Zoe Discovers

Zoe Stephens, better known online as Zoe Discovers, is a British blogger, videographer, photographer, visual artist, and writer, whose YouTube videos mainly focus on daily life in North Korea, along with her life in Tonga, the U.K, Taiwan, and languages.
==Personal life==
Zoe is originally from Liverpool, England. Born a English speaker, she went on later to learn Mandarin, Japanese, South Korean Dialect Korean, German, and is currently studying North Korea's dialect of Korean.
Zoe first traveled outside the borders of the U.K. at the age of 15, stepping onto French soil. Zoe followed that trip up by backpacking through Southeast Asia.
In 2015 and 2016, Islamic State followers planned, coordinated, and carried out respective attacks on Paris and Brussels. Zoe claims that in the aftermath, she heard a colleague voice their belief that Europe is dangerous, and from that it piqued a belief in her in relation to media narrative shaping of countries.
Zoe first started experimenting with content creation during her time in China in May 2018, in which she wrote, directed, and starred in videos meant to advertise LTL Mandarin School, a company she was associated with at the time. At the same time, she began blogging about travel and her personal life on various platforms.
In April 2019, Zoe started recording NK related content for the channel, which at the time did not exist.
Zoe, who was spending the 2020 New Years in the DPRK, says that she came to a realization during the celebration in Pyongyang square, that it did not feel like she was in North Korea, but instead felt like she was in any place in the world.
In January 2020, after the onset of the COVID-19 epidemic and North Korea sealing it's borders in hopes of preventing transmission of the illness to North Koreans, Zoe travelled to the Island nation of Tonga in hopes of riding out the situation, a thought which was common among most people during the initials stage of the pandemic. After arriving, Tonga also shut it's borders. Zoe, who had explored most of the Island the first day she was there, started to struggle with feelings of boredom and loneliness. To pass the time, she took up a University course online. During her time there, her content alternated between archived media she had captured while in North Korea, and content she made in Tonga, from the locals to it's Geography.
In 2021, she completed the program and was given her Master’s degree, also being awarded a Distinction from the . 
On September 1, 2021 Tonga time, after a previous failed attempt, with Tonga at the time starting the process of allowing people in and out, Zoe Discovers boarded a outbound flight, and landed on British soil 64 hours later.
On January 10, 2022, Zoe Discovers launched her Patreon. Previous to this, Zoe had been mostly relying on paying for running the channel out of pocket, as she claimed later that she was pulling in €30 a month from the channel.
On January 15, 2022, a tsunami caused by an earlier Volcanic eruption destroyed the property that Stephens was living in during her Tonga stay. Angela Glover, a friend of Zoe's, went missing during the storm while attempting to rescue dogs under her care. Glover's remains were discovered two days later and the story of her death made significant news in the Western world, with Zoe saying that "I found out that the world has lost one of its truly beautiful souls."
In early July 2022, Zoe Discovers attracted significant attention after she content she posted about NK on Tik Tok went viral.
In August 2022, Stephens left the U.K. for Taiwan. She is currently attending National Cheng Kung University.
===North Korea===
Zoe first travelled to North Korea in 2015, and has been more than thirty times. She is a tour guide, taking Chinese visitors to North Korea.
Zoe has been criticised by people who believe that travelling to North Korea is unethical. She has responded to this by arguing that travelling there does not mean she supports the government.
As of September 16th 2022, Zoe has been unable to produce new content in NK due to the current travel ban still in place. 
==YouTube==
Zoe claims not to be paid by anyone, including the North Korean government.
She aims to make content about North Korea more "accessible," claiming that "a lot of Western media is recycled with the same stark photos and catchphrases."
Out of the belief that speaking on such publicly would minimize her focus on the people of North Korea, Zoe does not discuss her opinions on the Politics and Leadership of the DPRK.
==References==
Category:Vlogging YouTubers
Category:English YouTubers
Category:Users who joined in 2019