Helping Hands Korea is profiled extensively in Melanie Kirkpatrick’s much heralded account of the network of volunteers, many of them Christian activists, that has sought to fill the vacuum created by governments and well-funded international agencies that have chosen to ignore the plight of North Korean refugees in China. Ms. Kirkpatrick, a veteran journalist and deputy editor for the Wall Street Journal, has painstakingly etched a comprehensive picture of the modern equivalent of the US Civil War’s abolitionists’ volunteer network, the Underground Railroad, to guide slaves in the South to safe havens in the Northern states. 
In the past 15 years, a tiny community of activists has designed a similar grid to facilitate the safe evacuation of North Korean refugees through vast distances of China, which for the refugees is deeply hostile territory since Beijing’s authorities adamantly continue a calloused policy of forced repatriation of North Korean defectors if caught. Helping Hands Korea has decried Western governments’ ongoing craven compromise with Chinese authorities for commercial gain, choosing massive profits instead of confronting China over its consistently egregious violation as a UN Security Council Member of its own human rights obligations towards North Korean refugees on its soil.
