Original subtitles

All right, so welcome everyone to the U.S. Asian Law Institute's speaker

program. We're very pleased to introduce two speakers who have just published an

amazing and unusual book called Miss Kathy, Saving Lives in North Korea,

which is, by the way, available for those of you in person, is available

outside the door with copies from the bookstore.

Ms. Cathy is Cathy Zellweger, a Swiss aid worker who brought food, medicine,

and other assistance into North Korea from 1995 until the eve of COVID.

And for most of that time, she was flying in several times a year from Hong

Kong, where she was based, but for five years, she was also based in Pyongyang.

from 2006 to 2011.

And the lengthy time span of her engagement with North Korea as well as

the fact that she traveled widely inside North Korea to places that very few

foreigners are ever allowed to visit means that the book has a texture and a

flavor of real life that is exceedingly rare in writings about North Korea.

Also with us is her co-editor, Mike Shinoy, whom some of you might have seen

on CNN, where he was a correspondent for many decades, reporting from Beijing,

Hong Kong, and other places.

He also has traveled quite a bit into North Korea, 17 trips.

And among his previous books is Meltdown, the Inside Story of the North

Korean Nuclear Crisis.

And Mike is a resident permanently in Taipei these days, but he's a non

-resident scholar at the University of California at San Diego, writing

interesting and offbeat books on a wide range of subjects.

So our program today is a bit off the beaten track for us as well, because

usually we focus on very specifically legal topics.

But I want to suggest today that international law is a backdrop to our

conversation because a running theme of your narrative is about how you had to

overcome international sanctions in order to get your aid into North Korea.

And so I think what we might be hearing is perhaps one could say the argument

against sanctions, and perhaps it's a case for why the UN and the

international community has got North Korea wrong.

And so we look very much to hearing your suggestions for how to get it right.

as we continue to face a dilemma about what to do about North Korea.

So with that, Mike, would you please?

Thanks very much, Catherine. It's great to be here.

Most of you don't know this, but she and I were colleagues in Beijing back in

ancient history days when I was the CNN Beijing bureau chief, and she was at the

Associated Press going back to the mid-late 80s. So we've been friends for

a very long time, so it's really a special treat.

to be here.

I'd like to begin by saying there are really kind of two genres of books about

North Korea.

One focuses on the diplomacy around the missile program, efforts to get the

nuclear program rolled back.

My first book about North Korea, which Catherine mentioned, Meltdown, is very

much in that genre.

The other tends to come from defectors or people who share that perspective.

It's the kind of how I escaped from the secret state, the horrors of North

Korea, the awfulness of daily life, the gulag, and so on. There are a lot of

these, and they get a lot of attention.

But what gets lost in all of this is that 99% of North Koreans aren't

involved in nuclear diplomacy, and 99% of North Koreans aren't.

In fact, the defectors we counted in the book numbered just a few hundred, and

that number has shrunk even more dramatically in recent years. So the

question becomes, what about the rest of the people in North Korea? There's a

huge majority in this country of 25 million.

who are living their lives with hopes and dreams and fears and frustrations,

trying to survive often in extremely difficult circumstances.

And what I think Miss Cathy does in a way that almost no other book

has is to open a window onto these people and onto their experiences

through consistency, multiple visits, building relationships of trust.

with the North Koreans, Cathy had access to the country that no other aid worker

and certainly no other journalist ever had. And that story gives a sense of the

sort of depth and context and complexity to North Korea that's often missing from

the public discussion. And that is, I think, really its unique contribution.

I think it's also important to mention the broader geopolitical context in

which Cathy worked, amid fears of confrontation, nuclear and missile

tests, frequent talk about a new Korean war, Donald Trump's language about

fire and fury threatening North Korea in the early part of his first term, and so

on. The history of how all the diplomatic efforts to end North Korea's

nuclear program failed is a long and complex one, and there's not enough time

to really go into it in detail here, except to say that the conventional

narrative that it's all North Korea's fault due to North Korean intransigence

and double dealing obscures the many times that the U.S.

didn't deliver on commitments that it had made or missed conciliatory signals

from Pyongyang.

So both sides, I certainly feel, bear responsibility for the failure of

diplomacy. In any event, the always tense geopolitical context adds

perspective on how remarkable

it was what Cathy was actually able to do, because that was the context in

which she had to raise funds for aid, to convince donors there was value in

helping North Korea despite all the alarming headlines, and as we recount in

the book, how she had to fight to keep the program she was involved in alive in

the face of often very intense political opposition, particularly from

conservative forces in her home country of Switzerland.

Yet, in spite of those fears, which were real at the time, even if in hindsight

shows that the worst outcomes were avoided, Cathy kept going.

Despite tensions that soured North Korean attitudes towards many

foreigners, she continued to work with them, pursuing first food and medical

aid, and then development projects.

Let me come back as a sort of final point before Cathy speaks to

But what I was saying about the need to look at North Korea as a more complex

society, this time from the perspective of a longtime journalist who made 17

visits and had the opportunity to meet Kim Il-sung, the grandfather of Kim Jong

-un, three times. Talk a little bit about how the country is covered or

miscovered by the media that shapes how people see it.

The press tends to follow the headlines.

And the headlines are nuclear tests, missile tests, military threats,

geopolitical saber-rattling, or hair-raising defector accounts, or

sometimes just the sheer weirdness of North Korea, at least to our outside

eyes. And that leaves very little bandwidth for discussion about things

like public health, agriculture, environmental challenges, and the daily

realities that tens of millions of North Koreans live with.

tends to swing between sort of sensationalist hyperbole and complete

silence because the lack of access forces journalists into a kind of

information vacuum where unverified rumors face little accountability.

Access has always been very limited. Now it's almost impossible.

