Speakers

Betsy Yoon

Nodutdol

Betsy Yoon is a Nodutdol member and librarian. Betsy is a co-steward of Nodutdol’s archives, has led three delegations to North Korea through Nodutdol’s Korea Education and Exposure Program, and is a member of the Fight to Win Caucus and the International Committee of the CUNY faculty and staff union.

Brian Becker

ANSWER Coalition

Brian Becker is the National Director of the ANSWER Coalition and a founding member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL). He hosts a podcast and video show on Breakthrough News. In 2001, he was the Co-Director of the International Tribunal on US War Crimes in Korea, which presented testimony from survivors from South Korea, the DPRK, and overseas Koreans.

Carlos Ron

Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

Carlos Ron is a Senior Fellow at Tricontinental Institute for Social Research. As a former diplomat from Venezuela, he served as Deputy Minister for North America (2018-2025) and President of the Simon Bolivar Institute for Peace and Solidarity Among Peoples (2020-2025). Research areas include Hyper-Imperialism, Bolviarianism and National Liberation, Marxism in Latin America, People’s Diplomacy, Latin American unity and integration, and Revolutionary Pop Culture.

Cathi Choi

Women Cross DMZ

Cathi Choi (she/her) is the Executive Director of Women Cross DMZ, a global movement of activists mobilizing to end the Korean War, reunite families, and ensure feminist leadership in peacebuilding. She co-coordinates the Korea Peace Now! Grassroots Network, launched in 2019 to organize communities in calling for demilitarization and lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula. She obtained a JD from Harvard Law School.

Christine Hong

Korea Policy Institute & Ending the Korean War Collective

Christine Hong directs the Center for Racial Justice at UC Santa Cruz, serves on the board of directors of the Korea Policy Institute, and sits on the UC Ethnic Studies Council. She is a member of the Ending the Korean War Teaching Collective, Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, and UC People’s Tribunal for Palestine.

David Yun

David Sungmin Yun was born in Suwon, South Korea, and is currently based in Los Angeles. He first discovered the world of propaganda surrounding the DPRK in high school. Since then, David has been making films pertaining to myths surrounding the Korean Peninsula. His films include Loyal Citizens of Pyongyang in Seoul and Sikminji: How the U.S. Colonized South Korea.

Deann Borshay Liem

Deann Borshay Liem is an Emmy Award-winning documentarian known for films that explore war, memory, family and identity. Her work on the Korean War including Memory of Forgotten War, Crossings and the oral history project, Legacies of the Korean War, explores the geopolitical underpinnings of the unresolved Korean conflict.

Ella Delgado

BAYAN USA

Ella is the Secretary General of BAYAN USA, an anti-imperialist alliance of Filipino organizations across the United States fighting for genuine democracy and national liberation in the Philippines.

Erica Caines

Black Alliance for Peace

Erica Caines is a writer and organizer in Baltimore and the DMV. Caines is the National Co-Coordinator of The Black Alliance For Peace, co-editor of the African centered blog, Hood Communist, member of Friends of Latin America, and founder of #LiberationThroughReading providing African children with books that represent them.

Gregory Elich

Korea Policy Institute

Gregory Elich is on the board of the Korea Policy Institute. He writes for Counterpunch and the Korean news site Voice of the People (민중의소리). He is a contributor to Sanctions as War: Anti-Imperialist Perspectives on American Geo-Economic Strategy and Manuel d’autodéfense intellectuelle — Histoire. His website is https://gregoryelich.org.

Eugene Puryear

Breakthrough News

Eugene Puryear is an American journalist, author, activist, and host on Breakthrough News. He is also the author of Shackled and Chained: Mass Incarceration in Capitalist America.

Haruki Eda

Nodutdol & Eclipse Rising

Haruki Eda (he/they) is a member of Nodutdol and the Zainichi Korean organization Eclipse Rising. He is a Colorado-based educator and researcher specialized in the political history of the Korean diaspora. Haruki is working on his first book, Queer Unification: Community and Healing in the Korean Diaspora based on his doctoral research.

Helyeh Doutaghi

University of Tehran

Helyeh Doutaghi is a scholar of international law and political economy. Dr. Doutaghi’s research explores the intersections of the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), sanctions, and international political economy. Most recently, she was terminated from her position at Yale Law School due to her pro-Palestine stance. She is currently a fellow at the University of Tehran, where she is completing a manuscript examining the mechanisms, harms, and beneficiaries of the sanctions regime on Iran.

JT Takagi

Nodutdol & Third World Newsreel

JT Takagi is a Nodutdol member, filmmaker, sound engineer and Executive Director of Third World Newsreel, a progressive media center in NYC. Her films include Homes Apart: Korea, The Women Outside and North Korea: Beyond the DMZ (with Hye-Jung Park). She also serves on the board of the Korea Policy Institute.

