Escape from North Korea (22 page)

Citizens of France, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and other countries have also been kidnapped by Pyongyang. Many Japanese citizens have disappeared as well, some snatched by North Korean agents who sailed to Japan and sneaked into the country undetected. Three Japanese citizens—two tourists, one exchange student—were kidnapped in Europe. The most famous abduction was that of Megumi Yokota, a thirteen-year-old girl kidnapped while walking home from an after-school badminton practice in the western Japanese city of Niigata. In 2002, Kim Jong Il confirmed to visiting Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that North Korean agents had kidnapped Megumi and other Japanese citizens.
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In China, the best-documented disappearance is that of the Rev. Kim Dong-shik, of Chicago. Pastor Kim, a citizen of South Korea,
was a legal resident of the United States and the father of an American citizen. His disappearance caused a political stir in both Seoul and Washington—though not enough to stop his subsequent torture and murder by the North Koreans.

Pastor Kim vanished from the border city of Yanji on January 16, 2000. The details of his kidnapping and death emerged several years after his disappearance when one of the members of the squad that abducted him was arrested and prosecuted in South Korea. Pastor Kim's kidnapping was ordered by a senior state-security official in Pyongyang, the kidnapper said. The senior official was in charge of North Korea's program of abducting refugees and rescuers in China whom Pyongyang considered threats to the regime.

Pastor Kim was born in South Korea in 1947. He graduated from Koshin University in Busan, South Korea's second-largest city, and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister. For many years he was employed as a minister in South Korea on behalf of the Chicago Evangelical Holiness Church, a Korean-American congregation in Illinois. In 1993, he moved to China to work as a missionary. North Korean refugees were just starting to cross the border in large numbers, and Pastor Kim decided to help them. In Yanji, he set up refugee shelters and established a school for refugee North Korean children. He was one of the early conductors on the new underground railroad. In 1999, he helped a small number of refugees escape from China.

A few months before his abduction, the pastor befriended a North Korean woman whom he believed to be a refugee. She was a North Korean agent. On January 16, 2000, the woman arranged to meet with Pastor Kim at a local restaurant under the pretext of introducing him to two other North Koreans who needed help. As they were leaving the restaurant, Pastor Kim, who was disabled, was wrenched out of his wheelchair and forced into a taxi. The taxi sped to the Tumen River border town of Sanhe, where the North Korean agents transferred him to another taxi before crossing the bridge into
North Korea. The trip would have required them to pass through Chinese immigration control.

The details of what happened next are murky, but it is known that Pastor Kim was transported to a political prison camp. He appears to have been beaten and starved to death after refusing to renounce his religion. The exact date and location of his death are not known, but according his family, his remains are believed to be in People's Army Camp 91, a garrison on the outskirts of Pyongyang.
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In January 2005, a month after the Seoul Central District Prosecutor's Court confirmed Pastor Kim's kidnapping, the Illinois delegation to the U.S. Congress wrote a letter to North Korea's permanent representative to the United Nations asking for information on the U.S. resident. The letter called Kim Dong-shik a hero and spoke of his “selfless efforts to assist refugees escaping in an underground network to third countries.” The lawmakers compared him to Harriet Tubman, “who established an underground railroad allowing for the escape from slavery of those held in bondage before President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.” They also cited Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who “rescued Jewish refugees trapped in Hungary” during World War II. “We revere Reverend Kim Dong-shik,” the Members of Congress concluded, “as also being a hero who assisted with the escape of the powerless and forgotten.”
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The letter from the Illinois congressional delegation ended with a declaration that until North Korea revealed what happened to Pastor Kim, they would not support its removal from the State Department's list of state sponsors of terror. Among the signatories was then Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. Three and a half years later, in October 2008, the Senator, who was now running for President, reversed his position and supported President George W. Bush's decision to take North Korea off the terror list.

The Shenyang Six were more fortunate than Pastor Kim, and their story has a rare happy ending. In July 2007, six months after they were arrested and jailed, the Chinese government quietly allowed the six North Koreans to leave the country. Beijing would not permit them to go to the United States, as they wished, so they went to Seoul. Their release was thanks to behind-the-scenes work by the American government, which helped persuade Beijing to make an exception to its repatriation policy.

Some might see the American efforts on behalf of the Shenyang Six as an act of atonement for the consulate's earlier rejection of the refugees, when they were seeking asylum. Questioned at the time about its decision to turn away the six North Koreans, the State Department would say only that there were sensitive issues involved, that its decision was made carefully, and that any publicity about the incident would have grievous repercussions. In private conversations, senior officials defended the decision, explaining that the consulate was sheltering other North Korean refugees at the time and that it feared negotiations on their behalf would break down if it gave sanctuary to the Shenyang Six.

The incident took place during the George W. Bush administration, when Christopher Hill was assistant secretary of state for Asia and Pacific affairs and the boss of the American officials in China. Not everyone in the Bush Administration was happy with how State handled the Shenyang Six. Shortly after his return to the States, Adrian Hong said that an official at the National Security Council apologized to him for what had happened in Shenyang, telling him, “Heads would roll.”

