Liberty in North Korea Leads People to Freedom

National Review

A North Korean farmer pushes his bike along the North Korean-Chinese border near Dadong, 2009. 

. . . "In my reading, Liberty in North Korea (LiNK)* kept coming up among refugees who made it out, and they credited the organization with ushering them to safety from the North Korean border in China to safety in the West. I decided to open a GoFundMe and just see if I could rescue one refugee with my Twitter followers. We were able to raise the $2500 in a week or so. That was five years ago, and since then I’ve done a dozen or more fundraisers tied to the news cycle or holidays and have raised probably $100,000 on Twitter alone — enough to rescue over 30 refugees. [See here for the latest.]

"Lopez: What’s Liberty in North Korea all about? How has it helped people? What have you learned from it?

"Mandel: Liberty in North Korea has teams on the ground in China, right over the border from North Korea. When refugees are able to make it over, they are at risk of repatriation to gulags or human trafficking. LiNK helps these refugees make the 3,000 mile journey through China and Southeast Asia into South Korea, where they enjoy immediate citizenship." . . .

. . . Mandel: The situation is dire and has been for decades. There are concentration camps the size of Los Angeles in operation; people are born into them and they die in them. We can see them on Google Earth; there’s no ignoring their plight. By helping refugees get out and telling their stories, we are destabilizing the regime externally, and the more refugees who get out and see the outside world as it is, the more they send word back to their families still trapped inside. " . . .

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