And when you did get to go as a journalist, you were always accompanied

by government minders who supervised everything you did. This picture shows a

North Korean guide peering over the shoulder of my editor as we put together

a story during a CNN trip.

So under these circumstances, frozen out of North Korea, correspondents tend to

rely heavily on secondary sources, the South Korean media, unverifiable

defector accounts, satellite imagery, and sensational claims which can

generate massive traffic long before they're refuted.

So you get a sense of North Korea as a kind of cartoon caricature. North Korean

citizens portrayed as robotic brainwashed zombies or passive helpless

victims while high politics and state actions are often just treated as

bizarre. One example are the unverifiable execution stories like

claims, which were never confirmed, about political opponents being fed to

wild dogs.

If you ask her, Cathy can tell you the story about the rumors about what turned

out to be the non-execution of her friend, the then foreign minister.

And the government of North Korea is often treated as a kind of absurd

spectacle rather than analyzed in a more serious way as what I would argue it is,

which is a state pursuing calculated political strategies that have

an internal logic to it.

But reducing a complex society to a security threat or bizarre caricature

prevents the public from understanding the actual human landscape, economic

survival strategies, and the day-to-day realities of life there.

So what you don't generally get a sense of is sort of the nuance that this is a

living, breathing society of people, most of whom are just trying to survive

under difficult circumstances.

And that, I think, is missing from a lot of the press coverage and the public

discussion. It's something central to what we write about in Miss Cathy.

So as context for what Cathy is about to share of her own work, and as something

to keep in mind, As you follow the news and read about North Korea, I think

these are important points to hold on to.

So let me stop there. I hope this is some useful food for thought. And now,

once we switch PowerPoints, here's Ms. Cathy.

Good afternoon, everybody.

I'm delighted to be here and to talk about North Korea, a country I have been

dealing with since the early...

Why North Korea?

There was no plan to go there, let alone to work there.

So from the late 1970s, I was working in Hong Kong for the Catholic charity

Caritas, serving the poor, vulnerable, and excluded.

Mike and I met in 1995,

and CNN was the first international news agency to interview

me after I began visiting North Korea.

We stayed in touch, became friends, and started working on a book five

years ago.

The result is Miss Kathy, Saving Lives in North Korea.

Let me start by telling what the challenges can be in North

Korea.

And just a little story.

I had a colleague, the wife of our agriculturist, and she would

speak every Saturday afternoon with her 94-year-old mother in France.

And the two would speak a mixture of English and French.

And at that time, we were not yet switched to the server of the Swiss

government, so we had to use the North Korean lines.

And she was on the phone, of course, sharing state secrets, as you can

imagine. And all of a sudden, there was a click in the line, and a little voice

said, please not to change languages.

So that was just daily reality, and it was okay. You learn to live

with this.

In the spring of 1993, I met a North Korean official on the

sidelines of a UN conference in Beijing, and that led to a 1995

invitation, and not as a tourist, but to explore if there

was a possibility.

for Caritas to work there.

And then 1995 was the summer that the North Koreans

will not forget, nor will I.

In July and August, it rained nonstop.

And it really caused massive destruction.

As you can see here, villages were just washed out.

And what you see next are some stark images because soon

afterwards we saw a famine was developing.

It really plunged a nation already suffering from severe food shortages,

fuel, electricity, and so on into a brutal famine.

And for the first time, Pyongyang, made an official appeal for

international help.

I returned to North Korea as the disaster unfolded, witnessing

the incredible suffering.

And that marked the start of Caritas' massive relief

efforts, which I managed for many years out of Hong Kong.

We launched appeals year by year, first for food aid, and then for

rehabilitation work and also training programs.

Here you see a public distribution center where people line up to

collect the food rations from the government's food distribution system,

which unfortunately largely broke down during the famine.

It was tough work in those years, very challenging,

but I would say also rewarding.

Building relationships and winning the trust required enormous

patience.

Suspicion and cultural misunderstandings were common.

but remaining impartial, non-judgmental, treating local partners with

respect and honoring the importance of saving face

made collaboration possible.

Over time, that trust grew to the point where authorities

allowed me to film and photograph

freely, without censorship, following the usual rules and

even in difficult situations as you can see here or

the next picture where you see a child in a hospital receiving

fluids from a drip made out of an old beer bottle.

After nearly 30 years of Caritas, I took a job with the Swiss Agency

for Development and Cooperation, in short SDC.

And I was based in Pyongyang for five years from fall 2006 to 2011,

managing pilot development programs in agriculture and capacity

building.

We were a team of roughly five expatriates and about 15 to 20 locals

with foreign consultants bringing in specialist knowledge more or less all

the time.

Making our kimchi for the year was a wonderful team-building exercise.

We got 200 kilos or 250 kilos cabbage delivered from the government and then

Into swing we got and produced the kimchi for the whole year.

I think you are probably all familiar what kimchi is and also how important it

is in the Korean diet.

But it was really a way that we became more like one team and not a

Korean team and a Swiss team.

We had, for example, a program which was called Sloping Land Management.

The idea was to provide techniques to reverse soil erosion and

degradation and boost crops on these hilly areas.

And this is a cooperative farm of which there are about 3,000

in North Korea.

And you see here the farms have a small garden plot.

And that became very important, especially during the famine years.

What was interesting when I worked there was that the cooperative farms were

managed by the Ministry of Agriculture.

And the Ministry of Land and Environmental Protection managed the

steep land.

And I realized fairly soon that MOLEP, the Ministry of Land and Environmental

Protection, was much more open to try new ideas than the Ministry of

Agriculture. Probably because at the Ministry of Agriculture, they were so

worried not to fulfilling the targets which government set for them.

So here you see a user group of the sloping land management program in a

nursery and behind the land which they farmed.