Members of Congress spoke out in support of Hong's efforts to rescue the refugees. In March, a statement by Hong on the Shenyang Six was read into the Congressional Record at the request of Congressman Ed Royce, a Republican of California. Hong wrote: “It is absolutely unacceptable and shameful that a United States post will
turn away legitimate asylum seekers, especially those that are targeted for capture and repatriation by local authorities.”
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There has not been a repeat of the Shenyang Six incident. In its wake, American diplomatic posts in China have been instructed to welcome North Koreans seeking political asylum. That is, however, less likely than ever to occur. At the time of the Shenyang Six incident, the security around the American Consulate in Shenyang was considerable. Afterward, Beijing tightened security even more. To reach the entrance to the consulate today, a visitor must pass through two gates and two sets of Chinese guards. Unless he displays a passport from the United States or another country, the odds of making it into the consulate and to safety in American territory are next to nonexistent.

JESUS ON THE BORDER

“I
didn't want to become a Christian,” the pastor said, offering a wry smile. “It was an accident.”
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Eom Myong-hui was describing her personal faith journey from atheist to committed Christian, from member of the Korean Workers' Party to Protestant minister. Among North Korean escapees, she is unusual, though not alone, in becoming a pastor. She is far from unusual, however, in her Christian beliefs. A large percentage of the North Koreans who reach China make the same spiritual journey.

One of the remarkable aspects of the North Korean diaspora is the high number of men and women who, once they leave their country, choose to become Christians. Protestant missionaries in the Sino-Korean border area are highly successful in winning converts to their religion, and the charitable example of the Chinese-Korean Christians who help the refugees sets a powerful example.
There is no way of knowing how many refugees become Christians. Nor is there any way of knowing how many conversions are genuine. But reports by refugees suggest that many North Koreans in China make the decision to become Christians and that they are sincere in their faith. Refugees also report a growing interest in Christianity in North Korea itself. That interest is spurred by refugees who tell their relatives about their new religion and—somewhat amazingly, given the penalties if the regime gets wind of their work—by North Koreans who return to their country to preach the Gospel.

One reason for the attraction of Christianity among North Korean refugees in China is easy to pinpoint: Christians run almost all of the aid organizations. So, too, much of the informal assistance that refugees receive comes from Christians, especially local Chinese. Christians are the only people who seem to care. In a country where helping North Koreans is against the law, there are few others to whom a refugee can turn for protection and support.

It would be a mistake to dismiss North Korean converts as mere “rice Christians,” the cynical label applied to converts in pre–Mao Zedong China who were presumed to have accepted a strange Western religion solely for the purpose of receiving the benefits provided by the missionaries. Although it's impossible to judge the depth of anyone's faith, the fervor with which many North Koreans have adopted Christianity seems real. It is consistent with the enthusiasm, in post–Cold War Europe, that many citizens of former Communist countries showed toward Christianity. Even in China, which remains officially atheist even while loosening restrictions on religion, Christianity is rapidly winning converts. There are at least seventy million Christians in China today, or 5 percent of the population.
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That is nearly the same number of people who belong to the Communist Party. A top Communist Party official felt it necessary to warn in 2011 that party members are required to be atheists. “Our party's principled
stance regarding forbidding members from believing in religions has not changed one iota,” he said.
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North Koreans who become Christians in China do not jettison their faith when they reach South Korea. If anything, they often seem more committed and eager to share their new religion with fellow refugees. Christianity is widespread in the North Korean community in South Korea, where there are numerous so-called defector churches. These are often small congregations made up mostly of North Koreans.

Once a refugee arrives in South Korea, it is the government, not the church, that is his principal caregiver. The South Korean government provides an array of services, including a three-month resettlement program, vocational training, housing, and cash settlements. The government support is of course unconnected to a refugee's religion, which belies the theory that North Korean converts are merely “rice Christians.”

In contrast to the government's support, the South Korean people themselves often can be unwelcoming. South Korean Christians are an exception in paying attention to refugees. Although the government provides for the refugee's basic needs, South Korean Christian organizations provide personal connections and spiritual support. South Korea is the second-most Christian nation in Asia, after the Philippines. In the 2005 national census, approximately 30 percent of the population of forty-eight million identified themselves as Christian.

Pastor Eom spent several years in China before eventually escaping to South Korea on the new underground railroad. She became a Christian in China, studied for the ministry in South Korea, and eventually emigrated to the United States. She worked for a while at a church in Virginia before moving to the Dallas area to accept a job at a Korean-American church. She lectures widely in Korean-American churches, relating her own personal story and discussing the attraction of Christianity for many North Korean refugees.

Pastor Eom was a math and biology teacher in North Korea. She was so good at her job that she won an award for being a model citizen. In the 1990s, during the famine, she went into the business of selling Korean antiques and specialty foods such as ginseng root across the border in China. Both the business itself and the trips to China were illegal, but times were hard, the trade was lucrative, and she had a husband and two young daughters to feed at home.

As she tells it, converting to Christianity began as a business decision. Her principal buyer—and the person on whom her livelihood depended at the time—was a Chinese-Korean man who would visit North Korea to pick up the wares she was peddling. After they had been doing business together for a while, he confided to her that he was a Christian. She knew it was dangerous to associate with Christians, but she was afraid of losing his business, so she listened politely. “When he started talking to me about Christianity, I didn't respond in any negative way,” she said. “I just nodded my head and listened. I wanted to be on his good side. My only purpose was making money.” She told no one that she had spoken to a Christian.