Christianity and North Korea
Over the holidays, I watched a PBS documentary on the socio-political situation in North Korea that really opened my eyes. I knew that Kim Jong-Il was pretty much a ruthless, greedy dictator who hoards his money (about $4 billion) while the rest of his 22 billion people starve (the entire nation has a GDP of about $1,000 per person per year), but until I actually witnessed some of it in full color, I had no idea of how bad it really is for North Koreans.
In the documentary, PBS sent two cameramen undercover to North Korea to shoot the conditions under which the people live, and also to document North Korea's "Underground Railroad" which is run by a Korean Christian minister named Choi Yong-hun who the people call the "Korean Schindler." The cameramen essentially risked their lives to do this, and in spite of it were able to capture some amazing footage anyway.
The living conditions were atrocious. The scene that sticks out in my mind was a shot of some big, vacant, flat, muddy, treeless plot of land where North Koreans were gathered as far as the camera could show. It was cold, and all these people where gathered around huddled around whatever small fires -- mostly cooking fires -- they could muster. People lacked warm clothes, kids ran barefoot through the mud and the puddles, literally picking up muddy bread crumbs and eating them off the ground. It was beyond anything that most Americans could probably even comprehend.
Then, they began showing the underground railroad and outlining how it worked. Not surprisingly, North Koreans are trying to flee the country by the drove; the problem, of course, is that it's illegal to leave North Korea and those who are caught trying are generally executed. Some make it to China, where, if they're caught, the Chinese government ships them back in blatant violation of international law.
The goal of the railroad is to get people to Mongolia, which is over 1,000 miles to the northwest of North Korea. This is the only place they can really get safety; of course, the problem is that they have to pass through China to get there, and it's a risky journey.
There is one other way of escape that stops short of Mongolia, and that's to get inside a foreign embassy in China. And in the documentary, that's exactly what this party of ten or so people tried to do. By way of the subways, they got well into China, and had planned to have the men in the group storm the Chinese Army guards in front of an embassy, knock them down, and allow the women and children to get through, and then follow suit themselves. Once inside, they would seek asylum from somewhere else and get their freedom. One more thing: temperatures were well below zero for much of their journey.
The cameramen were stationed across the street to film the escape attempt. The people were dressed like Korean tourists, and a three year-old girl was given a ball and told to play with it to distract anyone who watched them while the men made the move.
What happened next was heartbreaking. The plan nearly worked, except that when the men tackled the guards near the gate, they ran on to the embassy property rather than hold down the guards and let the women through as planned. The cameramen captured the scene as the guards scrambled to their feet and picked off all the women and the child as they screamed helplessly. The men were nowhere in sight as the rest of the party was captured and scheduled to be sent back to North Korea to face probable death.
At some point in the film, the Choi Yong-hun had split from the rest of the group. Sadly, he was captured too, and since then has spent two years in a Chinese prison, where the Chinese refuse to listen to appeals for his freedom and plan on keeping him three more years.
There were several things that bothered me about this in addition to the obvious. First of all, I consider myself a well-informed citizen; I vote every election, and a good portion of the television I watch is national and international news. How do things like this so often escape the white-hot spotlight of the media, yet we're fully aware of the disappearance of the "Nun Bun," or whatever contestant advanced in the previous night's episode of "The Bachelor"?
Second, how can so many Christians be unaware of this? I'm in a regular Christian study group every week with a group of men who are conscientious and up on current events. I relayed this story to them, and none were aware of how bad it actually was.
I've been reading N.T. Wright's, "The Challenge of Jesus" over the past few weeks. In it, Wright stresses how Jesus tried to tell the Jews of his time that doing God's will was not about taking up arms and smashing the Romans to bits and establishing their political and social reign. Instead, Jesus' message was very simple: Be salt and light to the world.
And I wonder... Is there perhaps a loose parallel to the Jews of the day and much of Christian America today? We sit in blissful unawareness of a lot of pain and suffering in the world, thinking that our battle is against those heethens who want to take a "Ten Commandments" monument out of a courthouse somewhere, or that our calling is to boycott Disneyworld because they once had a "Gay Day," or to rage against the local city hall because they dared call the green orifice in their lobby a "holiday tree."
I am not saying that Christians shouldn't have an opinion on these things, or even take a stand against them when need be. What I am saying is this: Don't we have things a little out-of-whack when we have suffering brothers and sisters across the world, and not only are we largely not helping them, but we don't even know about them?