They were not farmers. They were just ordinary villagers.

But they did this back-breaking work because they could keep the

harvest and do whatever I wanted with the harvest, and that means keep it,

sell it, or barter it.

And this was very new for the villagers.

Our program, I think, loosened also a little bit government control.

And that was quite unusual, but accepted because it led to

more food being grown.

More or less at the same time, or even earlier actually,

i realized more and more small markets were springing up across the

whole country and this is a real tiny one and first as

survival mechanism during the famine and later to ease food shortages

it was a difficult time but again

another story

which shows that even under grim circumstances, North Koreans

maintained a sense of humor.

We had later on bigger markets in Pyongyang, too, and I would sometimes go

to the market.

And once at the market, I asked the lady selling stuff. It was always women

who did the selling because men had fixed jobs.

Anyway, I asked this woman, and what do you sell today?

She looked at me and said, everything.

So I said, everything?

She said, everything, even my husband, and at a discount.

So, and of course we both burst out into laughter.

This is capacity development, a training program.

on safe use of pesticides, a big problem.

They get very strong pesticides, usually from China, and do not

understand why they should wear the protective gear.

So quite a number of cancer patients because of that.

Another interesting project we had was the Pyongyang Business School.

And that meant bringing in foreign lecturers to teach the basics of

capitalism and how the international economy worked.

Because the North Koreans had realized they wanted to do business with the

outside world, and it just didn't work because the two systems are

so far apart.

We also sent young North Koreans abroad for training, study tours, and

workshops.

They gained new perspectives, and what they learned

cannot be unlearned or taken away from them.

And who knows if this is not a catalyst for

future change.

We don't know. But anyway, I have always been

concerned about people with disabilities because they are at the low end

of every society in almost every country.

And in 2015, I created a nonprofit organization called

CORAID. to assist this disadvantaged group.

Over four years, CARADE supported over 30

,000 cataract operations in 10 hospitals across the whole country, providing

lenses, speciality eye medicine, and equipment.

Doctors there

can do the operation.

Quite a number has been trained in China or in Nepal, but they really

lack the inputs.

And I must say it was extremely gratifying to see thousands of people

having their eyesight restored, and I think this picture is quite telling.

We also worked at a rehabilitation center in the city of Hamhung,

purchased special material which they couldn't produce locally,

usually in China, and over the years we helped

them to produce some 1,000 orthopedic devices.

It was very sad to see these young people having one or both legs cut, lost

in accidents usually.

On the other hand, I must say I admired them because their willpower to walk

again was just incredible.

We supported greenhouses at residential childcare centers to improve

children's nutrition, funded renovations, and provided items for

daily living.

Or we assisted in training programs, not only for

staff at the institutions, but also for parents, caregivers who were working

with special needs children.

In all of these activities, the aim was always to contribute to

solutions, and if possible, long-term.

For example, in 2019, we conducted, together with two Hong

Kong specialists, a four-day workshop on autism.

And it was a surprise to me that they admitted.

that there was a problem and they were very very receptive of whatever my hong

kong colleagues could teach them and also very appreciative of the many books

we would bring in questions i am

asked all the time has anything changed during the years you worked in north

korea and i

produce the term to describe it, the five Ms, which is also

the title of one of the chapters in the book.

So markets and money

are now playing a much bigger role.

Mobile phones have become increasingly common.

Motor cars have increased.

And when I was there in December 2019, there were five different companies

in Pyongyang really competing with each other.

And then the next M, the fifth M, is middle class.

This lady with her high heels, not easy to work, walk on the streets

in Pyongyang, I may add.

And then a little parasol because suntan means you have to

work in the fields. So that was all of a sudden we saw this everywhere.

And then I added another M later on, mindsets.

especially among the generation born during the famine, who, unlike their

parents, never relied solely on the state.

So they had to figure out that they had to do something and fend

for themselves, and that's what they did.

But with progress, the hunger for more knowledge grows, but also the risk of

discontent something which of course varies the regime

yet one thing that became clear to me over the many

years there was that ordinary north koreans have hopes and dreams

not so different from ours on

the flip side The North Korean regime has long tried to isolate its people

from the outside world and control every aspect of their lives.

After the early mid-2000s relaxation,

I noticed that control has become much stronger again.

But the country is full of paradoxes and

surprises. So another story for Swiss National Day on August 1st, I would

always have a big party with 115, 170 guests and usually

invited somebody from Switzerland or a Swiss.

And one year I had a musician piano player.

And he played with the Pyongyang Symphony Orchestra.

And we had a meeting.

The event was on Sunday. We had a meeting on Friday evening with the

manager of the orchestra and the conductor.

And after about two sentences, the conductor looked at us and says,

Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

We were surprised and said, yes, it's our mother tongue.

And then the conductor says, well, in that case, with a very strong Austrian

accent, well, in that case, we may as well continue in German. I have

studied music in Vienna for eight years.

I mean, who would have thought? So this is the other side of North Korea.

Nowadays, there are many new buildings.

Pyongyang, but in Pyongyang, but also across the country.

And that has changed quite a lot in recent years.

This is 2019 when I visited a county that produces

tobacco.

And what do the buildings represent, I was told?

Tobacco leaves.

So a creative architect, obviously.

And in December 2021, Kim Jong-un declared the beginning of a new

socialist rural construction era.

And satellite imagery today show new buildings in many

several rural provinces too.

And this pink building was built by the North Koreans under Kim Jong

-un, and it's a children's home, which I visited.

It's quite all right. Of course, the worry is always maintenance later on.

While positive, renewed state control makes

True progress, very hard to assess.

And that's where we are at right now.

My last visit, as I said, was in December 2019. In January 2020,

the country closed its borders because of COVID.

And since then, information is scarce.

