For everyone who has worked in and around North Korea, Kathi Zellweger has been a role model. As the director of international operations at the Catholic charity, Caritas, she oversaw food aid to North Korea in the 1990s when it was overwhelmed by famine. Later, she worked in Pyongyang for the Swiss government on various development projects. When that assignment ended, she continued to remain engaged through an NGO she founded to provide the supplies needed for cataract operations in North Korea. Throughout this challenging work, she remained unfailingly dedicated. Even as other international organizations withdrew from North Korea and the government there put restrictions on those that remained, Zellweger still focused on helping the most vulnerable people.
What was once available only to those in Kathi Zellweger’s network is now available to everyone, thanks to a new book, Miss Kathi, that she has written with longtime journalist, Mike Chinoy. It chronicles her experiences in North Korea across 75 trips, from her first contact in 1995, just prior to the outbreak of famine, to her last, pre-pandemic visit to the country in December 2019. The book also details her five years of living inside North Korea as a representative of the Swiss government’s official development agency.