When we finally made it to Thailand, we thought we were safe, but we were arrested almost immediately by Thai police.

They put us in a detention center for illegal immigrants.

It was overcrowded and dirty, and we were kept behind bars, but it was better than North Korea, and the Thai government did not send defectors back.

We stayed in that detention center for 3 months while our cases were processed.

During that time, I was interviewed by representatives from the South Korean government and from international organizations.

They asked me about my life in North Korea, about why I left, about what I had seen.

I told them about Sunung min, about the church, about the execution.

They recorded everything.

They said my testimony was important, that it would help document the human rights abuses in North Korea.

I did not care about documentation or politics.

I just wanted Sunung means death to mean something.

Finally, in late 2010, I was released from the detention center.

I was given a choice.

I could go to South Korea where I would automatically be granted citizenship as a North Korean defector or I could apply for resettlement in a third country through the UN refugee agency.

I chose to go to South Korea.

It seemed like the logical choice.

They spoke my language.

They had programs to help defectors adjust.

But when I arrived in Soul, I felt more lost than ever.

The city was overwhelming.

The buildings were so tall.

The streets were so crowded.

There were more people in one subway station than in all of Riong Chon.

Everyone moved so fast.

They were always looking at their phones, always rushing somewhere.

No one looked at each other.

No one smiled.

And everyone had so much so much food, so much clothing, so many things.

I walked through a supermarket once and almost cried at the sight of all the food.

Isisles and aisles of food.

More food than I had seen in my entire life in North Korea.

But I did not fit in.

I could not fit in.

People called us defectors.

They called us refugees.

They looked at us with pity or suspicion.

We talked differently.

We dressed differently.

We did not understand their jokes or their culture.

I was given an apartment and some money to live on while I adjusted.

I was enrolled in classes to learn about South Korean society.

I was supposed to find a job and start a new life, but I could not.

I was paralyzed.

Every night I dream about Sunin, about the execution, about the sound of the rifles.

I woke up screaming.

I could not eat.

Food turned to dust in my mouth.

I lost weight until I looked like a skeleton.

I could not work.

I tried a few job but I could not focus.

I kept thinking about my family in the camp.

I was depressed, traumatized, broken.

One day a woman from a church contacted me.

She said she had heard about my story.

She asked if I would like to come to their church.

I did not want to go.

I did not want to see anyone.

But she kept calling, kept inviting, kept reaching out.

Finally, I went.

The church was full of South Korean Christians who welcomed me like family.

They fed me.

They prayed with me.

They listened to my story and slowly, very slowly, I started to heal.

I started sharing my testimony at that church.

Just small groups at first, then larger gatherings.

People would cry when I told them about Sunung Min, about the singing at the execution, about the faith that sustained him even unto death.

They asked me what they could do to help, how they could pray.

I told them to pray for North Korea, for the 50,000 Christians in prison camps, for the underground church that was still meeting in secret, still risking everything.

I told them to pray for Sun Min’s children, for our mother, for all the families torn apart.

And I told them not to forget.

That was the most important thing.

Do not forget.

Over the next few years, I continued sharing my testimony.

I spoke at churches and conferences.

I was interviewed by human rights organizations and journalists.

I told Sang Min story over and over until the words became almost automatic, but they never stopped hurting.

In 2013, I received news through unofficial channels.

Someone who had escaped from camp 18 and made it to South Korea told me that Hijin had died in the camp.

She died shortly after giving birth to her fourth child.

The baby died too.

When I heard this news, I locked myself in my apartment for a week.

I did not eat.

I did not sleep.

I just sat in the dark and griefed.

Son means wife, dad.

His baby dead.

What about the other three children? What about our mother? Were they still alive? I would probably never know.

This is what I carry.

This is the weight I wake up with every day.

The knowledge that I am free and they are not.

That I am alive and sin is not.

that I sleep in a warm bed and eat good food while his children, if they are still alive, are starving in a prison camp.

People tell me it is not my fault, that there was nothing I could do, that I should not feel guilty, but I do.

I will always feel guilty.

The only thing that makes it bearable is the hope that telling this story might make a difference.

that somehow it might help bring attention to North Korea, might help bring pressure to close the camps, might help save even one person from the fate that befell my family.

In 2015, I moved to a western country.

I will not say which one for security reasons, but it is a place where I can speak freely, where I can share my faith without fur.

I still have nightmares.

I still wake up some nights and think I am back in Riong Chon hiding from the Bowie Buu.

I still see Sung Min’s face bruised and bloody on that execution stage.

But I also see his smile, his peace, his unshakable faith.

And I try to live in a way that honors his memory.

I work with organizations that help North Korean defectors.

I advocate for human rights.

I speak at churches and schools and anywhere people will listen.

And I tell Song’s story because he cannot tell it himself because his voice was silenced by bullets on a June morning in 2009.

But through me, he can still speak.

From me, the world can know what happened to him.

What happened to Mrs.

Park and Mister Choy and all the others who died for their faith.