But I'm concerned that ordinary citizens would still desperately need our

help.

Important is also to note that there is a sharp divide between Pyongyang,

where there is a wealthier elite, and the mostly underdeveloped rural

areas, where residents continue to face deprivation

and poor infrastructure.

Pyongyang today, and there are many more, even taller buildings, which I

haven't seen in person.

But a human rights report of 2025 states that the regime

has intensified surveillance, censorship, forced labor,

and punishment, and is maintaining total control over its

citizens.

There's also no internet access for ordinary people and

they cannot travel freely in their own country. They need travel permissions

for once they want to leave their county or even Pyongyang.

The borders with China and Russia today are heavily controlled.

And North Korea is completely separated from South Korea.

So it's not a nice picture.

By now, we have some 34,000 North Korean

defectors that reside in Seoul or in South Korea, I should say.

But since COVID,

it's almost impossible to flee the country.

And for example, in 2025,

the new arrivals in Seoul were only 223 people.

And for the first six months of this year, something like

63.

and these North Koreans have usually lived in other countries for quite a

long time until South Korea would admit them.

These children look quite okay, but you know, it

only needs five, six weeks of food shortages and we slip back into a very

difficult situation.

And chronic food insecurity and access to essential services such as health

care and clean water remain a major problem.

Again, the UN says approximately 46% of North Korea's population,

some 11.8 million people, are undernourished.

This is the countryside, how I saw it.

All the infrastructure, capacity gaps in technology and skills,

regularly natural disasters, and of course a lack of

investment are among the main reasons why we are in the situation we are

in right now.

This is a hospital in Hamon.

Healthcare remains a major concern.

Chronic shortages of medicine, outdated equipment, insufficient

clean running water, and an electricity supply that

is very irregular.

So we have infectious diseases such as TB and hepatitis

B that are endemic.

But let me ask why this was a good hospital. Why is this a good hospital?

Because we have two patients in one bed.

I have seen so many hospitals where there was no patient at all. Because why

would you go into hospital if there is no medicine, if there is no heating?

And the family has to bring in the food. You may as well stay at home.

This is a picture to getting water.

It's a very difficult problem.

Clean drinking water for all.

So I unfortunately have the feeling today because of

many global crises, and also because the North Koreans don't make it easy to work

there, North Korea's humanitarian plight is almost forgotten.

We did have quite a successful project with SDC, which was providing clean

water to public facilities, but also homes.

But for doing so, it is imperative to have access to the project site

as well as to the people there.

And this has always been an issue and can require countless

hours of negotiation.

Personnel from the UN and humanitarian aid organizations

In fact, most of the international community left North Korea in spring

2021, when the borders remained closed and restrictions

within the country made it almost impossible to work there.

And except for some diplomats, neither UN teams nor international aid agencies

have been able to return, preventing

both assistance and independent assessments of the humanitarian

situation.

The relationship with aid agencies has always been somewhat tense, and North

Korea has never been a keen humanitarian aid recipient.

And government officials would occasionally call us sugar with

poison.

And you can imagine what we were.

Again, this man is transporting the harvest on his bicycle

because he doesn't have a tractor.

And even if he had a tractor, there was no fuel to run it or any spare parts.

Let me also say that

North Korea has been facing for many years extremely

tough Western and UN sanctions because of its nuclear weapons

program.

Personally, I'm not totally against sanctions, but I have seen with the many

sanctions and the layers that were on time and time again,

Sanctions hurt ordinary citizens and hinder aid more than

they pressure the regime, which basically has not shown any

signs of a changing behavior.

For future engagements, direct channels to North Koreans are needed.

to identify areas of possible collaboration.

And I also believe there is a need for a gradual shift from

handouts to rehabilitation work and eventually development cooperation.

However, for many aid agencies, development cooperation is a no-go

because of the political situation there.

Moreover, interest in operating there is shrinking

because of the lack of access for international staff, regulatory

barriers, funding needs or issues, needs in many other

countries, and of course also because of North Korea's participation in the

war in the Ukraine.

It's a sobering picture, but with some glimmers of hope of

the embassies present in Pyongyang, only a few are fully operational, but

some countries are considering returning.

And Switzerland announced plans to reopen its cooperation office

in Pyongyang this year.

Colleagues that had the opportunity to visit this spring for the International

Trade Fair told me that Pyongyang has really changed.

Many new buildings, much better electricity supply, and far

more consumer goods that are available.

I don't think I would have seen a picture with North a postal.

with North Korean women with local shopping bags.

So the middle class in the capital is still there, even if

markets in the countryside have been curtailed.

But persistent humanitarian needs remain, and also

the human suffering.

And whether aid agencies will be allowed back in, sadly, is a big question.

My own feeling is that the history of pressure and sanctions

has not brought peace, stability, and prosperity to the Korean Peninsula.

i do not see north korea giving up its nuclear weapons program until its

security can be assured and these days it is not clear

even then that pyongyang would agree but in the interim

what is required what i hope we will see is a

broad variety of confidence building measures

a substantial period of peaceful coexistence.

And above all, what is needed is pragmatism,

patience and perseverance.

So thank you for listening to me. And now we have some time for

Q&A. And one of the recurring themes

is the dilemma of wondering, is

this aid propping up an evil regime?

So should I be helping?

Or should, I guess you didn't write this, these are my words, but should we

let the whole thing fall apart so that it can...

start again better, right? Would things be better if we let this regime

collapse? So with the benefit of time and hindsight, do you still come out,

because clearly your final decision at that point in time was no, this was more

important to do. How do you think about that now?

Well, even now, I feel it was worthwhile what I did,

because You just have to make sure that aid is reaching

the identified recipients.

