Our team

As the only global organisation working with North Korean escapees, we have a unique depth and breadth of understanding of the different contexts, barriers, and prospects North Korean people face in succeeding in their new lives. This means we have the insight and expertise to provide solutions that create lasting positive change for North Korean escapees.

Our collective lived experience informs everything we do.

Connect: North Korea is staffed and informed by North Korean lived experience at every level of our organisation:

• All key roles on our staff team are held by North Korean people.
• We are guided by our user voice subcommittee – comprised of 12 North Koreans with direct experience of our programmes.

This is key to understanding the complex and unique set of challenges faced by people who have escaped life under the oppressive North Korean regime.

The lived experience of our North Korean staff and volunteers ensures a bond and a trust with the escaped people taking part in our programmes that cannot be replicated with someone who has not shared the horrors of growing up in an authoritarian regime, does not understand how much courage it takes to attempt escape, does not know the loneliness of having found freedom but at the price of leaving your family, or the isolation of arriving in a new country where you don’t understand the language, and don’t know where you fit in.