Joseph Kim made the courageous decision to escape his home country of North Korea at the age of 15. Once he made it across the border, he slept in the mountains in China and begged for food until he was rescued by an organization called Liberty in North Korea. In 2007, Joseph was one of the first refugees to come to the United States under the North Korean Human Rights Act (NKHRA), which was signed into law by President George W. Bush on Oct. 18, 2004.
Joseph went on to work at the George W. Bush Institute, named after the same president who signed the act that saved his life — and President Bush even painted a portrait of Joseph for his book Out of Many, One: Portraits of America’s Immigrants.
Joseph tells his incredible story, the impact of the NKHRA, and why it must be reauthorized in The Washington Post.
“My story is about hope and resiliency,” Joseph writes. “I worked hard to stay alive, but none of my success would have been possible without the compassion and generosity of Americans such as [President] Bush, who care about the North Korean people.”
