2019-10-11 American graduate students visit TNKR

The Teach North Korean Refugees Global Education Center (TNKR) had its second small group discussion this week, this time with a group visiting from the USA. Two TNKR speakers who have been with us since 2015 gave great speeches, then engaged with the audience in Q&A.

I started off the session by asking audience members if they had any questions. And they had PLENTY! I entertained them until our featured speakers arrived. It turned out that they had done some research on us in advance and had some specific questions about me and TNKR.

These sessions are great even for our accomplished speakers. As it has been said, "The threat of execution sharpens the mind." Knowing they will be speaking in front of a live audience with questions keeps the speakers on their toes. After a point, they would have heard almost every question that could possibly be asked about North Korea and North Korean refugees. They can then continue developing their responses.

Having more than one speaker at an event also has great advantages. A key one is that audiences can hear more than one perspective. So many people, after hearing one North Korean refugee, seem to consider that person to be the one and only source about North Korea. I will never forget the South Korean friend who kept telling me about North Korea and North Korean refugees, based on a former co-worker who was from North Korea. When I told her that I had heard a variety of opinions from North Korean refugees, she was undeterred, she had already heard everything she needed to hear, from that one North Korean refugee she had worked with.

After Cherie and Ken spoke, we then had a lively Q&A. Cherie and Ken have been in TNKR since 2015, joining us about six weeks apart, and they have never left us. They know each other's stories, so they will even explain about each other. In my case, I can challenge and push both a bit to further develop their public speaking.

After that, it was photo time! We had more than 20 people squeezed into our small office--21 students, 2 tour guides.

During the discussion I challenged the grad students to take us on as a project--and they agreed!

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2020-04-26 "May I choose more teachers?" TNKR Matching session #102

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...

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