Yes, Leslie, the North Koreans need our assistance -- Thanks so much for asking.  At the back of my book is a page called "How to Help" with the names of several nonprofits and links to their Web sites.  You can also find the same list, with links, on my Web site, www.MelanieKirkpatrick.com  There's a tab there labeled "How to Help."

Yes, Christians -- locals plus Americans and South Koreans.  But there are brokers who are in it for the money too.  It's against Chinese law to help North Koreans, so doing so is now without risk. Several Americans have gone to jail for that "crime."

Thank you, Rob.  I'm glad you like Escape from North Korea and appreciate your comments. I met lots of inspiring people in my research--both North Koreans who got out and the rescuers, often Christian, who helped them.  Maybe it's just as well you didn't get to North Korea itself.  I'm delaying my own trip till the country is finally free.

Romney' s first challenge will be to select a strong team to work with him, and here I worry especially about his likely foreign policy and national security teams.  He will need strong conservatives to stand up to the civil servants in State and the defense establishment. The international challenges are going to be as as difficult or even eclipse the domestic ones.  For starters, think Iran, North Korea, China. Four years of the Obama Administration has weakened American standing in the world.

One of the first acts of  Kim Jong Eun, the young new dictator, was to issue a shoot-to-kill order on the border.  No North Korean was to be allowed to get out.  I don't see any indication that he is a kinder, gentler Kim. 

Thank you all for your insightful comments.  I admire Franklin Graham.  It is possible that, unlike other aid organiztion, some of the aid his organization sends actually reaches some needy people. but I doubt it it helping to open the country. The restrictions imposed on the workers for the aid organiztions are usually strict and might include such prohibitions against sending in Korean speakers.

I agree with Barkha that the narrative is controlled.  Surveys show half or more of Americans are both pro-choice and pro-life. That is, they support a right to abortion under quite limited circumstances.  It's hard to know that from the media coverage of the issue.

Yes, I think we may have helped to perpetuate the Kim family dictatorship through aid -- aid that usually ends up in the hands of the elites or on the black market. Several international humanitarian groups refuse to operate in North Korea because they don't believe their aid gets to the needy.
If the Kim regime wished to feed its people, it could do so. Instead, it prefers to spend money on nuclear weapons.

I would remind everyone that the plight of North Korean Christians, to the extent that they exist, is far, far worse.  Religion is banned in North Korea.  A few years ago the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom reported a case of Christians who had been captured and pressed to recant. When they refused, a steamroller was ordered and they were run down and killed. 

Any relation?  To Jeane?  I was living in Asia when she was our ambassador to the U.N. and she was so famous that even a hotel bell man in Jakarta asked me that question. Just about everyone I interviewed wanted to know that too.  The answer is no, we're not related. But I like to say she was my ideological big sister.  She was a great woman.

Responding to Hartmann von Aue's comment on South Korean missionaries:  South Korea is second only to the U.S. in the number of Christian missionaries it sends abroad.  One very sad aspect though that I found in my research on Escape from North Korea: not many South Korean missionaries help North Koreans.  They seem far more interested in serving Indians than in their own brothers and sisters from the North. 

I've never seen any numbers on the birth rate among Christians. I'd note that Christianity is growing in popularity among the educated, middle class -- a group that would be better able to afford the high fines that the government imposes on families that dare to defy its one-child policy and have a second child.

 So many good thoughts and questions here and only 200 words! First, China emphatically does not want war. It desperately wants to maintain the status quo, in my view, but KJE and friends may not oblige. Then it will have to choose. The U.S. challenge is to persuade China that a democratic, unified Korea is in its interest. And, in fact, South Korea is a better partner to China now than North Korea is.

There is zero indication that NK wants a Chinese-style economic transformation. These guys are control freaks. And they look at what economic opening has wrought in China--political dissidence--and cringe.  I worry that KJE will try to "prove" himself with military action, that South Korea will respond, and we'll find ourselves in a regional conflagration that we can't control. South Korea has turned the other cheek many times in recent years--the sub that NK torpedoed and the attack on one of its islands--and I get the sense it's not about to do so again. It could respond more aggressively next time.

As for Fatty Eun (or Un), I think they look at him and remember Kim Il Sung.

 Why is there even a "female" person of the year?  Sounds like French male chauvinism to me.

 Rob raises an important point about Baby Kim's power base.  Unlike his father, who was officially named the heir apparent years before his father's death, KJ Eun got the job only a year ago. The speculation is that two old-timers are whispering into his ear and advising him closely:  Kim Jong Il's sister and her husband, who is the country's deputy leader.  Both are longtime power brokers and may be the power behind KJ Eun's throne. No one knows a lot about either person, and I don't know of any American, or Westerner, who has any sort of personal relationship with them.  China is the most important player here. It supplies a huge percentage of NK's fuel and also supplies food. Even so, it did not seem to have a lot of influence with KJI, who routinely defied them. For example, he'd go to China and say positive things about China's economic opening and then go home and crack down on the little markets that had sprung up.