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Showing posts from November, 2016

2016-11-30 Is Donald Trump a Racist? (Korea Times Roundtable)

Korea Times Roundtable Discussion Casey Lartigue: "Is Donald Trump a racist?" http://tinyurl.com/hgxqghb (Korea Times link) Michael Breen: "Me and My Liberal Tribe" http://tinyurl.com/j3pzlgy Donald Kirk: "Media mix facts with views" by Donald Kirk http://tinyurl.com/zftps6e Oh Young-jin: "How to make Trump great president" http://tinyurl.com/jgyvrre Three Korea Times columnists speak on the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president in a roundtable hosted by Chief Editorial Writer Oh Young-jin, third from left, at the Times conference room, last week. From left are Michael Breen, Don Kirk, Oh and Casey Lartigue Jr. Oh's column, titled "How to make Trump a great president," was previewed online and will be published in Thursday's edition of the newspaper. / Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chu l

2016-11-07 The Transformation of Eunkoo Lee!

I often like to ask people what they like to do in their free time. Many Korean students and office workers answer: "Sleeping." In the case of TNKR co-founder Eunkoo Lee, she enjoyed sleeping on weekends, and watching baseball during the season. All of that changed because of (TNKR) Teach North Korean Refugees. She now rarely has time to sleep all weekend, because we have TNKR events almost every weekend. Early in TNKR's history, I fired Eunkoo for one day. I realized that our model would be very difficult to attract sustained financial support, we were trying to do something different without having a financial sponsor. How long and deep was her commitment to this? What if we never raise money? What if we can't ever count on others to help us long-term? Yes, I later admitted to her, I had to test how much she really wanted to be part of this. She had always been an office worker, had never started anything from scratch, and never had never been i

2016-11-05 Coach Robinson is down, but not out!

This morning I stopped at the hospital to help Edward M. Robinson check out. Down to one arm at the moment, but the sarcasm is still there. But don't test him, he may rip off the bad arm to beat you with it, then put it back in place...

2016-11-04 Youngmin Kwon does it all! Steve Chai does the rest!

It was Friday, but they were busier than ever. * Translation * Tutor * Assistant Academic Adviser * Grading Level Exams * Project Manager getting prepared for upcoming events * Organizing the office Support TNKR: www.lovetnkr.org/donate

2016-11-04 Academic Advising

We had two students from the waiting list to join TNKR visit me yesterday. Now that we have our own office, it is easier for me to meet with  newcomers. Eventually, we will have an academic adviser to do personal interviews with everyone entering TNKR. One question I ask them: Do you want tutors to correct you immediately or later on? So far, 100% of refugees have answered: immediately! It was so obvious to one refugee, he couldn't grasp the question and was probably wondering about my intelligence for even asking such a stupid question.

2016-11-03 Who is Andrei Lankov?

Disclaimer: NK experts, please don't read this, there will be no rabbits pulled out of a hat. * * * Every couple of months, I meet up with Andrei Lankov to discuss various things. I first met him back in 2011, shortly before he spoke at an event I organized with the Center for Free Enterprise. I have read his articles for years, he has spoken at about four TNKR events over the years. When it comes to analyzing NK, he is one of the leading experts in the field. Last March, I was one of the organizers of the first (and perhaps last) International Volunteers Workshop, we had 227 RSVP in advance. I asked them all as part of the RSVP: "The keynote speaker will be Andrei Lankov. Had you heard of him before hearing about this event?" No: 133 Yes: 94 Even within those 94 "Yes" responses, I am sure there were various levels of awareness--such as some may have seen his name, others may have read some articles, and a few experts may have the Andrei La