Mike Kim

Mike Kim is an author, consultant, NGO founder, and North Korea specialist. He is the author of the Wall Street Journal featured book “Escaping North Korea”, a current events memoir published in 2008 by Rowman & Littlefield, about his experiences at the China-North Korea border helping North Koreans. On New Year's Day 2003, Mike gave up his financial planning business in Chicago, Illinois 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 two famous 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 and he founded Crossing Borders, a nonprofit dedicated to providing humanitarian assistance to North Korean refugees.