Kang Chol-Hwan

Kang Chol-Hwan is a human rights activist who is also the founder and president of the North Korea Strategy Center, an NGO seeking to bring free press and media into North Korea. Originally from a family with strong ties to the Workers’ Party, he was imprisoned as a child and taken to a Yodok concentration camp for 10 years. At the time of his imprisonment, he was just nine years old. In his autobiography, The Aquariums of Pyongyang, Chol-Hwan describes the terrible living conditions including exposure to the elements, routine beatings and being forced to watch public executions of other prisoners. At the age of 15, he was assigned to a work detail where he witnessed many people die from starvation, while others resorted to eating rats and worms to survive. 

Kang and a fellow Yodok internee escaped from North Korea by crossing the Yalu River into China in 1992. He made his way to South Korea, and established the North Korea Strategy Center in 2007. Since its inception, the NKSC has worked with over 150 North Korean defectors and sent over 40,000 DVDs, 400 radio sets, and 4,000 USBs into North Korea.