Skip to main content

2014-06-04 Yeonmi even works on holidays

In Yeonmi Park's book "In Order to Live," she thanked me for believing in her from the very beginning.

I think this meeting on June 4, 2014, is an example.

Yeonmi and I met with the organizers of a TEDx event in Seoul. I had reached out to every TEDx organizer--only two responded. One said they couldn't fit the North Korean topic into their event. The other one responded that they were very interested, but not sure. They didn't want anything political.

So I told them what I was telling everyone during 2014: Just meet her.

Finally, they agreed. It was election day, so it was a holiday. After 10 minutes of them talking, one of the ladies said, "Wow! This is definitely a TED Talk!!!" They had gone from doubting she would be a speaker to thanking me for being persistent about meeting with them.

It wasn't going to be the big TED stage, but it would be a chance for Yeonmi to give a TEDx speech, in preparation for giving a TED talk later (which she did).




At that time, we were working at the now-defunct Freedom Factory. I wonder sometimes what we could have accomplished with a real budget. The week before, her op-ed had been published in the Washington, there were so many requests from people to meet her.

We held that meeting at a cafe in Seoul.




Popular posts from this blog

2014-02-14 Yeon-Mi Park`s debut

Yeonmi Park, February 14, 2014, making her debut! Yesterday I was one of the speakers at a special session on North Korean refugees at the Canadian Maple International School. Wow, it was a wonderful time! * Yeon-Mi Park delivered her first major speech in English. She was wonderful! She told her story (35 minute speech without notes), discussed different aspects of North Korea, and then handled questions from students for more than an hour. She did seem to be nervous at the beginning-she took a deep breath just as she started, looked at me, then told her story from her heart. * Returning from the speech, I told Yeonmi that she had star potential. She told me that she didn't believe it, but I told her that the way she handled Q&A and told her story, I would be lucky to have her still returning my phone calls within a year. * The students had many questions. They have been learning about North Korea. They are now reading "Escape from Camp 14" featuring Shin Dong-h...
Read more

Eliot & Casey are bad guys=Memorandum 46 is True!!!

Rev. Walter Fauntroy has responded to a column that Eliot Morgan and I published in the August 5 edition of the Washington Post. Unfortunately, some people are more focused on me and Eliot than they are on determining whether or not Memorandum 46 is a fraud. I'll concede that we are mean guys with bad personalities...does that mean that Memorandum 46 about black Americans is real? Anyway, a couple of observations and comments about Rev. Fauntroy's response : 1) WHERE'S THE FOIA REQUEST? On June 12 or 13, talk-show host Joe Madison invited Rev. Fauntroy on his show for a discussion about Memorandum 46. At that time, Rev. Fauntroy said that they (apparently the Congressional Black Caucus and colleagues) asked for--and were granted--a Freedom of Information request for Memorandum 46. You would think that, in a commentary of more than 2,200 words, that Rev. Fauntroy would have mentioned the FOIA request that must have been stamped with FOIA on it to prove that Memorand...
Read more

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
Read more

[Video] "Author Spotlight" by Harvard

On February 2nd from 2-3 a.m. (Korea time), I was the featured speaker at an "Author Spotlight" by the Harvard Division of Continuing Education (DCE) and the Harvard Extension Alumni Association (HEAA) .  Watch, like, share, and comment.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmRgP3q7rQg&list=PLn7xtnmarHFq6kVvq3PxOgC8nwjn8ioBO  * * *  I will be in the USA for two weeks in March, I will kick off the trip with a speech on the campus of the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HSGE) for its annual Alumni of Color Conference (AOCC). It will be a bit of a homecoming reunion, I was one of the speakers at the first HGSE AOCC in 2003.  Stay tuned, this will be preparation for a larger event later this year. Thanks to everyone who has helped make FSI's work possible. ( Stripe ) ( PayPal ).
Read more

Open door to N. Koreans (Korea Times, January 16, 2013) by Casey Lartigue, Jr.

Open door to N. Koreans By Casey Lartigue, Jr. Last Dec. 12, I fired off an opinion piece of about 1,500 words to the Washington Post. It easily could have been 1,600 words, but I deleted all of the curse words. The day before, I had learned that the United States government had rejected visa applications by three of the students at the Mulmangcho School for North Korean refugee adolescents. Mulmangcho (meaning, ``forget-me-not”) is a small alternative school located in Yeoju, more than an hour south of Seoul. It opened last September with 11 former North Korean children who are orphans or are disadvantaged in some other way. It was founded by former national assembly member Park Sun-young and a distinguished board of directors. Why were the youngsters rejected? The explanation I got: 1) The U.S. government is concerned that they might not return to South Korea and 2) there was a question about their refugee status because they didn’t have pr...
Read more