And we did that by signing contracts and making very clear where the

aid was going, who was getting it, how much they were getting.

plus an agreement that we could always visit where the aid was going.

And that's why I had years when I was there five times a year for two, three

weeks to see that that was all in place. And that gave me the confidence that

I didn't feel it was propping up the system because the needs were so

big.

but it gave me the feeling I could help people who really needed it.

I remember, I think it was in 1994, everybody

talked North Korea would collapse and it got stronger and stronger.

I think we just need to forget that North Korea will collapse.

And now, of course, with the help of Russia.

There's a lot of money going into North Korea, so it's again a different

picture. The picture shifted all the time over these years, but no regrets to

what I tried to do and especially also those

training programs had such an impact because we would brief the people when

they left the country And we would receive them when they came back.

And it was just mind-boggling when they talked about the experience of going to

Cuba, Vietnam, Switzerland, you name it. And I felt that had a very strong impact

on the people.

And it's also something you cannot take away.

For example, I think it was in spring 2019,

North Korean women in Hong Kong for two weeks who were looking at

services for people with disabilities.

And I mean, Hong Kong is not that advanced, but it's okay.

And they were totally baffled.

And they had so many questions.

And they were accommodated in a hotel.

Kowloon site, a very busy area of Hong Kong and I would bring them back in the

evening and after a couple of days I thought maybe, maybe they go out again

afterwards. So I went to the opposite side of the street and waited in a shop

and sure enough after 10 minutes out they came with shopping bags and had a

good time in Hong Kong.

And I think that just changes people's minds.

It's a small contribution, but still, I tried.

I heard you say two things. One is I think it's fair to say that there are

literally thousands of people who are still alive, who are alive today because

of the kind of work that Kathy did and other aid workers.

So just on a human scale, it matters.

And Kathy is absolutely right about the collapse scenario.

That's been predicted over and over. I remember when Kim Il-sung died in 94, I

was the first American to go to North Korea after his death. And all the press

was full of Kim Jong-il is a flake and he's not going to last.

And I came back from this trip absolutely convinced that the regime was

solid. And I would say that. And I got quite a lot of grief from people who

thought I was being naive and hoodwinked and so on.

And then when Kim Jong-il died and Kim Jong-un took over, I remember a very,

very prominent Korea scholar in Washington who had served in the Bush

administration predicted that he wouldn't last six months.

Well, here we are 15 years later, and he's stronger than ever. So the notion

that somehow one last push and down it comes the way the communist regimes in

Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union just doesn't apply.

And I think you just go off in the wrong tangent in analyzing the

situation if you put that front and center as a possibility.

Do I see hands with questions? Yes, sir.

We're using the microphone.

Yes, please.

I was surprised to hear that North Korea allowed a religious organization into

the country to deliver aid.

And I'm curious, or I would be curious about your perspective on navigating

what I assume would be a concern that they would have, that you'd be

proselytizing in addition to delivering aid.

And then also, on the other end,

was the Catholic Church, were donors, pushing for you to proselytize under the

table in addition to doing age?

Very good question.

Let me say that Caritas does not proselytize.

I myself am not a Catholic and I could not work for Caritas if I had to do

that. And the other thing, I have always worked very

transparent. So they knew

The funds were from Caritas, a Catholic organization, and

they had no objection to that.

I would go on a Sunday sometimes to the Catholic church and sometimes to the

Protestant church, which of course confused them immensely.

But in my time with Caritas, I also organized

for three vatican visits senior officials from the vatican to visit

north korea so there was also the idea but at a much different level to see

if anything could change but nothing has changed but there is a catholic church

and especially when the vatican delegations were there

and would for example bring greetings from the pope or

there was a priest there because there's no priest in North Korea

so when a priest from the Vatican was there and would hand out

communion I would always watch way back in the church the reaction of the people

and it was very interesting because sometimes I really felt very different

reactions and some people knew immediately the meaning of greetings

from the Holy Father or their smile when they got the communion.

So I do believe there are still some real Christians there, but of

course it is not easy for them and I was also told that there are house

churches.

I never had a chance to visit the house church, but one of my Canadian

colleagues could do so. So I know one person who has actually been to one.

So that's all I can say.

And also, the hymn books in the Catholic Church are from South Korea.

Oh, interesting.

I also want to mention, if anybody online has questions, please put them in

the Q&A tab.

And so we were scheduled, I think, to end at 5.

Oh, at 5.30. Oh, good. Okay, I was going to say we were going to go a little

longer. I was going to decide to go longer, but we do have lots of time

then. So, yeah, please enter your questions in the tab.

Let me slip in another question.

You pointed out that North Korea has been providing assistance to Russia in

its war in Ukraine.

We know that some North Korean soldiers have gone, and there's also been, I

understand, provision of drones and other kinds of material from North

Korea, in return for which Russia is giving some support economically to

North Korea.

What do you hear about Russia stepping in to do any of the kinds of things that

you were doing? Are the Russians providing these kinds of capacity

-building programs? Are they trying to do any kind of training in how to engage

in international trade, or are they trying to build any productive

facilities, factories, et cetera, et cetera?

I'm sure that is going on because it's China and Russia with the two biggest

embassies in North Korea.

And I did hear that Russia is providing training in the healthcare

sector, which is very, very much needed.

And Russia has done this before because I remember when I started going to

North Korea, Every hospital had a department.

The signage was in Korean and in Russian. And then it was taken away and

it became Korean and English.

And probably now we are moving back to Korean and Russian.

But if at least something happens, that's positive.

In terms of factories, I think more that

North Korean workers going to Russia, China, and other countries.

That is quite well known.

And I have seen that already when I was there, I would see long queues in front

of a building and ask my interpreter, what are these men all waiting for?

And he said, they have applied for a job in China or in Russia.

