About the Speakers

Blaine Harden is an author and journalist who reports for PBS Frontline and contributes to The Economist. He worked for The Washington Post as a correspondent in Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia, as well as in New York and Seattle. He was also a national correspondent for The New York Times and writer for the Times Magazine. His most recent book, Escape From Camp 14, is the story of Shin Dong-hyuk, the only person to have been born and raised in a North Korean prison camp—and to have escaped to the West. Blaine is also the author of A River Lost. It’s about well-intentioned Americans (including the author’s father) who dammed and degraded the West’s greatest river, the Columbia. An updated and revised edition of A River Lost will be published by Norton in April, 2012, to coincide with a PBS American Experience program about Grand Coulee Dam and the Columbia River. Blaine and the the book are featured on the program. Blaine’s first book, Africa: Dispatches from a Fragile Continent, was described by The Independent (London) as the “best contemporary book on Africa.” Journalism awards include the Ernie Pyle Award for coverage of the siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War, the American Society of Newspaper Editors Award for Nondeadline Writing (stories about Africa), and the Livingston Award for International Reporting (stories about Africa).

Shin Dong-hyuk is now executive producer of Inside NK, a Seoul-based webcast that is also available on YouTube. The daily show features Shin interviewing other North Korean defectors, as they talk about their lives in North Korea and their adjustment to life in South Korea. Shin plans to continue this webcast and is trying to raise money to help support it.

Shin has been living in Seoul since 2011. Before that he lived in Southern California for nearly two years, where he was a Senior Ambassador for LiNK, Liberty in North Korea, an NGO that helps North Korean defectors in China and other countries. Shin spoke often about his life while at LiNK, work with young American volunteers and helped out in the group's office.