-term, TNKR is now an official organization in both South Korea and the USA, we have been featured in media and by other organizations (just yesterday, we were featured by KOTESOL), and we have fans and donors from around the world.

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By Casey Lartigue, Jr. Is the sky blue? Is the ocean water? If you suspect those are trick questions, you are right. The sky isn’t always blue ― it is reddish at sunset, dark at midnight, gray on an overcast day. The ocean isn’t water ― there’s also fish, plant life, submarines, dissolved minerals, surfboards, sunken ships, even people swimming in it sometimes. As Hoover Institution scholar Thomas Sowell wrote in his 1996 book ``The Vision of the Anointed,” people who use “all-or-nothing” reasoning can deny a statement because it is not 100 percent true in every circumstance. Such word games might be fun for college students or debaters, but there are some distinguished people who are respected for making such childish arguments about serious issues. In his book ``23 Things They Don’t Tell you About Capitalism,” Cambridge University economist Chang Ha-Joon argues that 1) “[T]here is really no such thing as a free market” and 2) “The free market doesn’t exis...

"Yoegi Anjuseyo!"

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Park Jin welcoming remarks to FSI (and Casey Lartigue)

National Assembly member Park Jin makes the welcoming remarks at FSI's conference featuring North Korean diplomats. Park Jin | Greeting message to FSI and Casey Lartigue mention - YouTube

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