And they all apparently

wanted to go because it did mean a bit more money in their pockets.

And I would see them coming home by chance when I was on the same flight in.

Everybody, new shoes, new luggage, you know, tons of stuff which they did bring

back. So there was.

probably is also a side of benefit and on top of that they see a little bit how

the world functions just to see this big airport in Beijing for example

so it's we'll see but uh let's hope

yeah yes um thank you so much that was

really interesting um this is a very specific question but I feel like I

remember when you were talking about medical training, you mentioned that a

lot of them go to China, but a lot of them are also trained in Nepal.

And I was wondering what the nature of North Korea's relationship with Nepal is

and why they provide so much of the medical training.

The medical training was for ophthalmologists because Nepal with

this strong exposure to the sun and the high altitude has a lot of eye problems

and that's why somehow there was a relationship established and there are a

couple of NGOs in Nepal who then offer training programs

in the country but also for North Korean doctors going to Nepal.

And of course, China has always been a place where people could be trained.

I saw something recently that the United Nations had

returned some programs to North Korea. Is that right?

UNICEF was approved to return to North Korea.

have I got that wrong?

UNICEF and the WHO were the two?

I only know that UNICEF even during

the very close period did deliver the medicine for children's

immunization and also some

special food for malnourished children.

But there is no present on the ground about WHO.

Oh, I haven't heard that.

So who, to your knowledge, who is actually from the aid and development

communities? I'll lump them together. I know they're rather distinct.

But who is on the ground, to your knowledge, at this point?

Nobody. Nobody.

Nobody.

Okay. Which is very sad because I think especially the capacity development

angle, you know, even if a North Korean person could work for

the UN or humanitarian aid agency, it was capacity

building on the spot and had a big impact.

So it's a pity that that cannot be continued.

That aspect is interesting.

I know a lot of knowledge is transferred to a local community through working

with international organizations.

Were any of the local aid workers who worked for you when you were working for

the Swiss Development Corporation or any of the former UN workers able to form

their own domestic?

organizations doing that type of work even if they were not able to have a

true non-government nature?

Were they able to form some kind of organization or effort? Not that I heard

of that, but basically most organizations kept a number of local

staff to just keep the facilities running and see what could be done,

including Switzerland. So sort of a ghost presence.

Yeah, yeah.

So that, yes, that did happen. Now I've forgotten the next one. Well, the

question was whether any of those staff who had been trained by working with the

international organizations were able to go off on their own and then continue

some of that work.

Not that I know of, because, you know,

It also depended on inputs and where would they get the inputs from if

there is so much distrust to just provide

aid without a monitoring system.

However, already I think in the late 1990s

there was what I would call a semi-governmental organization

established to help people with disabilities and when I had the NGO

Courade I worked mainly with that organization and I always felt

they had a little bit more freedom and the other beauty was that I would work

for years with the same people there was no staff change and that of course is

very valuable because the longer you work together the more you get to know

each other and the higher the level of trust and the level of sharing

information personal but whatever so this was the korean disabled persons

federation yeah yeah yeah and they apparently worked with with you and

korea but they also worked with handicap international which is a very strong

organization uh as well Do they still continue to operate, the Korean

Federation?

Handicapped International left even before COVID started. No, but the Korean

Disabled Persons Federation, do they still work?

Oh yeah, they do. They still work, yeah.

So that would be perhaps the closest thing that you could think of that is a

domestic. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

And also they have benefited from

the long-term training we provided them or Handicap International provided them

and other non-resident NGOs.

What about on the agriculture side?

You showed pictures of working with villagers to build terraced farming and

perhaps, I wasn't sure, greenhouses or plastic coverings or so on. Is there a

domestic organization that is able to take that knowledge and carry that

forward?

I think a very similar program like our

sloping land management program is still ongoing because again that is a program

which doesn't need a lot of external inputs and that is something I've

always been very careful to try and make programs or develop programs which are

not relying too much on Outside funding because once that stops the program

falls apart, so I think it's still going on Maybe in a different format, but

that's okay We take over from here

Thank you so much for your presentation and as a Korean myself and a

mother of two children your pictures evoke a very strong emotion

And my question is about your interactions with the governmental

officials of North Korea, because I heard that you did a lot of activities

in building the greenhouses and running the education program and helping the

hospitals. And during those process, I guess you have to go a lot of

approvals or permissions or registrations through North Korean

government. And how was your experience with the governmental officials?

Can you predict what they're going to say, or were you able to build some

type of relationship with them? And I wonder, during your working years, I

think you worked before and after the death of...

Kim Jong Il so I guess was there any change between those periods?

Of course within the government there is a turnover or people get promoted or

people get retired but on the whole I would say the issue is

really building relationships and trust and in my case because I would go there

year and year and year again

I could do that where many aid workers stay

for two years and then move on and after one or two years you have just started

to get to know them and then they move on and that of course sets the program

back again.

And then also it's a question of how you treat your local staff.

government officials, because if you come in with, you know, suspicion, total

suspicion about everything, and you treat your interpreter as a minder,

you get exactly that back.

You get treated as a minder.

They have a very, very sensitive feeling for that, so I always

try to be impartial.

non-judgmental, and also treat them with respect.

And they knew I wouldn't often.

I didn't agree, but you have to live with agreeing to disagreeing, and that

doesn't mean you shouldn't do anything.

And another issue is the concept of face, which is very important in Asia.

And luckily I'd worked in Hong Kong and in China long enough to know that.

And then also cultural issues, which were just there and which you had to

accept.

I'll give you an example.

There were aid workers coming back and basically almost

laughing, saying, oh, the pregnant women told us a pregnancy is 10 months.

They found that very funny.

I thought, well, I wonder why.

I dug into it with my South Korean contacts and they said, of course, ten

moon months.

They counted according to the moon, so it was ten.

But you need to know this and think about it. What could it be? Why do they

react like this?

or when we did food monitoring and we would ask

what other food do you have in addition to what government and we

provided which was mainly cereals and they

would say no other food no no and then maybe we would see a sack of peas

or whatever

But for them, food meant carbohydrates and nothing else. That was just nice to

have, but it wasn't considered food because they had so little of that.

So those are things you get to know over a certain period of time and not from

day one to day two.

If I could just add one anecdote that Cathy talks about in the book in terms

of developing friendships.

She was quite personally friendly with the man who was the North Korean consul

general in Hong Kong.

And she had a fall in Hong Kong a few years ago and broke her arm and was in

the hospital. And she was supposed to meet this North Korean official.

So she rang him up and said, I'm really sorry.

I had this accident. I can't come.

He said, within 10 minutes, he called back and said, my wife will be coming to

the hospital with bibimbap, her favorite Korean dish, shortly.

So, and they've come to your home in Switzerland, didn't they send somebody

to your mother's funeral?

Yes, that was also, I was totally stunned again. I was in Switzerland

because my mother had passed away.

And again, I had, before that, I had arranged a meeting with the North Korean

embassy in Berlin.

And I had to cancel it and of course they wanted to know why and so I told

them. And they came to the funeral, came to the church with a big

bunch of white flowers.

I was really touched.

So you know that's when you think there is a relationship there.

So thank you very much for the inspiring and fascinating presentation.

Just to build up on your answer, after so many years, do you still have contact

with the locals that are living there?

The first question, the second question is when you go back to North Korea, do

you feel that you are treated better than your first time or feel that you

have certain privileges that all the foreigners would not have?

That's a bit of tea leaf reading.

Contacts with locals, very minimal because I'm also very careful. I don't

want to bring problems to my local contacts because they are not allowed to

have international contacts.

But I have some through the embassy or through embassies outside of

the country.

or some of my staff during the SDC years were promoted and got jobs

abroad and then we could keep in touch.

Will I go back?

I have no idea.

It doesn't look like right now and it's a wait and see situation for all

of us and I really hope that first the UN team can go back and then hopefully

also. the NGOs.

But when?

Big, big question mark.

Let me add to that. Has the North Korean government not been issuing visas?

Oh, it's just the borders are still closed.

They're still officially closed?

Yes.

It's only select Chinese and select Russians that can go in.

That's it.

I see.

Okay.

uh first the gentleman in the front and then we'll go back to you sir i had a

question regarding the also the risks of this kind of the risks associated with

this kind of activities uh because we've heard in the news from in the cases of

you know westerners being being arrested sometime on very flimsy charges and

sometimes for also political bargaining purposes especially for western

countries so was that an issue for maybe part of your team and more

generally how did you manage that kind of risk which seems like a potentially

big risk for organizing such operations?

You know I never felt that there was a big risk or

that it was dangerous to be in North Korea, never, because they

always always showed Asian hospitality to us.

Of course, you had certain rules which you had to obey, but in which

country don't we have rules?

And you just get to know them and then follow the rules.

I mean, we really tried our very best not to step over the

border. Of course, sometimes there were situations that the government perhaps

didn't like it.

We were told that not to do. For example, during the Pyongyang Business

School, we had mostly Hong Kong Chinese.

It was through the Hong Kong Management Association, so it was mostly Hong Kong

Chinese who would come and teach because they had been educated abroad.

They had experience with joint ventures in China.

And of course the cultural gap is also much smaller.

But one thing they were not allowed was to refer to case

studies including South Korean companies.

That was a total no-go.

Or, you know, legal training, but...

No human rights training.

You know, there were all the lines which we had to follow through.

If I could just add, in my 17 trips, I also never felt any sense of personal

danger. We had plenty of spirited discussions with our guides. We want to

go here. No, you can't go there. We want to take you somewhere else and so on.

But I never felt at risk. And quite a lot of the foreigners who've gotten into

trouble, have done, frankly, stupid things.

The two journalists who were detained went across

the two women, journalists who in 2009, I think,

they went across the Yalu River, right? And she wanted to stand up and say, I'm

inside North Korea, and the North Korean guards just grabbed them.

So that's dumb.

Don't go into North Korea without permission.

Or people who leave a Bible in a bathroom in a system that

tightly controlled, you're asking for trouble.

So if you don't, and if you follow the guidelines as the North Koreans

pretty clearly set out or that you understand what they are.

you should be okay.

There are very few cases of people who've been detained who haven't done

something that crossed a line that logically, looking at it from the

outside, was reckless to cross.

But of course, suspicion could be there within a split second and the CNN

team... Tell the CNN story, yeah.

Of course I knew the CNN team very well from Hong Kong and the many interviews I

did and they came for some big function and I was up on the podium with the

VIPs and all that and I saw the cameraman, the CNN cameraman down

there and he saw me and Tim signaled to me.

And my guardian angel came and said, Miss Kathy, what was that?

You know, thinking.

So, you know what it was?

Tim was asking, is there fondue afterwards?

And with that, you know, then you have to clarify things, which was just

basically a joke, you know.

Okay, we'll get a few quick ones in, so yes.

Regarding the information economy,

these North Koreans who had the opportunity to leave the country for

training, obviously that's a life-changing opportunity for them, and

they get to keep that perspective no matter what.

Is that also a risk for them, coming home and having this information that

wasn't part of the state-sponsored or state-sanctioned information economy?

Is there any way that they were told ahead of time, like, you're going to

learn things you're not allowed to talk about when you come home or when they

came back.

How did they even know that there's now boundaries they can't cross when they

weren't supposed to know about these things in the first place?

It was very interesting. It's a good question.

