A Lifetime of Aid: Miss Kathi and Humanitarianism in North Korea

Miss Kathi: Saving Lives in North Korea tells the extraordinary story of Kathi Zellweger, a Swiss aid worker who spent nearly three decades working in North Korea, building relationships and delivering humanitarian assistance in one of the world’s most isolated countries.

Co-written with former CNN correspondent Mike Chinoy, the book offers a rare glimpse into life and humanitarian work on the ground in North Korea, particularly during the devastating famine of the 1990s. Zellweger worked alongside local doctors and caregivers, negotiated with government officials, and helped bring food, medicine, and development assistance to some of the country’s most vulnerable communities.

For many North Koreans, she was the first foreigner they had ever met. Join us for a conversation about Zellweger’s remarkable journey, the human stories behind humanitarian work in North Korea, and what it means to build trust across one of the world’s most difficult political divides.

This program will be moderated by Melissa Dale, Ph.D, USF Department of History.

Speaker bios: 
Kathi Zellweger is a senior aid manager with over thirty years of experience in Hong Kong, China, and North Korea. She has made 75 trips to North Korea and 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. She later established her own NGO, the Hong Kong–based KorAid Limited. Zellweger is affiliated with the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and is a Non-resident Fellow at the European Center for North Korean Studies at the University of Vienna. =

Mike Chinoy is a Nonresident Scholar at the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego. Previously, he was a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the University of Southern California’s US-China Institute. Before joining USC, he spent twenty-four years as a foreign correspondent for CNN. He was the network’s first bureau chief in Beijing, bureau chief in Hong Kong, and senior Asia correspondent. He also worked for CBS News and NBC News in Hong Kong. Chinoy won Emmy, DuPont, Peabody, and ACE awards for his coverage of China, and also made seventeen trips to North Korea. He is the author of five other books, including two on North Korea.