Mike Chinoy

It's an amazingly inspiring story of not giving up in the face of very, very difficult circumstances and showing that it is possible to achieve certain things in North Korea despite all the obstacles.

Okay, on that note, please join me in thanking Kathi Zellweger and Mike Chinoy.

Their book is Miss Kathy, Saving Lives in North Korea.

I want to thank all of you for joining us.

Lock in.

Those records became the basis of a new book co-written with former CNN Beijing bureau chief Mike Chinoy.

I've made 17 trips to North Korea, and Kathy and I intersected on some of those trips.

And when I was a journalist for CNN, she became probably my most valuable source because she was seeing parts of the country that I, as a journalist, wasn't able to see.

She visited North Korea 75 times, lived in Pyongyang for five years, gaining access to its hospitals, orphanages, farms and homes, witnessing the devastating famine of the 1990s and the country's cautious attempts to open to the outside world.

Her new book, Miss Cathy, Saving Lives in North Korea, written with veteran foreign correspondent Mike Chinoy, tells the story of the ordinary people living beneath one of the world's most repressive governments and asks whether isolating the regime ultimately means abandoning the people.

Kathi Zellweger and Mike Chinoy, welcome to the Radio National Hour.

Thank you.

Kathy, take us back to your first visit in 1995.

That there is still this middle class, but Kim Jong-un has reimposed a tighter degree of control than existed perhaps eight or ten years ago and has closed the country off, except really to the Russians and the Chinese.

This is the Radio National Hour.

I'm speaking with Swiss humanitarian worker Kathi Zellweger and veteran journalist Mike Chinoy about their experience working in North Korea over many years.

It was a lonely effort, but one that saved thousands of lives.

Now she's telling her story in a new book, Miss Kathy: Saving Lives in North Korea, and she joins us alongside her co-author, former CNN correspondent, Mike Chinoy.

Welcome, both of you.

Um, congratulations on the book.

A bit of optimism here.

Kathy Zeliger, thank you so much.

Mike Chinoy as well, co-authors of Miss Kathy: Saving Lives in North Korea.

And still to come, we turn our attention to the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence.

She even shared her reports on the secretive nation with Pope John Paul II.

The co-authors of Miss Kathy, Saving Lives in North Korea, Kathy Zellweger, a former Caritas Hong Kong North Korea director, and Mike Chinoy, a non-resident scholar at the 21st Century China Center and an award-winning journalist, join me now to discuss here in studio.

Thank you both for coming in today.

Thanks very much.

So I encourage you to be thinking about your questions and be ready to pose them at the end of the program in a question-like form.

So with that, it's my pleasure, pleasure to turn it over to Mike Chinoy.

Mike, over to you.

Thanks very much, uh, Jonathan, and thanks for all of you to brave the New York traffic to come here tonight.