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Acting and Activism with Minnie Mills

Media

Join us for a conversation on acting and activism with actress and North Korean human rights activist Minnie Mills and Korea Society policy program officer Chelsie Alexandre. Exploring the origin and development of her professional acting career, Minnie discusses roles on “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” “Obliterated,” and future projects. She then describes her passion for supporting North Korean refugees through volunteering for the nongovernmental organization Liberty in North Korea (LiNK). How does she balance work with school and volunteering? What has she learned from North Korean refugees? An introduction is provided by Dr. Victor Cha, Distinguished University Professor, Georgetown University, and President, Geopolitics and Foreign Policy Department, CSIS.

This program is made possible by the generous support of the Kim Koo Foundation.

 

 

 

Acting and Activism with Minnie Mills

Wednesday, April 16, 2025 | 4 PM (EDT)


The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017

 

 


About the Speakers:

 

Actress Celine “Minnie” Mills is best known for her role as ‘Shayla’ in the hit Amazon Prime Video series THE SUMMER I TURNED PRETTY. She now stars as ‘Jen’ in Sony Pictures Television Studios and Netflix’s action-comedy series OBLITERATED, and voices the lead role ‘Ruby / Venus’ in the rom-com podcast series DUMP HIM!

In addition to acting, Minnie has been a lifelong advocate for North Korean Human Rights, working closely with the organization Liberty in North Korea. She currently works under Ambassador Julie Turner at the State Department and was recently appointed Goodwill Messenger. Minnie also studies Behavioral Neuroscience at Columbia University.

 

 

 

Victor Cha is president of the Geopolitics and Foreign Policy Department and Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He is also a distinguished university professor and professor of government at Georgetown University. In 2021, he was appointed by the Biden administration to serve on the Defense Policy Board in an advisory role to the secretary of defense. From 2004 to 2007, he served on the National Security Council (NSC), where he was responsible for Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Pacific Island nations. Dr. Cha was the U.S. deputy head of delegation at the Six Party Talks and received two Outstanding Service Commendations during his tenure at the NSC. He is the author of eight books, including the award-winning Alignment Despite Antagonism: The United States–Korea–Japan Security Triangle (Stanford University Press, 1999), which won the 2000 Ohira Book Prize; The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future (Ecco, 2012), selected by Foreign Affairs as a “Best Book on the Asia-Pacific for 2012”; Powerplay: Origins of the American Alliance System in Asia (Princeton University Press, 2018); Korea: A New History of South and North (Yale University Press, 2023); and The Black Box: Demystifying the Study of Korean Unification and North Korea (Columbia University Press, 2024). Dr. Cha is a two-time Fulbright scholar and a former Olin Fellow at Harvard University, as well as a former Hoover, Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), and Koret fellow at Stanford University. He currently serves on the editorial boards of ten academic journals and is coeditor of the Contemporary Asia book series at Columbia University Press. He serves on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy and is a senior fellow at the George W. Bush Institute. Dr. Cha received his PhD, MIA, and BA from Columbia University and a BA with honors from Oxford University.