FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 13, 2022

Contact: Rohit Mahajan | 202.530.4976 | mahajanr@rfa.org

Radio Free Asia Wins Gracie for Korean Defector Project

WASHINGTON - Radio Free Asia (RFA)’s Korean Service was today named among the winners at this year’s Gracie Awards for its report Rerouting: defying the given path, paving a new one - North Korean female defectors' journey. The project, which follows two female North Korean refugees and documents their perspectives on leaving their homeland’s heavily male-dominated society, won in the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation-sponsored contest’s category for Foreign Language Individual Achievement. 

“RFA’s Korean Service has the crucial and challenging job of reporting news out of North Korea on a daily basis, while keeping informed a population especially vulnerable to disinformation,” RFA President Bay Fang said. “A compelling story through the years has been that of the defectors – who face incredible odds in their quest to realize the dream of freedom.”

“RFA’s winning piece is another episode in that saga, documenting the journey of two brave women yearning for a better life in neighboring South Korea.” 

The winning report, which premiered in December 2021, follows the journey of two North Korean women refugees who fled their repressive homeland to start new lives in South Korea. The report contains testimonies from various age groups of North Korean defectors from their 20s to 50s. It also includes a testimony of a foreigner who lived in Pyongyang for two years as a diplomat's wife. These accounts underscore North Korean women’s lack of human rights and provide insight into a possible feminist movement percolating within the country. 

Other winners at this year’s competition include The Washington Post, NPR, CBS News, and VICE Media. They will be honored at the 47th Annual Gracie Awards Gala in Los Angeles on May 24. Alliance for Women in Media Foundation (AWMF) is a non-profit that creates educational programs and scholarship initiatives to benefit the public and women in the media. 

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Radio Free Asia is a private, nonprofit corporation broadcasting and publishing online news, information, and commentary in nine East Asian languages to listeners who do not have access to full and free news media.  RFA’s broadcasts seek to promote the rights of freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to “seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” RFA is funded by an annual grant from the United States Agency for Global Media.