At the George W. Bush Institute on Wednesday, morning coffee came with a wake-up call. "We are talking about human rights," Ambassador Julie Turner told those gathered around tables, some of whom escaped from North Korea. "Many of you had to make that difficult trek."
Turner is a U.S. Special Envoy on North Korean Human Rights. She was the featured speaker at the George W. Bush Institute's third annual North Korean Human Rights Workshop. Many of those in attendance did not want their faces shown in the video or their identities revealed.
"When their faces are in public, it puts their family in North Korea in danger," Bush Institute Research Fellow Joseph Kim said.
Kim escaped North Korea. He was among the first recipients of the Bush Institute's Lindsay Lloyd North Korea Freedom Scholarship. Since 2017, $350,000 in scholarships has gone to 84 North Korean refugee scholars.
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Kim is currently getting into the Masters program at Harvard while working part-time for the Bush Institute. In college, Kim had a dream of getting refugees like him together to empower them. At the Bush Institute, Kim made his workshop dream a reality.
"All of us who have freedom have a responsibility to care for others," Kim said.
The goal of the workshop is to give attendees leadership skills to use their voices for change in North Korea.
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"To talk to people are their experiences can do so much to shine a spotlight and to reveal to the rest of the world what the government (of North Korea) is trying to keep hidden," Turner said. "The fact that so many of them need to remain anonymous is also a really important indicator of just how severe the repression, how serious the human rights violations are in North Korea."
Later this month will mark the 20th anniversary of President George W. Bush signing the North Korean Human Rights Act. Both he and the former First Lady Laura Bush were at the workshop last year.
"One thing President Bush really prioritized was human rights," Turner said. "Specifically human rights in North Korea."
"It basically is a program that helps North Korean escapees who are in college; equip them with knowledge and skills to become the next generation of leaders dedicated for the cause of freedom," Kim said of the workshop. "I think life is a lot more exciting when you have a passion and dream that is bigger than us."
'I hope they leave here feeling motivated to continue really difficult work in advocating for North Korean human rights," Turner said.
