Haeun Moon is an undergraduate student at Harvard College concentrating in Social Studies and Philosophy. She is a Korean-born immigrant, and the issue of human rights is a deeply personal one. From a young age, she questioned why people who share the same language, history, and culture were separated by an arbitrary line. Her family’s experience with the human rights violations of the North Korean government sparked an interest in the ongoing humanitarian crisis in North Korea. This has led to a broader interest in human rights, ranging from the immigrants detained at the southern border of the United States to Afghan refugees.

In the summer of 2022, Haeun was an Oslo Scholar with the Human Rights Foundation, working with NAUH, a Seoul-based non-profit that advocates to defend human rights in North Korea and help those who escape. She spearheaded an international social media campaign in this capacity to raise awareness of the North Korean human rights crisis. Furthermore, she conducted research on UN, EU, and U.S. policies since 2016 related to North Korean human rights, carrying out a comparative analysis on the impact of these policies. These experiences further substantiated her passion for North Korean human rights. She plans to write her senior thesis on inter-Korean relations, with an emphasis on approaching reunification with a focus on North Korean defectors.

Haeun hopes to attend law school after graduation to study international and immigration law, directly serving the disadvantaged members of our communities while pushing for fundamental changes to the system. She is continually reminded of the fact that we all share a common future, and wants to help shape a hopeful future that includes and embraces more people.

Through her internship with HRNK, she hopes to deepen her understanding of the North Korean situation by being embedded in the daily geopolitical happenings, as well as the latest intellectual advancements regarding the North Korean human rights crisis.