Current Volunteers

Annie Eunjung Kim

Annie Kim is an undergraduate student majoring in English and minoring in East Asian Studies. Growing up in Seoul, she had always been peripherally aware of North Korea issues. She had a personal connection as well, since her grandmother had originally lived in Pyongyang before fleeing to Busan as a child during the Korean War. 

Rochelle Leonor

Rochelle Leonor currently volunteers for Daily NK as a social media assistant to help increase and sustain awareness about North Korea. She believes in the power of journalism and digital marketing in reaching more people who are on the lookout for more information about North Korea.

Angelika Wanat

Angelika Wanat is a currently attending a Seoul-based university, majoring in Korean Language and Literature. Her main scope of interest in terms of North Korea revolves around the country's human rights issue. By obtaining a deep knowledge and proficiency in the Korean language, she hopes to contribute to the international community’s work towards improvement of the human rights situation in the country, bringing those who are unable to communicate with North Korea's residents a step closer towards understanding the severity of the issue.

Abhishek Sharma

Abhishek Sharma is a PhD Scholar in Korean Studies at Department of East Asian Studies, Delhi University. His doctoral thesis examines the Strategic Utility of North Korea Cyber capabilities. He is interested in studying the application of emerging technology by Authoritarian states for surveillance, coercion and submission against their citizens.

Audrey Gregg

Audrey’s interest in North Korea began when she read the graphic novel Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea by Guy Delisle. Over the next few years, she further educated herself on the topic, particularly enjoying Seol Song Ah’s 사회주의 시장 풍경 and Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea. Audrey became truly invested in the politics of the Korean peninsula when she began working as a translator for 주성하TV, a defector-run YouTube channel, and starting meeting defectors regularly.

Past Volunteers

Gabriela Bernal

Gabriela Bernal volunteers to help translate Daily NK articles from Korean to English and also contributes to the organization’s weekly newsletter, Daily NK Weekly Briefing. She tells Daily NK she first got interested in North Korea after visiting Cambodia: “[I got interested in North Korea after visiting a] North Korean restaurant in Cambodia and having some conversations with North Korean girls who worked there..."

Jason Bartlett

Jason Bartlett contributes his time and energy to help translate Daily NK’s Korean language content into English for a wider audience. He was first exposed to North Korea during a semester abroad in Seoul when he was grouped together with a North Korean defector student for a team project.

Esther Ra

In her telling, Esther Ra, who works at Saejowi, a nonprofit NGO that supports North Korean resettlement through medical services, got interested in North Korea as a young child after “reading several memoirs by North Korean defectors and meeting a pastor who worked with underground churches in North Korea shortly afterwards.”

Seongjin Park

Seongjin Park, a 2022 Candidate at Choong Ang University’s Advanced Interpretation Programme, got interested in North Korea when he worked for the South Korean air force several years ago. During his service, he worked with an intelligence team from the US Air Force and attended daily briefings about what was happening in North Korea.

Jason Mallet

According to Jason, Daily NK’s most important work is that instead of “spending all of its energy focusing on matters in Pyongyang and what the central government does, it speaks with ordinary North Koreans through clandestine means to learn about issues happening on the ground. They talk about mundane happenings as well as what is going on in the markets and how the price of food is affecting the average citizen.”

Vilde Olaussen

Vilde became a frequent reader of Daily NK when she was working at the Norwegian embassy. She says that Daily NK offered a reprieve from the often sensationalized and unbalanced mainstream media coverage of North Korea.