Guardian Angels, Not Minders: How cultural blind spots complicated aid for North Korea's famine.

The following is an excerpt from: “Miss Kathi: Saving Lives in North Korea” by Kathi Zellweger and Mike Chinoy. This chronicles the remarkable story of Kathi Zellweger, a native of Switzerland whose history of engagement with a secretive, isolated North Korea over nearly three decades is unprecedented in its scope, access, and humanitarian impact. It is one of the first book-length accounts in English by an aid worker operating on the ground in North Korea; the story of a woman who has lived out her commitment to the poor and most vulnerable undaunted by the tensions and threat of conflict perpetually looming over the Korean peninsula.

For many North Koreans, Kathi was the first foreigner they had ever met or even seen. Playing a central role in the early years of international relief efforts in North Korea was a lonely job, as Kathi addressed the humanitarian needs of a suffering people largely ignored by the world because of their citizenship. She befriended local doctors, nurses, and caregivers; negotiated with suspicious government officials; overcame international doubts about the diversion of relief supplies to the military; and, over a period of years, spearheaded an effort that provided food, medicine, and development aid. Ultimately, her efforts saved the lives of thousands of people—most of them children.

This excerpt discusses the challenges that international aid agencies faced as they began providing emergency relief supplies during the height of the famine in North Korea in the late 1990s.

As the famine got worse, North Korea, despite its reservations, allowed a growing number of international humanitarian aid agencies to base staff in the country. These included Médecins San Frontières (MSF, aka Doctors Without Borders), Médecins du Monde, German Agro Action, Mercy Corps, World Vision, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the World Food Program, UNICEF, the UN Development Program, and the European Union’s Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO), as well others. Although not allowed to establish a full presence until 2001, the World Health Organization was permitted in 1997 to set up an Emergency and Humanitarian Action office in Pyongyang.

From their experiences in places such as Africa and the Middle East, most NGOs were used to humanitarian emergencies characterized by a collapse of local political authority and relative freedom to move around, depending on security or weather or topographical considerations, and to operate where and how they chose. But North Korea was different. The government was profoundly suspicious of, and quick to attribute sinister motives to, outsiders, and felt deeply embarrassed at having to ask for international help.

Consequently, as the expat presence grew, so did tensions with the authorities. For many NGOs, the interaction with theFlood Damage Rehabilitation Committee (FDRC) —the body set

up by the North Korean government to handle international assistance–was adversarial from the start. They chafed at the restrictions under which they operated, including an initial ban on sending Korean-speaking staffers; tight controls on travel, with a requirement to apply one week in advance to visit locations outside Pyongyang; and sharp limitations on what was called “random access”—the independent evaluation of conditions on the ground to determine for themselves which parts of the country faced the greatest need. Above all, there were numerous complaints about the challenge of monitoring aid, which led to widespread speculation—intensified by media coverage—that some assistance was being diverted to feed the North Korean military, security services, and government officials. The issue came up at almost every meeting that aid agencies held in Pyongyang, the concern heightened by the obsessive secrecy of the North Korean system and the thinly disguised hostility on the part of many officials toward the growing foreign presence.

The result was frequent confrontations and much bad feeling, with complaints that local authorities were hiding starving children, sprucing up areas to be inspected, and pocketing aid for themselves.

North Korean officials, while expressing gratitude for the assistance, also complained to me that some organizations were more interested in undermining the North Korean system than in helping its people. They repeatedly expressed fears that monitors, especially Americans, might have “alternative agendas,” were “interfering in local affairs,” or could be spies. To me, though, the reality was much more complex.

Working for the Catholic aid agency Caritas, I observed the arrival of aid shipments and traveled the country to inspect deliveries, and I remained alert for any signs of diversion. I certainly encountered situations in which the distribution of food and even the conversations were obviously stage-managed. I attributed this both to the secretiveness and regimentation of the North Korean system and to inexperience and fear in dealing with foreigners. And I continually pressed the North Koreans for greater transparency and access. But throughout 1997 and 1998, I felt reasonably confident that the bulk of the aid Caritas was sending was indeed reaching the intended beneficiaries. Yet the North Koreans were still reluctant to agree to what the aid community felt were crucial steps, especially to allow a nationwide nutritional survey to determine the scale of the hunger and identify the best way to address it.