Ju-Hyun Park

Nodutdol

Ju-Hyun Park is a writer and a member of Nodutdol, who leads the US Out of Korea campaign. Born in the US and raised in part in South Korea, Ju-Hyun is now based in New York. Their work has appeared in Public Radio International, The New Inquiry, People's Dispatch, and Truthout, among other outlets.

Junyoung Verónica Kim

Ending the Korean War Collective & Korea Policy Institute

Junyoung Verónica Kim is a core member of the Ending the Korean War Teaching Collective and an associate member of the Korea Policy Institute. Born in Korea and raised in Argentina, she is an interdisciplinary scholar and educator whose research examines how militarism, imperialism, and racial capitalism intersect in East Asia and Latin America and across hemispheric Asian American diasporas. Currently, she is working on two book projects.

Kawenaʻulaokalā Kapahua

Hui Aloha ʻāina, Honolulu Chapter

Kawenaʻulaokalā Kapahua is the Political Education Chair for Hui Aloha ʻĀina—an anti-imperialist Hawaiian independence party originally founded in 1893 to oppose the illegal occupation of Hawaiʻi by the United States. He has taken part in struggles, including to shut down the military’s Red Hill fuel storage facility and to protect Maunakea.

Kei Pritsker

BreakThrough News

Kei Pritsker is a journalist at Breakthrough News and a co-director of the documentary “The Encampments.”

KJ Noh

Pivot to Peace

KJ Noh is a journalist, political analyst, writer, and teacher specializing in the geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific region.

Manolo De Los Santos

The People’s Forum

Manolo De Los Santos is a founder of the People’s Forum and a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. His writing appears regularly in Monthly Review, People’s Dispatch, CounterPunch, La Jornada, and other progressive media.

Mick Kelly

Freedom Road Socialist Organization

Mick Kelly is the Political Secretary of Freedom Socialist Organization and the editor of the newspaper Fight Back! A 50-year veteran of the communist movement, Kelly has written extensively on East Asia and the Middle East. He is active in the labor movement and has long promoted international solidarity.

Minju Bae

Nodutdol

Minju Bae is a New York-based Nodutdol member and co-steward of Nodutdol’s archives. She is also an interdisciplinary historian and educator, who specializes in the history of labor organizing in New York’s Asian communities.

Miyeon Jang

Nodutdol

Miyeon Jang is a Nodutdol member based in New York. Miyeon leads Nodutdol’s organizing and outreach in New York City.

Moe Taylor

Korea Policy Institute

Moe Taylor is a historian and community organizer based in Ottawa, Canada. He is the author of two books and numerous articles on DPRK-Latin America relations, the role of the DPRK in global South solidarity movements, and issues of agriculture, farm mechanization, and food security on the Korean peninsula.

Sara Flounders

United National AntiWar Coalition

Sara Flounders has opposed U.S. war, occupation, sanctions and the imposed division of Korea and of Palestine for 50 years. She is a Contributing Editor of Workers World Newspaper and helps organize United National Antiwar Coalition, SanctionsKill Campaign, Friends of Socialist China and International Action Center. She is co-author and editor of 10 books opposing U.S. wars.

Simone Chun

Korea Policy Institute & CODEPINK

Simone Chun serves on the Board of Directors of the Korea Policy Institute and on the advisory board of CODEPINK. She previously held positions as an assistant professor at Suffolk University, an associate-in-research at Harvard University’s Korea Institute, and a lecturer at Northeastern University.

Terrell Evans

December 12th Movement

Terrell Evans is an activist attorney and member of the December 12th Movement located in Brooklyn, NY. The December 12th Movement is a pan-Africanist, human rights organization that advocates for the rights of black people domestically and internationally. As a member of its international committee, Terrell’s work focuses on opposing unilateral coercive sanctions, agitating for reparations, and organizing against imperialism and colonialism in Africa and throughout the diaspora.

Tim Shorrock

Tim Shorrock is an independent investigative journalist who grew up in Japan and South Korea during the Korean and Vietnam Wars. He is best known for exposing the secret background role of the Carter administration in assisting Chun Doo Hwan's martial law army suppress the Gwangju Uprising of 1980. In 2015, the City of Gwangju made him an honorary citizen for his contributions.

Tamar G.

Palestinian Youth Movement

Tamar is an organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement based in New York City.

Vijay Prashad

Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. Prashad is the author of forty books, including Washington Bullets, Red Star Over the Third World, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South.

Yeeun

Koreans 4 Decolonization

Yeeun is an organizer with Koreans 4 Decolonization @ Penn and Our Iyagi (우리의 이야기). She was born and raised in the Deep South and is currently based in Philadelphia.

Zoe Alexandra

Peoples Dispatch

Zoe Alexandra is an anti-imperialist journalist and the editor of Peoples Dispatch, an international media outlet covering the stories of people's movements from across the world.