It's been three weeks since I saw this piece, and I can't get it out of my head. If anyone reads this and has ideas on how we can help these people, please E-mail me or post a response here. In the meantime, the least we can do is to keep them in our prayers.
In the documentary, PBS sent two cameramen undercover to North Korea to shoot the conditions under which the people live, and also to document North Korea's "Underground Railroad" which is run by a Korean Christian minister named Choi Yong-hun who the people call the "Korean Schindler." The cameramen essentially risked their lives to do this, and in spite of it were able to capture some amazing footage anyway.
The living conditions were atrocious. The scene that sticks out in my mind was a shot of some big, vacant, flat, muddy, treeless plot of land where North Koreans were gathered as far as the camera could show. It was cold, and all these people where gathered around huddled around whatever small fires -- mostly cooking fires -- they could muster. People lacked warm clothes, kids ran barefoot through the mud and the puddles, literally picking up muddy bread crumbs and eating them off the ground. It was beyond anything that most Americans could probably even comprehend.
Then, they began showing the underground railroad and outlining how it worked. Not surprisingly, North Koreans are trying to flee the country by the drove; the problem, of course, is that it's illegal to leave North Korea and those who are caught trying are generally executed. Some make it to China, where, if they're caught, the Chinese government ships them back in blatant violation of international law.
The goal of the railroad is to get people to Mongolia, which is over 1,000 miles to the northwest of North Korea. This is the only place they can really get safety; of course, the problem is that they have to pass through China to get there, and it's a risky journey.
There is one other way of escape that stops short of Mongolia, and that's to get inside a foreign embassy in China. And in the documentary, that's exactly what this party of ten or so people tried to do. By way of the subways, they got well into China, and had planned to have the men in the group storm the Chinese Army guards in front of an embassy, knock them down, and allow the women and children to get through, and then follow suit themselves. Once inside, they would seek asylum from somewhere else and get their freedom. One more thing: temperatures were well below zero for much of their journey.
The cameramen were stationed across the street to film the escape attempt. The people were dressed like Korean tourists, and a three year-old girl was given a ball and told to play with it to distract anyone who watched them while the men made the move.
What happened next was heartbreaking. The plan nearly worked, except that when the men tackled the guards near the gate, they ran on to the embassy property rather than hold down the guards and let the women through as planned. The cameramen captured the scene as the guards scrambled to their feet and picked off all the women and the child as they screamed helplessly. The men were nowhere in sight as the rest of the party was captured and scheduled to be sent back to North Korea to face probable death.
At some point in the film, the Choi Yong-hun had split from the rest of the group. Sadly, he was captured too, and since then has spent two years in a Chinese prison, where the Chinese refuse to listen to appeals for his freedom and plan on keeping him three more years.
There were several things that bothered me about this in addition to the obvious. First of all, I consider myself a well-informed citizen; I vote every election, and a good portion of the television I watch is national and international news. How do things like this so often escape the white-hot spotlight of the media, yet we're fully aware of the disappearance of the "Nun Bun," or whatever contestant advanced in the previous night's episode of "The Bachelor"?
Second, how can so many Christians be unaware of this? I'm in a regular Christian study group every week with a group of men who are conscientious and up on current events. I relayed this story to them, and none were aware of how bad it actually was.
I've been reading N.T. Wright's, "The Challenge of Jesus" over the past few weeks. In it, Wright stresses how Jesus tried to tell the Jews of his time that doing God's will was not about taking up arms and smashing the Romans to bits and establishing their political and social reign. Instead, Jesus' message was very simple: Be salt and light to the world.
And I wonder... Is there perhaps a loose parallel to the Jews of the day and much of Christian America today? We sit in blissful unawareness of a lot of pain and suffering in the world, thinking that our battle is against those heethens who want to take a "Ten Commandments" monument out of a courthouse somewhere, or that our calling is to boycott Disneyworld because they once had a "Gay Day," or to rage against the local city hall because they dared call the green orifice in their lobby a "holiday tree."
I am not saying that Christians shouldn't have an opinion on these things, or even take a stand against them when need be. What I am saying is this: Don't we have things a little out-of-whack when we have suffering brothers and sisters across the world, and not only are we largely not helping them, but we don't even know about them?
It's been three weeks since I saw this piece, and I can't get it out of my head. If anyone reads this and has ideas on how we can help these people, please E-mail me or post a response here. In the meantime, the least we can do is to keep them in our prayers.
posted by Chris Lee at 8:23 PM
1 comments
