General Update – New Partnerships & North Koreans Abroad

Over the last two months, we have established a series of exciting partnerships to improve our ability to deliver quality training. We will work with an international financial institution to share knowledge and to develop some course content. In addition, we are also discussing with several law schools from around the world how we can work together to start a legal training program. We are also in touch with a few companies to discuss partnerships in support of our programs. Most exciting is that we might start our program sending North Koreans abroad to participate in conferences and academic programs earlier than expected. This year, we expect to send two North Koreans to the Asia Society Asia 21 Fellows program in Jakarta, Indonesia. This experience will help us better develop our screening process to identify individuals worth supporting.

We have also established contacts with Swedish, German, Swiss and Australian authorities in charge of their North Korean technical assistance programs. In addition to coordination and collaboration in the future, we plan to learn from them what works, what does not and what needs to be done to raise the effectiveness of training programs.