Casey Lartigue Jr. is co-founder of Freedom Speakers International, a Seoul Honorary Citizen, and co-author of Greenlight to Freedom.
How martial law postponed our Harvard event
Freedom Speakers International co-founders Casey Lartigue, left, and Eunkoo Lee, right, meet with Harvard University students Feb. 28, 2025. Courtesy of Freedom Speakers International
By Casey Lartigue Jr.
Around 1:00 a.m. on December 3, 2024, a phone call changed everything we had been planning for months. My colleague's voice was urgent: "Have you seen the news? The president declared martial law." I had been asleep and doubted what she had said.
It turned out to be true. President Yoon Suk Yeol had taken the unprecedented step of imposing martial law on South Korea, the first time since the country's democratization in the 1980s.
Later that morning, we were scheduled to meet with the president’s top ranking executives with other NGOs. "I don't think that meeting will happen," I told her. I was right. Just hours before the scheduled meeting, we were notified that it had been postponed. But I knew this wasn't just a scheduling change. The political earthquake would reshape everything we had worked toward.
We continued with our plans for the "I am from North Korea" 22nd English Speech Contest, presented by Freedom Speakers International. The pieces were falling into place beautifully. We had secured funding from a generous donor. Harvard University had confirmed their partnership, with Harvard students eager to volunteer as mentors for North Korean refugees.
I have made two trips to Cambridge during this year. First, to speak at the Harvard Graduate School of Education Alumni of Color Conference in March, then in May to receive the Michael Shinagel Award for Service to Others from the Harvard Extension School. During these visits, I met extensively with Harvard students, staff, and faculty to prepare for what would have been a major milestone: our speech contest scheduled for October 1, 2025. We had reached out to dozens of partners and peers. Everything seemed set.
Then President Yoon was impeached and removed from office. South Korea elected a new president shortly after my second trip to Harvard University. The ripple effects reached us immediately.
Our South Korean donors began to hesitate. One warned us bluntly not to engage in "human rights talk" — a chilling reminder of how quickly the space for certain conversations can contract. Our main donor, previously enthusiastic, asked us to postpone the contest until 2026. She wanted to wait until the new president had been in office long enough to clarify his position on North Korean human rights issues. Other activities followed suit: a book talk about "Greenlight to Freedom" was canceled, and several initiatives were pushed to 2026.
This kind of political alignment isn't new in South Korea's civil society landscape. During the Park Geun-hye administration, I visited CJ Entertainment and noticed something called "The Creative Room" — a space for artists and musicians to create. When I asked about its purpose, an employee explained it was tied to President Park's "creative economy" initiative. Businesses understood they needed to demonstrate support for presidential agendas. Similar alignments have likely occurred under other administrations, but this was one instance where someone spoke about it directly.
The political shift forced us to reimagine our plans entirely. Instead of Oct. 1 at Harvard, we moved the contest to Seoul, Sept. 6 (Chuseok in Seoul presents a different challenge so we needed to move the event up). The compressed timeline meant refugees and mentors would have less preparation time together.
It meant we had to change which North Korean refugees would be participating. We had several previous winners of the Seoul contest scheduled to speak at Harvard. Because they have already won in Seoul, they are not eligible to join that contest again.
Over the years, we've deliberately resisted pressure to become a political organization, take on religious agendas or turn over my member list to churches, or even label ourselves primarily as a human rights group. We don't push specific policy positions. Our mission is straightforward: empower North Korean refugees to engage in public speaking. If they choose to address human rights in their speeches, we don't discourage them, but we don't mandate it either. Some have discussed their hobbies, changes in their lives in South Korea, their heroes and so on.
The events of 2024 and early 2025 validated this approach. Organizations with more explicitly political missions faced greater scrutiny and funding cuts. By maintaining our focus on individual empowerment rather than systemic change, we preserved our ability to continue empowering North Korean refugees even as the political landscape shifted.
We won't have our contest at Harvard this year, but we're more than fine returning to Seoul. The postponed Harvard event taught us something valuable about adaptability in civil society work. External forces will always try to reshape our mission, whether through funding pressures, political climates, or partnership constraints. Our strength lies not in resisting these forces entirely, but in adapting while protecting what matters most: giving North Korean refugees a platform to share their experiences in their own words.