Watching the situation unfold as the worst of the famine took hold, I came to believe that the attitude of some aid agency personnel—even if they did not have the subversive agenda the North Koreans worried about— was exacerbating the problem. Most aid workers arrived with the best of intentions but knew very little about Korean history, North Korean society, or the unhappy legacy of the Korean War. Not surprisingly, given North Korea’s less than stellar international reputation, many were deeply suspicious of their interlocutors and the North Korean system. Used to operating in their own way, they adopted what often seemed to me to be a top-down and sometimes confrontational approach, presenting conditions or making demands, and not displaying an awareness of North Korean culture and sensitivities that might have made their life easier.

The suspicion, distrust, and lack of cultural understanding soured many dealings with the North Koreans. I recall, for example, one NGO aid worker coming back from a family visit during which the housewife had told him, “I have no other food.” The worker could see edible things in the home and concluded he was being lied to. He was unaware that when the North Koreans speak of “food,” they mean cereals. Other items are just nice little extras. The housewife was not lying but simply expressing a premise of her own culture.

Another time, a foreign woman who had visited a family mockingly recounted to me how a pregnant woman there had said the pregnancy lasted ten months. But ten months in the Korean lunar calendar is nine of our months. Again, it was a case of cultural misunderstanding rather than of someone’s trying to pull the wool over an aid worker’s eyes.

The building of relationships took time and enormous patience. Whatever my private feelings about the North Korean system, I made a conscious decision not to be judgmental, to keep an open mind, and to treat the North Koreans with respect. Early on, for instance, I stopped calling those who were escorting me everywhere my “minders.” Instead, I used the term “colleagues,” or, occasionally, “guardian angels.” “Aware of the importance of face, I went out of my way to avoid embarrassing North Korean officials. If there was an issue or a problem, whenever possible I would take the person aside later to discuss it. These were small gestures, but they shaped my encounters, and I think those who interacted with me appreciated the fact that I saw them more as colleagues than as adversaries.

As I noted in a report to Caritas in 1998, “Accepting the pace of developments the local partners can accept, follow or cope with, is often the source of irritation. Cross-cultural exchange is still new for North Koreans, taking into account that it is less than three years since the North Korean government asked for international assistance. To offer a variety of opportunities to learn about new developments, to look at problems from different perspectives, to grow and transform within a nation and across borders is only valuable if done in a non-threatening manner.”

As frustrating as my experience was, I had some sympathy for the officials and residents in the places I was inspecting. I often thought of how my mother would have reacted in our small Swiss village if a team of unfamiliar Africans or Asians were to have walked into her home at a time of great distress and questioned her in detail about her diet, medical condition, and other personal details. Moreover, in North Korea, not only was I usually the first foreigner that local people had encountered, but I also was asking embarrassing questions while officials from the area looked on as the personnel who had accompanied me from Pyongyang did the translating. No wonder it was awkward. Often during these visits, when no one was watching, I would, as we were sitting on the floor Korean-style, slip a bar of soap under a piece of furniture, so the family would have a nice surprise after I left. For waitresses in the county restaurants, I would sometimes quietly put lipstick into their hands or apron pockets when saying goodbye. I remember one young girl opening her hand to see what I had given her and literally jumping up and down with pleasure. It was the least I could do.

Excerpted from Miss Kathi: Saving Lives in North Korea

By Kathi Zellweger and Mike Chinoy © 2026 by Kathi Zellweger and Mike Chinoy

To be published by Post Hill Press

Used with permission

Mike Chinoy was a CNN foreign correspondent for 24 years, serving as the network’s first Beijing Bureau Chief. He has won Emmy, Dupont and Peabody awards for his coverage of China. He is also the author of books including China Live: People Power and the Television Revolution, Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis, and, most recently, Assignment China: An Oral History of American Journalists in the People’s Republic. Currently he is a Taipei-based Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the University of Southern California’s U.S.-China Institute.