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As COVID-19 cases multiply worldwide, North Korea claims it has no cases of coronavirus and continues to sequester itself from the outside world. Meanwhile, as leaders turn their attention to battling the spread of the virus, Kim Jong Un has ordered a half-dozen missile tests in recent weeks, deepening his country’s political and economic isolation as well as complicating stalled nuclear diplomacy.
In this briefing, Wilson Center scholars and experts who have spent considerable time on the ground in North Korea discuss what’s happening inside North Korea, both in politics and in public health, and assess the impact of COVID-19 on North Korea’s economy, its people and nuclear negotiations with the United States.
Original event page: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/ground-truth-briefing-whats-happenin…
Speakers
Katharina Zellweger is a senior aid manager with over 30 years of field experience in Hong Kong, China and North Korea. Ms. Zellweger is the founder of the NGO KorAid Limited, which leads projects focusing on the disabled in North Korea and China. She is also a Visiting Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, and previously served as the Pantech Fellow in Korean Studies at Stanford.
From 2006 to 2011, she was based in Pyongyang at the North Korea Country Director for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, an office of the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The focus of her work for the SDC was on sustainable agricultural production to address food security needs, income generation to improve people's livelihoods, and capacity development to contribute to individual and institutional learning.
Edward Wong is a diplomatic correspondent at The New York. He has worked for the Times for more than 20 years, reporting for 13 of those as an international correspondent and bureau chief from China and Iraq. As Beijing bureau chief, he ran the Times’ largest overseas operation. He has reported from dozens of countries, including Afghanistan, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Mongolia, Uganda and Ukraine. Mr. Wong also serves as a Wilson Center fellow and is working on a book project related to China.
Jean H. Lee is a Pulitzer-nominated veteran foreign correspondent and expert on North Korea. Before joining the Wilson Center, Ms. Lee led the Associated Press news agency’s coverage of the Korean Peninsula as bureau chief from 2008 to 2013. In 2011, she became the first American reporter granted extensive access on the ground in North Korea, and in January 2012 opened AP’s Pyongyang bureau. She has made dozens of extended reporting trips to North Korea, visiting farms, factories, schools, military academies and homes in the course of her exclusive reporting across the country from 2008 to 2017.
Abraham M. Denmark’s research and policy expertise is in the politics and security of the Indo-Pacific, and in U.S. strategy toward the region. Denmark previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia and worked as Senior Vice President for Political and Security Affairs at The National Bureau of Asian Research, a Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and held several positions in the U.S. Intelligence Community.