Mike Kim

Mike Kim is an author, business consultant, keynote speaker, and nonprofit founder.

He is the author of the Wall Street Journal-featured book Escaping North Korea: Defiance and Hope in the World’s Most Repressive Country (Rowman & Littlefield / Bloomsbury). The memoir chronicles his experiences on New Year's Day 2003, when he walked away from his financial planning practice in Chicago and boarded a one-way flight to China with little more than two duffel bags. For the next four years, Kim lived undercover near the North Korea border—training under elite taekwondo masters from Pyongyang while secretly helping North Korean refugees and human trafficking victims escape via a 6,000-mile underground railroad. During this time, he founded Crossing Borders, a nonprofit dedicated to providing assistance to refugees.

Following his time at the border, Kim earned his MBA from Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. Today, he is the founder of Gradient Consulting, a Tokyo-based firm that advises startups on market entry and expansion across Japan, Korea, and the Asia-Pacific region. He works with leading U.S. venture capital firms and their portfolio companies to secure customers, build strategic partnerships, and accelerate revenue growth in Asia.

His work has been featured on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, Fox News (with Bill Hemmer), the BBC, and Reuters.

Kim is a columnist for The Japan News (Yomiuri Shimbun), where he writes on the adoption of startup technology and business trends in Japan.