Delve into the frontlines of humanitarian aid in North Korea. Join us for a special discussion with seasoned experts Kathi Zellweger, Mike Chinoy, and Jerome Sauvage as they share first-hand insights from years of experience on the ground inside North Korea.
In Miss Kathi: Saving Lives in North Korea, Swiss aid worker Kathi Zellweger collaborates with veteran journalist and author Mike Chinoy to chronicle her nearly three decades in North Korea. Dubbed the “Mother Teresa of North Korea” by local officials, Zellweger navigated state suspicion and international skepticism to deliver life-saving relief to thousands of vulnerable North Koreans, focusing especially on children. The book is available for purchase on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
In Witness to North Korea: Three Years on the Ground in the DPRK, former UN Resident Coordinator Jerome Sauvage offers a rare insider account of daily life and operational realities inside Pyongyang. Drawing on his tenure leading international aid operations, Sauvage reflects on the successes and challenges of delivering humanitarian assistance and offers strategic guidance for future engagement. The book is available for purchase here, with a 20% discount using the code: WITNESS20.
The discussion is moderated by Korea Society policy director Jonathan Corrado.
This program is made possible by the generous support of the Korea Foundation and our individual and corporate members.
About the Speakers
Speaker
Mike Chinoy
Mike Chinoy is a Nonresident Scholar at the 21st Century China Center at the University of California and the author of six books. Previously, he spent 15 years as a Senior Fellow at the U.S.-China Institute of the University of Southern California. From 2006-2009, he was a senior fellow at the Los Angeles-based Pacific Council on International Policy, focusing on security issues in Northeast Asia.
He spent 24 years as a foreign correspondent for CNN, including serving as the network’s first bureau chief in Beijing. He also worked for CBS and NBC in Hong Kong. He has received numerous awards for his journalism, including the Emmy, Peabody, and Dupont awards for his coverage of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crisis, and a Dupont Award for his coverage of the 2004 Southeast Asian tsunami.
He has also covered North Korea extensively, traveling there 17 times since 1989. In 1994, he became the only journalist invited to accompany President Jimmy Carter on his historic trip to Pyongyang and was the first journalist ever to file live TV reports from North Korea.
He holds a BA from Yale University and an MS from Columbia University. He lives in Taipei, Taiwan.
Speaker
Jerome Sauvage
After a career with the United Nations taking him and his family to Africa, Asia and at Headquarters in New York, Jerome Sauvage became the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in North Korea. He negotiated new control arrangements with the North Korean Government to re-open the UNDP office in Pyongyang; coordinated the delivery of humanitarian aid and the international response to natural disasters and facilitated visits from the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s political envoys and from Jimmy Carter. Jerome Sauvage is an international affairs consultant specializing in humanitarian affairs and human resource management. He is a graduate of Paris’ Sorbonne University and Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
Speaker
Kathi Zellweger
Kathi Zellweger is a senior aid manager with over thirty years of experience in Hong Kong, China, and North Korea. She was based in Pyongyang during 2006–2011 as the North Korea country director for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. Before that, Zellweger worked in a senior post for the Catholic Agency Caritas in Hong Kong, where she played a key role in pioneering Caritas’s involvement in China and North Korea. She later established her own NGO, the Hong Kong–based KorAid Limited, to serve children in institutions and people with disabilities in North Korea. Zellweger is affiliated with the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and a Non-resident Fellow at the European Center for North Korean Studies at the University of Vienna. She holds a master’s degree in international administration from the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont.
