Kenneth Bae was born in Seoul, Korea on August 1, 1968. His family immigrated to the United States in 1985. Kenneth went to high school in California and attended the University of Oregon and Covenant Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. He held multiple jobs in sales and marketing until he moved to China in 2006. After years of managing his cultural-exchange business and missionary work, he transitioned into travel and tourism industry in 2010 planning trips for the DPRK (North Korea). Kenneth had a passion to introduce westerners to the untainted beauty of the landscape and people of North Korea and was excited to contribute to their economic development. He is a licensed preacher in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), an ordained Southern Baptist pastor, and has been working with Youth With A Mission (YWAM) since 2005. Kenneth is a husband and a father of three children, ages eighteen to twenty-five.
