On February 26, KEI hosted the author of Escaping North Korea, Mike Kim. Mr. Kim, founder of Crossing Borders Ministries, an NGO assisting North Korean defectors in China, shared his experiences along the China-North Korea border and through the six-thousand-mile modern-day underground railway leading North Koreans to asylum. His uniquely personal perspective on the human security challenges facing North Koreans builds on his intimate conversations with refugees who helped him understand the hidden world of ordinary North Koreans.

Mike Kim is the author of Escaping North Korea: Defiance and Hope in the World’s Most Repressive Country. Kim is a Korean-American who, in 2003, moved to the China-North Korea border and founded Crossing Borders, a nonprofit dedicated to providing humanitarian assistance to North Korean refugees. On New Year's Day 2003, he decided to give up his financial planning business in Chicago and left for China on a one-way ticket carrying little more than two duffle bags. While living near the North Korean border, he operated undercover as a student of North Korean taekwondo, training under North Korean masters from Pyongyang - eventually receiving a second-degree blackbelt. During his time in China, he learned of the hundreds of thousands of North Koreans fleeing to China through a 6,000-mile modern-day underground railroad in search of food and freedom. He has interviewed hundreds of North Koreans and in his book he recounts their experiences of famine, defection, sex-trafficking, and torture in gulags.
He now travels and speaks widely to raise awareness of their plight. Mike Kim resides in Washington, DC, where he is a full-time MBA student at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. He frequently appears in the media. He has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and has appeared on Larry Kane: Voice of Reason. His organization, Crossing Borders, testified in a congressional hearing on the topic of "Combating Human Trafficking in China".