Through me, people can know that there is a church in North Korea, that it is alive, that it is growing, that it refuses to die, no matter how much the government tries to stamp it out.

This is my mission now.

This is why I am still alive.

Not for myself, for them.

I sit here today in a country where I can speak freely and I try to find the words to tell you what it means to be the one who survived.

To be the brother who lived while Sunn died.

To be free while his children remain in prison.

To have plenty while they have nothing.

There’s no word in Korean or in English that fully captures this feeling.

Guilt is too small.

Responsibility is too clean.

It is something deeper, something that lives in my bones.

Every morning when I wake up in my warm bed, I think of them.

When I eat breakfast, I think of them.

When I walk down the street in safety, I think of them.

They are with me every moment of every day.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

Let me tell you how I got here.

how I went from being a traumatized defector hiding in an apartment in soul to someone who stands before crowds and tells this story.

It was not a smooth journey.

It was not a quick healing.

There were many dark days.

Many times when I thought about giving up after I received the news about Hayene’s death in 2013, I fell into a deep darkness.

For months, I could barely function.

I stopped going to church.

I stopped answering calls from people who wanted to help.

I just sat alone in my apartment and sat at the walls.

I was angry at God.

I did not understand how he could let Hijin die like that.

How he could let a baby be born just to die in a prison camp.

How he could allow such suffering to continue.

I stopped praying.

What was the point? God did not seem to be listening anyway.

One night, I decided I could not go on.

The weight was too heavy.

The guilt was too much.

I thought about ending my life.

I even wrote a note.

I wrote that I was sorry, that I had tried but I could not carry this burden anymore.

But before I could do anything, my phone rang.

It was pastor Kim from the church in Soul.

He was calling to check on me because he had not seen me in weeks.

I did not answer but he left a message.

He said, “Jinho, I do not know what you are going through right now, but I know you are suffering.

I want you to remember something your brother said in his final moments.

He said, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.

” He was able to forgive even the people who killed him.

Can you forgive yourself for surviving? I listened to that message over and over.

And something broke open inside me.

Sunung min had forgiven his executioners.

He had looked at the people who were about to shoot him and he prayed for them.

He did not hate them.

He did not curse them.

He forgave them.

And here I was unable to forgive myself for not dying with him.

I realized that by giving up by ending my life, I would be throwing away the very thing Sunung min had died to preserve his story, his witness, his faith.

If I died, who would tell what happened to him? Who would speak for the voiceless Christians still in North Korea? That night I fell on my knees and I prayed for the first time in months.

I asked God to forgive me, to give me strength, to show me how to carry this burden without being crushed by it.

I did not hear a voice.

I did not see a vision, but I felt something shift inside me, a small measure of peace, a tiny bit of hope.

I tore up the note I had written, and I decided to live.

Not just to survive, but to truly live.

To live with purpose, to live for those who could not.

I went back to church the next Sunday.

Pastor Kim hugged me and cried.

He said he had been praying for me every day.

I started sharing my testimony again, but with a new understanding.

I was not just telling a story about the past.

I was calling people to action in the present because the persecution did not end with Sunung means execution.

It is still happening right now today as I speak to you.

Let me tell you what is happening in North Korea at this very moment.

There are an estimated 200,000 people in political prison camps right now.

of those between 50,000 and 70,000 are Christians or people in prison because of their connection to Christians.

These are not criminals.

They are people who own a Bible.

People who prayed, people who dare to believe in something other than the Kim regime.

They are in camps like camp 14, camp 15, camp 18, places where people work 16 hours a day in coal mines and fields, where they are given just enough food to keep them alive, but not enough to keep them from starving slowly.

Where they are beaten for the smallest infractions.

Where they watch their children die from malnutrition and disease.

and there is nothing they can do.

Three generation punishment is still the law.

If you are caught as a Christian, your parents and your children go to the camps with you.

Babies are born in those camps and will die in those camps without ever knowing freedom.

Public executions still happen.

Just a few years ago, in 2016, a woman was executed for owning a Bible.

In 2019, several people were executed for watching South Korean Christian videos.

The underground church still exists.

It is estimated that there are between 50,000 and 400,000 Christians in North Korea.

They still meet in secret.

They still risk everything to worship.

And they still need our prayers.

I have met other defectors who were part of the underground church.

I have heard their stories.

One woman told me about a church that met in a basement.

20 people squeezing into a tiny space, taking turns reading from pages of the Bible they had memorized because they did not dare keep written copies.

She said they met every week for three years before someone betrayed them.

15 people were arrested.

She only escaped because she was sick that week and stayed home.

A man told me about a pastor who was tortured for weeks to get him to give up the names of his church members.

They broke his fingers one by one.

They put out his teeth.

They beat him until he could barely stand.

But he never gave a single name.

He died under torture without betraying anyone.

These are not stories from the distant past.

These are things that happened in the last 10 years.

This is the reality that Sunung Min died for.

This is the reality that his children are living in right now and the world does not know or if they know they do not care enough to do anything about it.

That is why I tell this story.

That is why I stand before you today and ask you to listen, to care, to act.

