LiNK: Raising Awareness at PEA
Liberty in North Korea, abbreviated to LiNK, is a nonprofit organization that works to raise money for and awareness of conditions in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The institution is based in Long Beach, California, and Seoul, South Korea. However, this year, upper and Exeter Rescue Team President Hanna Pak decided to start a branch of the organization at Exeter.
History Instructor Dr. Hannah Lim was enthusiastic about helping Pak initiate the club and now serves as a faculty adviser. Explaining the history of LiNK at Exeter, Lim said, “Hanna emailed me over the summer because she wanted to restart LiNK at our school. LiNK is an organization that has branches of clubs around the U.S., and Exeter used to have a branch, but it disappeared because student interest went away over time.”
“The humanitarian issue in North Korea is a very important one, but not many people know about it because most of the time, conversation surrounding the DPRK is political,”
Pak discussed her decision to restart the LiNK branch at Exeter, emphasizing the importance of this particular moment in world history. “I decided to revive this team because now more than ever, the humanitarian crisis in North Korea needs to be addressed,” she elaborated. Furthermore, Pak wishes to dismantle the mainstream narrative about North Korean affairs. “The humanitarian issue in North Korea is a very important one, but not many people know about it because most of the time, conversation surrounding the DPRK is political,” she said.
Upper and Vice-President of the Exeter Rescue Team Maxx Murray described a typical LiNK meeting. “Club meetings generally consist of a video or short movie and then discussion about what we think,” he said. Pak expanded on Murray’s explanation, saying, “We talk about recent club events and how to get more people involved, discuss plans for the future and often watch a few documentary clips/investigative journalist videos/TED talks on the refugee crisis in North Korea.”
Considering the fact that videos are so integral to the club’s meeting, LiNK’s plan for the fall term should come as no surprise. Murray explained the club’s agenda for the current term, “This term we are doing a three-part documentary screening, all of which depict North Korean life and serve to educate people about the situations in which they live,” he said. Looking ahead, Murray outlined the group’s future aspirations: “We want to create a fundraiser of sorts in order to contribute to LiNK, and we are also hoping to bring in an assembly speaker.” Expanding on the topic of bringing an assembly speaker to campus, Pak mentioned that she is in contact with the CEO of LiNK, Hannah Song, and hopes to bring Joseph Kim to the Exeter campus. “He escaped North Korea at 16 and wrote a memoir about it, and I feel that he would be a very powerful speaker,” Pak explained.
With a Ph.D in Asian History, Lim has taken on the responsibility of being one of the faculty members most vocal about providing information to the PEA community about Asian countries, such as North Korea. Most importantly, Lim wants to give Exonians the tools to think critically about the media and analyze the discourse around North Korea. “The History Department at the beginning of the year decided that we wanted, in our own individual capacity, to reach out to our community and figure out what was going on not just in America but globally, as well,” Lim said. “When we hear news about North Korea being crazy, we might, as Exonians, think, ‘Wait a second, maybe it’s a little more complicated than that.’”