We always wondered that and it took me a while to find out actually

much better than in other countries when the group would come back.

They had to give workshop to their fellow co-workers about what they

had learned on those trips, which was for me very amazing because that is a

problem we have in many countries that, you know, the person who has the

information keeps it to him or herself.

I also would say, well, we never had any problems. They all came back.

And there is, you know, there is a commitment to the country.

And of course, they also have families there.

That's another issue.

But I know it worked very well. And it was amazing sometimes what

then transpired sometimes a year or two years later. Once

I was, I drove myself in Pyongyang, not always, but.

passed the driving test.

So I was driving and I had a diplomatic number plate but anyway I was

stopped by a UN car and he looked quite hmm so I thought oh my god what have I

done now and then a guy jumped out of the car and my interpreter

came with me and we were wondering what was going on.

Well, he thanked me profoundly that his wife had attended the Pyongyang Business

School and gave me a name card of the restaurant she was running now. Would I

please come?

So totally different to what I expected because I thought, oops, I'm in trouble

now.

So we have a question from an online viewer, so I'll read that out.

asks if there are countries that want to support and cooperate with North Korea

in the nonprofit sector, how could they do that and what should they be

concerned about?

For example, if Vietnam wants to help North Korea develop agriculture, does it

have to worry about U.S. policy?

So I think this is wondering about the sanctions regime, and I guess not just U

.S., but there are U.N. sanctions in place.

So if there are...

actors outside who want to support North Korea in some way, read your book

perhaps, see the continued to be need.

Is it even possible given all of the sanctions that are in place?

Well, I think you really need to study the sanction documents very carefully to

figure out what you can do.

And then I would suggest the best way is to work between embassies, you know.

Because Vietnam, there is a big North Korean embassy in Vietnam, so approach

them and present the case, but study, as you pointed out before, that

what is possible and what isn't possible under present circumstances.

In the book, you seem to portray international sanctions as being

completely ineffective, and well, just now you indicated that

You know the regime gets stronger and stronger.

It's not being toppled by sanctions It's also not necessarily being changed by

sanctions The quote that caught my eye in the book was somebody telling you the

North Korean telling you The more that the outside world reacts to our nuclear

tests the more we think we need them so if sanctions are not the approach to

change North Korea, never mind change the regime, but change its policies,

what is the solution?

Small question.

Yeah, exactly.

Go ahead.

Okay.

One thing I observed when I was there...

sanctions became stronger and stronger and stronger and sometimes really,

really didn't make sense anymore.

You know, one NGO was providing inputs for a TB program and

they had like hygiene sets because hygiene is very important and in those

sets there were nail clippers and because of the nail clippers the whole

program fell apart.

Because they just didn't get... Who blocked the nail clippers? Because

they're metal.

Metal. But who didn't like them?

The sanctions.

The sanctions. The sanctions, okay. The sanctions.

I also felt some of the sanctions

really pushed the North Koreans into the gray zone.

There wasn't anymore a banking system.

We didn't have the foreign trade bank again. So we had to carry in money.

and with that you don't have a paper trail and that's high risk for

corruption. So it was very difficult and it still is difficult and I really think

we would need to think much more careful what sanctions do

and what they can achieve.

Then just I felt sometimes, you know, problems and then new sanctions, new

problems, new sanctions and this would just go on.

Where does this lead? It certainly doesn't lead to North Korea changing as

we see now.

The North Koreans are sort of very comfortable in this kind of siege

mentality that they've been in for a very long time and they're very used to

and they're very tough and the regime also doesn't really care that much about

the ordinary people who would be hurt most.

by the sanctions.

I've heard people joke that if you really want to change North Korea, you

recognize them and put a McDonald's on every corner in Pyongyang and the system

will come down in a month.

That's obviously a huge exaggeration, but the point is if they feel more

secure and they're willing to be more open, wishing for

East European Soviet style implosion end of regime collapse reunification with

South Korea is a pipe dream But incremental change if North Korea

doesn't feel so besieged is not impossible and we saw elements of that

in this earlier period before tightening up in the late teens and then COVID and

then now this embrace of the Soviets and the re-embrace of the Chinese.

But as long as they feel the world is against them and the Americans are

against them and they've got to batten down the hatches and hold the line, the

space for even incremental change shrinks very, very dramatically.

But to do that involves all sorts of very tough political decisions because

then

You know you're legitimizing a regime that has done horrible things and is

very repressive and all the stuff that people say about North Korea so It's

a pretty sophisticated argument to say if you do that in the end it will help

change and if you frame it in those terms the North Koreans like the word we

write in the book the word reform They don't use the word reform

because that implies Chinese-style reform taking it too far. So they used

other terminology for tinkering similar to sort of like when we were in China,

early days of reform, just loosening up a little bit in the countryside and so

on. But if you talk about it in those terms, they'll pull back.

So you have to be very, very careful how this is framed so the North Koreans

don't feel your secret goal is to bring them down.

Moreover, I'm also a firm believer that change has to come from

within if we want sustainable change.

Change in post usually doesn't last very long because the people are not on board

with those changes.

It's a process and that's what also requires the patience.

pragmatism, as I mentioned.

Yes, but now the North Korean regime, because in large part, I would say, of

Ukraine, has got Russia and China both back in its corner, which for a period

of some years they didn't really have, right? So they should be feeling a fair

amount of security from that.

Well, I think it's reflected in the very confident demeanor that you see Kim Jong

-un projecting.

But whether that means they want to open up to the West or whether they just feel

we've got this so we can stick to our guns and do what we want and the Chinese

and the Russians have our backs is the question.

Okay,

we're going to have to stop here because we have come to the end of time.

Thank you both so much for this wonderful book and for spending time

with us to share it.

Thank you all for coming.