I want to tell you about the last information I received about my family in 2016, 7 years after the execution.

I met a man who had escaped from camp 18.

He had been there for 12 years before he managed to escape.

I asked him if he knew anything about my family, if he had ever heard of them.

He thought for a moment and then his face changed.

He said he remembered hearing about a woman who had come to the camp in 2009 with three small children and an elderly mother.

He said people talked about them because the woman died in childbirth shortly after arriving.

He said he thought two of the children survived for a few years.

Dubichia, but he could not be sure.

The camp was large.

People died all the time.

Children especially did not last long.

He said he did not know what happened to the elderly mother.

That was the last information I ever received.

I do not know if Sung means children are still alive.

If they are, they would be in their 20ies now.

They have spent their entire lives in that camp.

I do not know if they remember their father.

The oldest was six when he was executed.

Maybe he has some memories.

Maybe he remembers being held, being loved, being told about Jesus.

Or maybe the camp has taken even that from him.

I think about them every single day.

I pray for them every single day.

I beg God to protect them, to sustain them, to somehow bring them out of that place.

But I do not know if I will ever see them again.

I do not know if they are even alive.

This uncertainty is its own kind of torture.

Not knowing is sometimes worse than knowing.

But I have had to make peace with it.

I have had to accept that I may never have answers.

What I do have is this story and the responsibility to tell it.

Over the past 15 years, I have shared Sang Min story in dozens of countries.

I have spoken at churches and universities and human rights conferences.

I have met with politicians and activists and journalists.

I have done everything I can to make people aware of what is happening in North Korea.

Some people listen with tears in their eyes.

Some people are moved to action.

They donate to organizations.

They advocate for policy changes.

They pray.

But many people hear and then forget.

They go back to their comfortable lives.

And North Korea becomes just another news story, another problem that seems too big to solve.

I understand.

I do not judge them.

The world is full of suffering and it is easy to become numb to it.

But I cannot become numb.

I cannot forget because these are not statistics to me.

This is my brother.

This is my family.

So I keep telling the story.

I will keep telling it until the day I die or until North Korea is free, whichever comes first.

Let me tell you what I want you to take away from this story.

First, I want you to know that the underground church in North Korea is real and it is alive.

Despite 75 years of brutal persecution, despite public executions and prison camps and torture, Christians in North Korea continue to worship.

They continue to share their faith.

They continue to believe this is a miracle.

in any human terms.

Christianity should have been completely wiped out in North Korea by now.

But it has not been.

It is growing quietly, secretly, but growing.

This is the work of the Holy Spirit.

This is God moving in the darkest place on earth.

Second, I want you to understand the cost of faith.

In the West, being a Christian is easy.

You can go to church without fear.

You can own a Bible without risking death.

You can pray out loud.

You can sing hymns.

But in North Korea, believing in Jesus can cost you everything.

Your life, your family, your freedom.

And yet, people still choose to believe.

They count the cost.

And they decide Jesus is worth it.

When I see Christians in free countries who treat their faith casually, who skip church because they are tired, who let their Bibles gather dust, I want to tell them about Sunung Min, about how he buried his Bible in a jar because it was so precious, about how he died rather than deny Christ.

I am not saying this to shame anyone.

I am saying it to inspire.

If Sun Min could have that kind of faith in the face of death, what kind of faith should we have in freedom? Third, I want you to pray.

This is the most important thing you can do.

Pray for the underground church in North Korea.

Pray for their safety, their courage, their faith.

Pray for the Christians in the prison camps.

Pray that God would sustain them, give them hope, bring them comfort in their suffering.

Pray for the North Korean government.

Pray that their hearts would be changed, that they would see the evil of what they are doing and repent.

Pray for change.

Pray for freedom.

Pray for the day when North Koreans can worship openly without fear.

I believe in the power of prayer.

I have seen God work miracles.

The fact that I am alive, that I escaped, that I am able to tell this story, that is a miracle.

So pray, please pray.

Fourth, I want you to support organizations that are working to help North Korea.

There are groups that send information into the country through balloons and radio broadcasts.

Groups that help defectors escape.

Groups that advocate for policy changes and sanctions.

Support them.

Give to them.

Help them in whatever way you can.

Every dollar makes a difference.

Every voice raised in advocacy matters.

And finally, I want you to remember.

Remember Sunung Min.

Remember Mrs.

Park and Mr.

Choi and all the others who died for the FA.

Remember their courage, their joy, their peace in the face of death.

Remember that they sang Amazing Grace as they faced the firing squad.

That they forgave the executioners.

That they died with the name of Jesus on their lips.

Remember that there are 50,000 Christians in prison camps right now who need you to speak for them because they cannot speak for themselves.

Do not let their suffering be meaningless.

Do not let the world forget about them.

I want to close by telling you what I have learned through all of this.

I have learned that faith is not about having an easy life.

It is not about prosperity or comfort or success.

It is about trusting God even when nothing makes sense.

Even when he allows suffering, even when he seems silent.

Continue reading….
« Prev Next »