2019-10-17 When can I start?

TNKR's co-founders had three hours of interviews yesterday with North Korean refugees joining TNKR.

We welcome North Korean refugees into the organization with an initial interview. The main point of it is to explain TNKR's approach and make sure they understand it, to confirm that they understand this is a self-study project, and that students looking to make foreign friends need to go somewhere else.

One challenge is when we have returnees. One of the refugees returning to us studied in TNKR back in 2014. TNKR was much less developed, we were still trying to figure out the best way to engage North Korean refugees.

We have made some decisions!

Such as, English-only. No socializing. Studying, not hanging out. No separate contact outside of studying in class. Much more monitoring.

It took a bit of time for the student yesterday to understand that we really meant that things had changed. After she understood, she was enthusiastic. Her classes had fallen apart quickly in 2014, and she wasn't sure why. Doing a bit of investigation, it turned out that she had talked to her tutors about her personal story, had tried to be friends with them, and had allowed the bilingual speakers to use Korean. As it is easy to predict, once it becomes a buddy relationship, then there is less focused studying. We will check to see how things go this time with her.

All three students who came by yesterday asked one similar question: When can I start?

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Evaluation process

In addition to three hours of interviews with refugees, we also had a long meeting with a young South Korean studying education who wants to join TNKR. We are now trying to develop an evaluation process that can have another upgrade to its education process.

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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The Casey Lartigue Show!

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