Jerome Sauvage served as the United Nations Resident Coordinator and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Resident Representative in North Korea from 2009 to 2013.

In this capacity, he was the most senior UN official in North Korea during one of the most eventful political periods on the Korean peninsula in recent memory. Amidst the sinking of the ROKS Cheonan, shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, and death of Kim Jong-il, Sauvage had to resurrect and strengthen UNDP’s—and the UN overall’s—presence in North Korea by delicately navigating the politics of not only Pyongyang, but also the overall international development ecosystem.

In this NBN episode, we talk with Sauvage about those experiences, which he recounts in his memoir Witness to North Korea: Three Years on the Ground in the DPRK (Bloomsbury, 2026).

The book offers an on-the-ground record of what diplomatic engagement in North Korea actually looks like, for instance regarding how one negotiates employment contracts and handles payroll in a country with no formal labor market. Especially with the DPRK’s borders largely closed to foreigners—including UN staff—after COVID, Witness to North Korea provides not only a look back at a past era, but also learnings for future engagement with North Korea.

Anthony Kao is a writer who intersects international affairs and cultural criticism. He founded/edits Cinema Escapist—a publication exploring the sociopolitical context behind global film and television—and also writes for outlets like The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Diplomat, and Eater.

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Not Everything Unfolds as Anticipated: Selections from Yi Kyubo’s Tongguk Yi Sangguk Chip (University of Hawaii Press, 2026) comprises translations of poems, tales, letters, epitaphs, and funeral orations by Yi Kyubo (1168–1241), the foremost writer and poet of the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392). Dr. Breuker’s translation and introduction humanize this celebrated poet, whom he reveals as not only a great writer, but a doggedly ambitious man with a reputation for drinking, a son weighed down by his family’s expectations of greatness, and a father who grieved for his dead son. Not Everything Unfolds as Anticipated” is an excellent book for anyone who wants to better understand the famed writer and the political, social, and literary context of the Koryŏ dynasty.

Remco Breuker is a Professor of Korean Studies at Leiden University. His research spans medieval and modern Korea and Northeast Asia, with a particular focus on historiography, identity formation, borders, state formation, and the uses of history in contemporary politics.

He has translated Korean literature into Dutch, and in 2025 he both contributed to and co-edited an English translation of the Samguk Yusa, an important Korean historical text.

Buy Not Everything Unfolds as Anticipated: here

Dr. Breuker’s LinkedIn: here

Dr. Breuker’s Bluesky: here

About the host: Leslie Hickman is an Anthropology graduate student at Emory University. She

has an MA in Korean Studies and a KO-EN translation certificate from the Literature Translation

Institute of Korea. You can contact her at leslie.hickman@emory.edu

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n this podcast, North Korean refugees who visited the University of Bradford share their harrowing experiences of life in North Korea, escape, and the challenges of building new lives in freedom. They are supported by Freedom Speakers International (FSI), a Seoul-based non-profit that helps North Korean refugees rebuild their lives through personalised English education, mentoring and public-speaking opportunities. Crucially, FSI enables refugees to tell their own stories in their own voices.

Their testimony reveals the human cost of repression in North Korea while highlighting the importance of the humanitarian work undertaken by FSI: helping refugees develop the skills and confidence to pursue their ambitions, rebuild their independence and ensure that their experiences are heard internationally.

Freedom Speakers International (FSI) is a Seoul-based non-profit organisation dedicated to supporting North Korean refugees as they rebuild their lives after escape from North Korea. Founded in 2013 by Casey Lartigue Jr. and Eunkoo Lee, it began as Teach North Korean Refugees and has developed into an organisation focused on empowering refugees through education, mentoring and public speaking opportunities.

FSI provides North Korean refugees with tuition-free, individualised English and public-speaking mentorship. This is particularly important because many refugees arrive in South Korea having experienced severe disruption to their education and face significant disadvantages in employment and higher education, where English proficiency can be important. FSI works with refugees according to their own objectives, helping them improve their language skills, confidence and ability to participate fully in South Korean and international society.

An especially important part of FSI's work is enabling North Korean refugees who wish to do so to tell their own stories. Through its public-speaking programme, its “I Am From North Korea” English Speech Contest and its Keynote Speaker Network, FSI gives refugees opportunities to communicate their experiences directly to international audiences rather than having others speak on their behalf. Its speaker network now includes more than 30 speakers.

The humanitarian importance of this work extends well beyond language teaching. North Korean refugees have often endured repression, traumatic journeys of escape, separation from their families and the considerable difficulties of adapting to an unfamiliar society. Effective resettlement therefore requires more than providing physical safety. It also means helping people recover independence, confidence and the ability to determine their own futures. FSI's personalised model is particularly valuable because it treats refugees not simply as recipients of assistance but as individuals with their own ambitions, experiences and voices. Its work helps turn escape from persecution into the possibility of a genuinely independent life.

At the same time, by enabling refugees to speak about North Korea from personal experience, FSI performs a wider human-rights function. First-hand testimony preserves awareness of conditions inside North Korea and ensures that the experiences of those who have escaped remain part of international discussion. Supporting North Korean refugees in finding their own voices is therefore both an important humanitarian activity and a contribution to the broader defence of human dignity and freedom.

Christoph Bluth is Professor of International Relations and Security at the University of Bradford.

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