Iwas early to the matching session for Teach North Korean Refugees, so I chatted with the other foreign and South Korean volunteers as I waited for it to begin. Just before the session started, a young Korean girl with a bright summer dress and stylish auburn hair came in and sat to my left. I said hello to her. I had just spoken to a North Korean for the first time in my life, and I didn’t even realize it. I don’t know how I expected a North Korean refugee to appear, but certainly not like this. I didn’t recognize that she was North Korean until my greeting fell flat because she didn’t understand what “How are you?” means. A thousand questions raced through my mind once I realized where she was from. I’ve been teaching English for a long time and I’ve met people from every part of the world. But I had never met a North Korean before. Hardly anyone has. It’s the most secretive nation on Earth. The whole world is hungry to sweep aside the veil of propaganda on each side and see what North Korea is really like. And there she was, all the answers to my many questions, sitting in a high school desk chair right next to me. On top of that, she was excited to get out into the world and finally have her voice heard. But first, I had to teach her what “How are you?” means. TNKR’s Mission

TNKR co-founders Casey Lartigue and Eunkoo Lee started this nonprofit in March 2013 and it became an official NGO in May 2015. Despite being such a young nonprofit, TNKR has already made large steps. One of its students and former ambassador, Yeonmi Park, has been able to use her English ability to address the UN and to write a book in which she talks about the desperation of daily life in North Korea as well as the hardships that refugees must face when they defect. TNKR started a year after Casey Lartigue happened to meet some North Korean refugees. They told him that one of the biggest problems they had with transitioning to life in South Korea was learning English. English is required to get through university, to get a job, and even to use the internet. More importantly, English is necessary to build bridges between North Korean people and the rest of the world. He and Eunkoo Lee began to discuss ways in which they could collaborate, and TNKR was born. PHOTO: Yeonmi Park, one of the most well-known North Korean defectors, giving a speech on human rights. As of November 1, TNKR has connected over 200 North Korean refugees with about 300 volunteer tutors. The Ministry of Unification’s website states that there are over 26,000 North Korean refugees in South Korea, but TNKR co-director Lee tells me those statistics are out of date—that number has already jumped up to 28,000. Every year, at least a thousand new North Korean refugees arrive in South Korea. There’s tremendous room for TNKR to grow, but they need more volunteers to do it. Your Role in TNKR