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Mike Kim (born December 11, 1976) is the author of Escaping North Korea: Defiance and Hope in the World’s Most Repressive Country, published in 2008 by Rowman & Littlefield. 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 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 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. Publishers Weekly remarked, "His intrepid effort to help four North Korean teenagers avoid arrest and repatriation on the journey from northern China to the British consulate in Shanghai is riveting, as is his insider knowledge of the perilous route refugees navigate across the borders of China, Laos and Thailand." 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. Kim received his MBA from Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. He is also a 1999 graduate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He frequently appears in the media: He has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and has appeared on CNN Anderson Cooper 360. He has also been interviewed by major international media groups such as BBC, Reuters, Yonhap News Agency, The Korea Times, The Korea Daily, and Seoul Broadcasting System. His organization, Crossing Borders, testified in a congressional hearing on the topic of “Combating Human Trafficking in China”.

On June 30, 2009, Kim was interviewed by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. They discussed his book, his help to North Korean refugees and issues in North Korea including human rights and propaganda. Since the interview, there has been interest in turning Escaping North Korea into a motion picture and the book-to-film project is represented by William Morris Endeavor.

In June 2010, Kim was voted in as a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Mike Kim", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0