Euna Lee, first-year graduate student at the Columbia Journalism School sat down with Spectrum to talk about her career, her five-month detention in North Korea, and the lessons she learned from her experiences in advocacy and journalism.
Euna Lee wore a jean jacket over her dress. She seemed no more notable than any of the thousands of other students that walked through Lerner Hall that day.
But unlike almost any of the other 27,705 students at Columbia University, her story also involves five gut-wrenching months in North Korean captivity, only 112 miles from where she was born.
However, speaking to her you would not sense a woman who has been through hell and back. Instead, you find a first year student at Columbia Journalism School studying film and broadcasting who speaks about peace and empathy and exudes it with her aura.
Her journey starts in South Korea, where she began in the film industry as a producer then moved on to become an editor. Eventually she moved to San Francisco to study at the Academy for Art University where she found a job, and worked in editing films for five years. The company merged with another firm and she found herself laid off.
She said, “It is not telling people’s stories, it is entertainment, it’s a paycheck, but I had to find something else I wanted to do.”
And she asked a single question, “What am I doing here?”
