The result is often harrowing -- stories of human trafficking and North Korean women being sold as wives or slaves to Chinese farmers are among the most frightening things I've ever read -- but also inspiring, even charming.
In one chapter, Kim describes helping four teenaged refugees force their way past a Chinese security guard to enter the British Consulate in Shanghai and request asylum. Its a suspenseful episode - if the guard manages to stop one or more of the kids, its almost certain they'll end up in a gulag back in the DPRK. Kim advises the youths to punch, kick, scratch and even bite their way free if the guard manages to grab them.
Yet despite the danger, Kim takes the time to describe the kids first encounter with McDonald's and Starbucks, and shows them teasing each other and having a laugh as normal teenagers would. It's a striking, hopeful moment, a vivid reminder of how little actually separates those of us outside the DPRK with those within.
Kim's organization is called Crossing Borders, and it's a Christian NGO with a multifaceted approach to aiding North Korean refugees (on the Chinese) that includes placing families in shelters, running orphanages for refugee children and even providing work to some, making small crosses to be sold in the US.
The website stresses that in no way does Crossing Borders require that refugees become Christian to receive their services, but the organization does provide "spiritual healing" and "spreads the message of the Gospel with all refugees."
The regime is clearly threatened by religion, and documents acquired by Open Doors International suggest that North Korea feels Christianity is responsible for the fall of communism in Europe.
Some estimates have put the number of North Korean Christians at over 100,000, Kim writes.
Yet I have doubts about how useful a tool Christianity can be against the regime because of the dangers the converted face if they choose to return to North Korea.
Kim describes meeting one North Korean Christian, whom he calls Mr. Lee, in China just before the man returned to the DPRK.
"Here in China," Lee says. "I've learned about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. I'm thankful that people here have taught me the Bible...When I go back to North Korea, it will be very hard. I will get beaten, and I might even die." Lee then breaks down in tears.
Kim also describes the dangers and difficulties of smuggling Bibles across the border.
The persecution of Christians in the DPRK is abominable. In prisons, they are not allowed even to look at the sky, and many develop hunchbacks or "90-degree curvature of the spine." Some have had their fingernails and toenails pulled out and had nails hammered into their skin.
Executions are also common, and repression in the DRPK is so pervasive, and the slightest infraction - or even suspicion - can get a three generations of a person's family put into a gulag.
Religion may provide hope and comfort to the oppressed, but I'm not yet convinced that returning to the DPRK and becoming a martyr has much practical value.
Information is the key to undermining the regime and bringing about change for the North Koreans, so why risk lives and efforts to teach them about the rewards awaiting them in the next life instead of focusing efforts on spreading the news, politics and history of the outside world that has been denied to them for generations?
Anyone out there have any thoughts?
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment