When a North Korean friend there shared the gospel with her in 2015, Sung-mi decided to visit her church and learn more about Jesus. But after attending a few services, she found it difficult to connect with church members and stopped attending. North Koreans often feel isolated in China. They avoid contact with Chinese people because they are there illegally.

Then, one day she happened to meet a VOM worker. “I was invited to his church,” Sung-mi recalled. “Over time, as I saw his honesty and service to other North Korean ladies, I started understanding what it means to live as a Christian.”

The VOM worker visited Sung-mi regularly and helped her with Bible study, eventually leading her to faith in Christ. “Christ came to my heart through the life of the VOM worker,” she said. “My heart filled up with joy as I came to know the Lord after 20 years of my life in China all by myself. Now, God and his people are with me.”

Finding Her Purpose

In 2017, the VOM worker invited Sung-mi to join him on a visit to some other North Korean women living in China. The trip moved her deeply.

“As I accompanied him on the visit, I could not believe how much effort he poured out,” Sung-mi said. “He had to drive from the early morning to the late evening to meet one North Korean lady. He was even physically weary, but he kept doing this work. Whenever we went to meet her, I saw him preparing and packing care packages for the person we would be going to meet. I had never seen people like him before.”

As they continued to meet with older North Korean women, Sung-mi wondered why the worker continued to take the visits so seriously. “Isn’t this just too much?” she asked. “It is too painful to visit such poor ladies who nobody is ever concerned about. You must feel exhausted. I feel sorry for you.”

The worker looked her in the eyes and said, “Dear sister, it is my joy and honor to serve the Lord. I feel true joy in this work.”

“It was a new world to me,” Sung-mi said.

As she continued traveling with the worker to visit women living in poverty, she began to enjoy the ministry and awaken to the needs of others. “I used to always think that my life was so miserable, but now I came to the realization that some of my people suffer greater than me,” she said. “I began to feel what it means to serve the Lord. Like the VOM worker said before, I felt true joy as I served other people. I found something valuable in my life.”

The care packages they deliver are more than just a means of blessing them. They are also a way to share the love of Christ with them. “I hope that each one comes to believe in the Lord and to have strong faith to endure it and carry on,” Sung-mi said.

Sung-mi regularly helps deliver the packages, typically distributing them to two people each trip. Prior to distribution day, she helps the VOM worker schedule the visits. Then, on the day of the visits, they spend a couple of hours purchasing items from local shops and filling the packs with personal care items, medicine, clothes and an audio-Bible device.

“After that, we got in the car and sometimes would have to travel for four hours just to get to the location,” she said. “After spending a couple of hours at the homes, worshiping and fellowshipping, I could feel and see the dramatic change of their spiritual condition on their face.”

Out on Her Own

After learning the basics of ministry work among North Korean women in China, Sung-mi started visiting them by herself. On two memorable visits, she brought care packages to a divorced mother of two living on top of a mountain and visited a woman suffering from terminal lung cancer. Sung-mi was so moved by their stories that she gave them each gifts using her own money.

Some of her trips to meet North Korean women have taken her into rural areas of China where she is quickly detected as an outsider. “If I visit other women in their home, people begin to be curious and suspicious about what is going on,” she said. “If we ever sing or pray aloud at the home, the people sometimes report it to the police because people do not like Christianity. I was sold when I was young. I risked getting fined or even sent back to North Korea if police showed up. However, the police know we are here.”

Often, she said, the police tell her and those she is traveling with not to gather at people’s homes. “When I read the Bible, I realized that nobody could stop us from gathering to worship God,” she said. “I kept visiting and delivering [the care packages] and the gospel to other people.”

She frequently hears from those who receive the care packages, staying in touch through a messaging app.

“You cannot imagine how much even one tube of toothpaste produces such great gratitude,” Sung-mi said. “They are just so thankful for these packages and for God’s Word. The packs are very important because they can actually be blessings to meet both physical and spiritual needs.”

Because she knows personally the value of the care packages from her time in China, she is committed to participating in VOM’s ministry to provide them to North Koreans not only in South Korea where she now lives, but as a missionary in training wherever North Koreans are found.

“This work must not stop,” she said.

As a high-ranking member of North Korea’s State Security Department (SSP), he knew his wife’s crime, which was punishable by death, could implicate him, too. In fact, their entire family could be executed because she was selling “propaganda” from the south on the black market.

To delay his capture and potentially save his teenage children, Kun-woo fled to Yanji, China. Meanwhile, Min-ji’s relatives, also SSP officials, took in the children and bribed those who oversaw her case to reduce her sentence. So instead of death, she received a prison sentence.

Kun-woo returned to North Korea following Min-ji’s release from prison, but he was not the same man Min-ji remembered. He could not stop talking about a book called the Bible and a being named God who hears our prayers. A family he met in China had told him about the Good News of Jesus Christ, and now every time Kun-woo ate a meal with his family, he gave thanks to the Lord.

“I thought he was crazy,” Min-ji told a VOM worker.

Problematic Prayers

In the four months the family was together, Kun-woo’s prayers became troublesome, as he began praying even with people outside the family. In North Korea, neighbors are required to spy on each other, so Christians must pray in secret. And sharing the gospel is even more dangerous than prayer; a simple mention of Jesus Christ can lead to arrest.

Although he knew his entire family could be severely punished for his bold faith, Kun-woo couldn’t help but share what he had learned in China. “I think he at least shared with 20 other people,” Min-ji said. “At that time, I was so resentful of him. My case had just been closed. Why would he put all the family in danger, a greater danger, again?”

Eventually, someone did report Kun-woo’s activities. One night, authorities came to the couple’s home and arrested them, and Kun-woo was immediately taken to a concentration camp. Under the country’s “no-mercy” law, anyone who elevated God above Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s supreme leader at the time, was taken to the camp without trial.

Christians in North Korea are routinely sent to concentration camps, where they are starved, overworked and tortured. Christian and secular analysts estimate that about 30,000 Christians are currently suffering in various camps throughout North Korea.

Min-ji believes her husband died in the camp. “I still do not know how my husband died,” she said. And she never learned who reported him either.

At the time of the arrests, Min-ji’s uncle, who held a chief position with the SSP, knew that Min-ji was in danger of being sent to a concentration camp because of her husband’s Christian faith. So for her own protection, he instead had her sent to a labor camp.

Prisoners in labor camps, known as kyohwaso, spend 15 hours a day working in coal mines, performing farm labor or doing construction work. And they receive only a few mouthfuls of simple food, such as corn, porridge or cabbage, twice a day. But despite the torturous work, they at least know they’re likely to be released one day.

Those who, like Kun-woo, are found guilty of serious crimes, are sent to concentration camps known as kwanliso. They are typically imprisoned for life, if they aren’t executed. Conditions at these camps are so bad that nearly 40 percent of inmates die of starvation, and those who don’t starve often lose up to half of their body weight. Former prisoners have reported that inmates sometimes eat grass and rats to survive.

“I was the luckiest among my family, since I was only in the labor camp,” Min-ji said. Two years into her detention, her uncle was fired for breaking protocol with her case, and all of her relatives faced interrogation. She said her mother and a nephew died from the stress.

Pursued by God

After more than six years in the labor camp, Min-ji was finally released. She said she barely survived its brutal conditions, but she knows it could have been worse. Someone in the labor camp who had known a concentration-camp survivor told her that authorities there pack the mouths of Christians full of gravel so they can’t scream as they are beaten to death. “They always beat Christians to death,” Min-ji said. “This is what I heard.”

After her release, Min-ji decided to defect. She said she felt it was necessary in order to support her children, who were young adults at the time. “Our family had no future in North Korea after the death of my husband and my own six years of imprisonment,” she said. “I needed to find a way to live, at least for my children.”

Min-ji bribed a border guard to allow her and one of her children to cross the Yalu River into China. But after crossing the river, her child decided to turn back. Alone, Min-ji continued the walk toward Yanji, China, where a friend had a car waiting for her. “To get there, I had to walk for 10 hours alone, crossing at least five mountains,” she said.

Min-ji stayed in Yanji for a month, earning money by caring for a Christian woman with Alzheimer’s disease who lived with other believers. She found it odd that the women believed in the same God that her husband had worshiped. “They invited me to sing Christian songs together and to pray together,” she recalled.

About a month later, Min-ji decided to try moving on to South Korea. She first traveled to Beijing, where she met a broker who was going to help her and other North Korean defectors cross into South Korea. But before they could leave China, she and her group of defectors were reported as possible human traffickers because the group included young children.

“The police showed up,” Min-ji said. “Because we had no proof of citizenship or visa, we were taken to a prison.”

Chinese authorities considered sending the group back to North Korea. But some Christians in South Korea who had been praying for the group of defectors contacted the South Korean embassy in China and explained that the North Koreans were simply trying to reach family members in the south.

At the time, however, the South Korean government was in a state of transition — the president had just been impeached — so they weren’t accepting any refugees. As a result, Min-ji remained in the Chinese prison for nearly two years.

“Interestingly, and thankfully, the Chinese guards treated us well,” she said. “Sometimes, the police even gave us certain foods that we wanted when we asked for them. The hardest part was not knowing whether I would be sent back to North Korea or if I would be able to defect to South Korea. It was very stressful.”

While in prison, Min-ji met many Chinese women who had been detained for their Christian faith. And a month into their imprisonment, a North Korean woman from her defection group finally felt comfortable enough to share that she, too, was a follower of Christ.

“If we were sent [back] to North Korea and it was discovered that we had encountered a church and Christianity, we would surely die,” Min-ji said. “So she could not share anything with me for the first month that we were together. But in prison, one has a lot of time.”

After confessing her faith to Min-ji, the woman — filled with joy — grabbed her toothpaste and used it to write “Jesus Christ” on the prison wall. “It was my first time to see the words ‘Jesus Christ,’ so I asked her what it was,” Min-ji recalled. “She began to share with me what Christianity is.”

The Chinese guards had allowed the woman to bring a Bible into prison with her, so she began reading it with Min-ji. “The first time I read the Bible, I felt it was odd to do so because it was on account of the Bible that my husband was killed and I ended up there,” she said.

In addition to the influence of her North Korean friend, Min-ji was moved by how empathetic the Chinese Christians were toward her family’s story. “These sisters were very nice to us and prayed for us,” she said. “When they prayed, they did so with tears. I wondered why they cried out like this even though it was my problem, not their own matter. I also wondered why they kept their faith even though they were persecuted and imprisoned for it.”

But one day their love started to make sense, and so did the gospel. Min-ji then decided to place her faith in Jesus Christ. “I had received so much grace from them,” she said. “I began to wonder about the God who was consistently intervening in my life.”

When the Chinese Christians were released, they gave Min-ji 1,000 Chinese Yuan (roughly $150) through the guards, who normally did not allow prisoners to receive money from other prisoners being released.

Moving Forward

Min-ji contacted her nieces in South Korea after her release from the Chinese prison, and they arranged for a broker to help her cross into South Korea.

Once there, Min-ji learned about The Voice of the Martyrs through another North Korean defector and soon enrolled in VOM’s Underground Technology (UT) program. Along with other North Korean defectors, she received an academic foundation as well as instruction in life skills, character development, relationship skills and spiritual formation.

“I love UT because the teachers teach me the Bible,” she said. “I see and hear things that I could not see in church. Also, I have never seen any people like [these] students before. The students truly become transformed, so much so that they do not look like the people in North Korea. Also, the school administration is merciful, and the people have kind manners. I want to follow in my husband’s footsteps. I have a heart to follow Jesus like my husband. I want to go to a theological school to do God’s work after I retire.”

Min-ji’s grown children have also now defected to South Korea. One of them, she said, still suffers from the trauma of Kun-woo’s imprisonment and death for his faith. And as a result, that child struggles with Christian faith.

“Neither of my children go to church regularly,” she said, “but they believe in God. Please pray for both of my children and for me to faithfully walk in the path that my husband had already walked through.”

Looking back, Min-ji wishes she would have considered her husband’s faith when he first shared it with her. “At the time, I did not see with the same eyes that my husband did,” she said. “If I had only had the spiritual eyes that I have now at that time. My concern then was only to earn money for my family and be loyal to my beloved nation.”

Kun-woo’s walk with Christ is never far from Min-ji’s memory. When she watched the VOM video Sang-chul: North Korea, produced for the 2019 International Day of Prayer for Persecuted Christians, she said it reminded her of her husband.

“It was hurtful to watch it,” she said. “I lost my husband when we were still young. A long time ago, whenever I thought about my husband, I always began to cry. Now I feel like I am with my husband because I am surrounded by Christians who were like my husband.”

More than a decade after Kun-woo joyfully shared his new Christian faith with her, Min-ji’s own relationship with Christ and her new Christian family grows ever stronger.

While recovering from malnutrition, Chul-ho consumed God’s Word, reading the Bible several times the first year. For the next three years, he taught other North Korean defectors about Christ and gradually broadened his ministry to include helping North Koreans at the border as they crossed into China. He also got married during that time.

Then, one summer day in 2001, Chinese police arrested Chul-ho and his wife, who was seven months pregnant, as they waited for a group of North Koreans to cross into China’s autonomous Inner Mongolia region. “For the sake of my wife’s survival, I had to tell [the police] that she was not my wife,” Chul-ho said. “I told them that I did not know her.”

Despite his attempt to protect his wife, both were detained for several days before being transported to Sinuiju, North Korea. When Chul-ho entered the North Korean prison, he lost everything. “In Sinuiju, my wife was forced to have an abortion,” he said.

He never saw his wife again.

Prison Ministry

Chul-ho was released from the North Korean prison in the fall of that same year. And three months later, he crossed the Tumen River for a second time to resume his ministry work among North Korean defectors in China. Even though the work had already cost him his wife, he recognized that the need was too great to stop.

In the spring of 2002, Chul-ho was again detained by Chinese border police while ministering to defectors along the border. This time he was charged with “systematically organizing a group and illegally helping them cross the river.” Chinese authorities quickly convicted Chul-ho and sentenced him to 10 years in prison.

His life behind bars was intolerable. The three-story prison held 2,000 inmates, packing 40 prisoners into each small cell. It was too hot to sleep during the summer and nearly too cold to breathe in the winter. Guards monitored Chul-ho 24 hours a day.

“I was classified as a dangerous prisoner because I was a Christian who would be sent back to North Korea after there,” he said. “Basically, they saw me as a person without any hope of living. They thought that I was going to commit suicide.”

Early in his imprisonment, Chul-ho began receiving letters every two months from Christians in the United States and other countries. The letters, sent by readers of The Voice of the Martyrs’ monthly magazine, provided essential encouragement and a sense of fellowship with the global church throughout his 10-year sentence.

The encouragement he received from caring Christians helped sustain him as he endured repeated interrogations and beatings. On one occasion, guards forced him to stand against a wall from 3 a.m. to 9 a.m., and if he moved, they kicked him or slammed his head against the wall. Through it all, Chul-ho clung to Christ.

“After investigating me in this way, one police officer told me that I had not sinned,” he said. “This officer came to realize that I did a righteous thing and should be recorded in history because I suffered for my people.”

The officer promised that if he was ever promoted, he would save Chul-ho.

As the months and years passed, Chul-ho said he entered a deep depression and had no idea how he could continue living behind bars. Soon, however, God pulled him out of the darkness and gave him a new purpose.

“I believed that it was God who started this work and that He would take me somewhere,” he said. “If I ever made it out of there, I hoped that the 10 years of imprisonment would not have been in vain.”

That’s when Chul-ho decided to make the most of his time in prison. After doing manual labor from 6:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day, he spent a few hours each night reading the Bible and studying Chinese.

As he continued his studies, he also built relationships with other prisoners and soon became known as the “North Korean pastor.” And gradually, other North Korean defectors who had become Christians approached him secretly. “They showed me their cross necklaces,” he said.

Although the believers weren’t allowed to hold formal worship services in prison, Chul-ho often read from the Bible and other Christian books he had at the time of his arrest. “I preached, taught and evangelized people in the prison,” he said. “I was even distributing Bibles and Christian books to those who showed interest in the faith.”

Hope in the Darkness

Of the prison’s 2,000 inmates, Chul-ho said 200 were from North Korea. And like him, most had defected to China simply to survive the famine.

One young North Korean with whom Chul-ho shared the gospel made a heartbreaking confession: He had sold his own mother to human traffickers in China in order to help the rest of his family. Still grieving over his unthinkable deed, the man turned to Jesus. Chul-ho said he is one of many North Koreans who came to know Christ in the Chinese prison.

“One could assume that all the North Korean prisoners I met in prison were all sent to North Korea,” he added. “They may have died there, but I am sure that some of them went on to be North Korean underground Christians.”

On a Sunday afternoon in 2011, one day before he was to be released from prison, authorities took Chul-ho to another building for interrogation. They then gave him new clothes, put him in a car and drove him to a city on the North Korean border. “They had brought me there to send me back to North Korea,” Chul-ho explained.

On that day, however, North Korea’s border office was closed because the government had just announced the death of its leader, Kim Jong Il. An officer then took Chul-ho to China’s foreign affairs department of Chinese Public Security, where the chief of staff happened to be the officer who several years earlier had told Chul-ho that he would save him if ever promoted.

“He really did save me,” Chul-ho said. “I stayed there for three months. After the first intense interrogation, I was treated nicely. They began treating me in a good way. The officer kept his word.”

In early 2012, Chul-ho was released as a “person of unknown nationality.” Since he had other relatives in South Korea, he was able to obtain a passport from the South Korean embassy and was then flown to Incheon, South Korea.

Aboard the plane, Chul-ho looked out the window and watched China’s Yanji airport disappear into the distance. “I felt like God was saying to me, ‘I am doing my work,’” he said. Though hopeful about his future, Chul-ho said the flight to South Korea was both joyous and unsettling.

“I was quite [emotionally] unstable when I was released,” he said. “But walking on the ground outside of the prison with my own two feet gave me such an ecstatic feeling. There is no human word that can describe that feeling. Until the moment I landed at the Incheon airport, I felt like someone was chasing after me.”

Looking back on his time in prison, Chul-ho can see how God was working through him. “In the beginning, I was not able to understand why God had put me there, because doing Christian work to save my people was not my own will but God who gave me the heart for it,” he said. “So in the beginning I had hatred against, and lots of struggles with, God. One day in the prison, I was even considering committing suicide. But now I can say that it was God who held my hands.”

A New Mission Field

After arriving in South Korea, Chul-ho met VOM workers who helped him adjust to life there.

North Korean defectors often struggle with the freedom they experience in South Korea. After years of hoarding what little they have, they find themselves squandering everything they’re given or are able to earn. And in place of the steady stream of government propaganda, they are inundated with pop culture and its supporting media, such as TV, radio, magazines and websites. They also have to learn to trust people after living in an environment of suspicion and the fear of being spied on by neighbors and family members.

Another common issue is the need to correct bad behavioral habits. Chul-ho said many in North Korea are forced to engage in unethical activities just to survive, and some continue those lifestyles after defecting to South Korea and China. They will often do anything to earn money and survive in their new environment.

After receiving help from VOM, Chul- ho decided to shift his ministry focus to North Koreans who initially defect to Laos, a common path for many hoping to eventually reach South Korea. His goal is to introduce them to Christ before they settle in South Korea.

For years, Chul-ho has shown North Koreans in Laos the love of Christ by providing care packages and discipling many of them in the faith. Nearly every month, he travels to Laos to meet small groups of defectors, typically five to seven people at a time.

“Discipling them in Laos is the last place for them to encounter God’s Word, which pierces their twisted conscience, before coming to South Korea,” he said. “I am trying to share the gospel with them in this specific way, where they can deeply think about the gospel for the first time in their life.”

He said the care packages, which include personal care items, medicine, clothes and an audio Bible, are a crucial part of his front-line ministry. “For North Koreans, the gospel is shared and manifested through people’s acts of service,” he said. “When I defected to China a long time ago, I saw a church. The church always had its light on, but I did not even think about going inside. However, there was one missionary who gave me many clothes. Even though the clothes were used clothes, through his love, which manifested God’s love, I was drawn to the Lord. For North Koreans, the gospel must come along with meeting their material needs.”

Chul-ho said those who hear the gospel and receive discipleship in Laos are more likely to attend church and live a godly life in the large, bustling cities of South Korea. And those who aren’t reached in Laos, he said, continue worshiping idols, trading Kim Jong Un for the idol of money.

“Both groups need a moment in their life to deeply consider faith before coming to South Korea,” he said. “Once they come to South Korea, the social structures and the worldly atmosphere drive and demand them to depart from God.”

Despite the trauma Chul-ho has experienced and the pain he re-lives when he hears of other North Koreans who have suffered for their faith, he said he’s learning to let God carry him in his work.

“In my dreams, I sometimes see myself in prison or [see] the faces of those who were martyred,” he said. “But I began to realize that the trauma also has the power to boost this ministry so that I can be thankful for this work. I am no longer imprisoned, but free. Even though the ministry is painful and demanding, I have full confidence in the Lord, who does this work. If I have learned one thing from my imprisonment, I learned that it is not my will but God’s will which will be done.”

Chul-ho said he hopes Christians around the world will continue to pray for North Korea and support other front-line workers who minister to those who have fled the oppressive regime.

“On the news, people speak all kinds of political talk about North Korea,” he said. “But I believe that raising up a North Korean and helping that person become a disciple of Jesus is the only alternative for North Korea.”

Years ago, Byung-woo traveled from his home in North Korea to visit relatives in China. His relatives, who were part of China’s vast underground church movement, invited him to read the Bible while he was there. When he declined, they fasted and prayed for a couple of days, hoping he would change his mind. That puzzled Byung-woo even more than the original invitation.

Finally, out of curiosity and a desire to appease his family, he agreed to give the book a cursory read. But the more he read, the more questions he had for his relatives. The Bible translation used the South Korean dialect rather than the North Korean dialect. The two dialects differ roughly 40 percent of the time. Still, the parts he understood fascinated him.

Seeing Byung-woo’s interest, his relatives took him to their house church, where church members explained the need for the gospel in North Korea and implored him to start an underground church there. They were prepared to provide him with food and money to sustain him, Bibles to distribute and a bicycle to help him reach more people.

Byung-woo grew increasingly fearful as he considered their idea. Possessing a Bible, let alone several of them, is extremely dangerous in North Korea. Being caught with even a few pages of Scripture could result in detention in a concentration camp, so North Korean Christians often memorize passages of God’s Word to safely “possess” it.

Overcome by fear, Byung-woo left the Bibles behind and returned to North Korea, where he told his wife about the Bible he had read in China and how it had moved him. To his surprise, she said she also wanted to read the Bible.

Out of love for his wife and a desire for her to learn about Jesus as he had, Byung-woo decided to return to China, get a Bible and then risk his life smuggling it back into North Korea. When he arrived back in China, his relatives joyfully gave him a Bible and some money from church members. He then returned to North Korea and gathered some relatives to tell them about the Jesus he had come to know through the Scriptures. Byung-woo’s relatives wanted to hear more. They took turns reading the Bible, and even though they didn’t always understand the dialect, they said its words brought them peace.

Inspired by his family’s reaction to the Bible, Byung-woo committed his life to the Lord and carefully began to share the gospel with other North Koreans. When he met someone who would soon be traveling to China, he would encourage them to visit a church there. And when they returned to North Korea, he would ask them about their visit. If they had attended a church service and had a positive experience, he would then discuss the gospel with them and disciple them.

Over time, Byung-woo learned that some of his neighbors were also underground Christians. That knowledge encouraged and emboldened him, but he also realized that his life in North Korea would be further endangered as more people learned of his Christian faith.

Byung-woo eventually defected to South Korea, where he learned about VOM. Through one of our programs for North Korean defectors, he is studying Scripture in the North Korean dialect, using the same translation we smuggle into North Korea.

Like Byung-woo, many North Koreans are now reading God’s Word and coming to faith in Jesus Christ, despite the persecution that they know may follow.

Min-jae knew from experience that he could never be too careful, even outside North Korea. Spies often cross the border into South Korea to find defectors and report their names to the North Korean government, which then punishes their relatives still living in the country.

“In North Korea, no one trusts each other,” said Min-jae, who even suspected his wife of being a spy. “We have to be very cautious about how we think and always careful with our words. I still have that kind of tendency. I get a little nervous, looking back and forth.”

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With the coffee grinder providing background noise, Min-jae gradually grew more comfortable sharing the story of how he became a Bible smuggler in the most restricted nation on earth.

The Bible: Dangerous Cargo in North Korea

Min-jae became a believer during a lengthy business trip to China in 2004. While there, he had visited a friend’s church and fallen in love with the Bible and all of its “weird” stories.

Five months later, after being baptized, receiving his own small Korean Bible and growing in his understanding of the Scriptures, Min-jae had to return to North Korea. But as he prepared to leave China, someone from the church made a bold request: Would he accept a shipment that included 10 hidden Bibles once he returned to North Korea?

At first he declined. He was already nervous about bringing his own small Bible into the country. If border guards caught him with even a few pages, he could be tortured or killed. And Min-jae knew that receiving the shipment of Bibles could result in his imprisonment in one of North Korea’s notorious concentration camps.

As he agonized over the decision, he remembered that he had given his life to Christ and it was no longer his own. He decided to trust his Lord.

“Now I believe in God, and in God everything is possible,” he thought. “I can do anything he wants. Even if it looks difficult, maybe God will just do his work.”

The shipment arrived a few months after Min-jae’s return to North Korea. At 1 a.m. on a morning in November 2005, he approached a boat along the bank of the Yalu River, praying for God’s protection and guidance with every step.

After retrieving three large vinyl duffle bags, he hoisted them onto his back and ran toward his home in the dark. Once inside the relative safety of his home, he opened the bags to find them tightly packed with pants. But wrapped randomly within the clothing were 10 small Korean Bibles.

“I was afraid and nervous,” he said. “Receiving them was fine, but when I actually opened the bags I began to wonder, ‘How can I distribute these at this time?’ I began to have doubts.” Min-jae decided to keep the dangerous books hidden until God led him to the right people.

Then, as he walked through his village one day in February 2006, he heard a man whistling a Christian hymn; he had learned the tune, “The Trusting Heart to Jesus Clings,” during his time in China. Min-jae made note of where the man lived and decided to deliver some Bibles to him that night under cover of darkness.

After midnight, Min-jae rewrapped eight of the 10 Bibles in the pants and left them at the man’s front door. He didn’t leave a note for fear that it could be traced back to him.

Behind Bars in North Korea

Months later Min-jae returned to China with the intent of defecting, but in November 2006 he was arrested and extradited to North Korea.

In prison, he met a former friend who had been arrested because of his Christian faith. And as they talked, Min-jae came to realize that the man he gave the Bibles to was his friend’s uncle. That man also had been arrested and was being held in a different cell in the same prison.

Min-jae’s friend told him that his uncle had given the eight Bibles to relatives, who had then committed their lives to Christ. The entire family of 27 people began to gather secretly at night to worship God and to read and discuss the Scriptures. But one night a neighbor overheard the believers singing hymns and reported them to authorities. The secret police raided their home and arrested everyone.

Although he wasn’t able to interact with them in prison, Min-jae often heard some of the family members praying in their cells. He never told his friend that he was the one who had left the eight Bibles on his uncle’s doorstep. It was still too risky for anyone to know.

A month later, all 27 family members, including Min-jae’s friend and his friend’s uncle, were sent to a concentration camp.

Set Free

Min-jae was released after seven months in prison, and in 2014 he successfully defected to South Korea.

He remains concerned — even feeling a bit guilty — about the Christian family suffering in a concentration camp. After all, he supplied the Bibles that helped lead to their imprisonment. Still, he knows that God ultimately provided the Bibles and that he is with them as they suffer in his name.

“I believe that these 27 people are children of God and that God will somehow release them miraculously,” Min-jae said.

VOM has provided some support to Min-jae, and today he serves in a variety of ways at his church and participates in a one-on-one discipleship program. He continues to pray for a job that will enable him to support himself and asks Christians in the United States to pray that more North Koreans will learn of God’s love for them.

“I just want for North Korean people to hear the gospel and share the gospel,” he said. “That is my only prayer.”

At the conclusion of his conversation with VOM workers in the South Korean coffee shop, Min-jae pulled out the hand-sized Bible he received in China when he first came to know Christ. The outside looks like a notebook, but its pages contain God’s Word in a near-microscopic font. He had hidden the Bible from everyone, including his wife, and it had sustained him when he was a lonely Christian fearful of his work as a Bible smuggler.

Like the family of 27 believers imprisoned for their faith and countless others secretly following Jesus inside North Korea, Min-jae depends on God’s Word, too.

Incredibly, the propaganda film gives many details about the life of this courageous Christian. It states that during North Korea’s “Great Famine” in the mid-1990s, when an estimated 2.5 million people died, Deoksun was a strong revolutionary whose faith in the government had wavered. After visiting a woman in the northwest to ask for help, she illegally crossed the border into China in search of her uncle. But instead of finding her uncle, who had died, Deoksun found the Seotap Church, where she heard the gospel for the first time. The video says she became a “fanatical believer” who was inspired to return to North Korea and form an underground network of Christians inside the country.

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When she returned to North Korea, Deoksun apparently turned herself in to authorities for crossing the border illegally. The video says that authorities were “lenient” and released her, but instead of praising the government, she praised the Lord. Because of her poverty, the government did not restrict her movement within the country; she could travel freely between towns in North Korea to earn money for herself. As she traveled, she shared the gospel and gave money to the poor and those suffering. In addition, she discovered the descendants of several prominent Christians who gathered every Sunday to worship, pray, sing hymns and study God’s Word.

Though she was faithful, compassionate and generous, the video describes her as a “spy seeking to recruit other spies” — a description of evangelists commonly used in North Korean propaganda. Eventually, according to the video, “a good and awakened North Korean citizen” reported her to authorities.

It is unclear how Deoksun died, but it is possible that she was executed. Deoksun served the Lord without recognition, just as many North Korean Christians do today despite their government’s attempts to eradicate Christianity.

Lee Joon-ki scanned the Chinese coffee shop carefully for the right place to sit.

The shop’s owner, a fellow Christian, had told him about a middle-aged laborer from North Korea who was in the shop, and Joon-ki wanted to sit in just the right spot to start a conversation with him.

After sitting down at a table near the man, Joon-ki began a casual conversation with him, even managing to draw the coffee-shop owner into the discussion. These conversations, which can quickly turn dangerous for everyone involved, are what he lives for; Joon-ki is a front-line worker who shares the gospel with North Koreans inside China, near the border with North Korea.

“Encountering these North Korean people, building relationships and leading them to Christ, is God’s work; it’s full of God’s grace,” he said. “Just meeting with him for an hour is so precious. It is not something we can do normally. Each time could be last time.”

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Joon-ki, an ordained pastor, has served as a front-line worker for over six years, sacrificing time with his family to share the gospel with North Koreans. He risks his life for the gospel, participating in everything from Bible balloon launches to distributing God’s Word near the border.

While his primary goal is to further God’s kingdom, Joon-ki also has a very personal reason for reaching out to North Koreans.

His father, a pastor, left North Korea in 1954 at the age of about 20 after facing intense persecution from the country’s relatively new Communist regime. “I have heard so many things about North Korea from my dad that have shaped my way of thinking,” Joon-ki said of his father, who died not long ago. “North Korea is not my enemy or something foreign to me. It is more like my stories, my nation, my dad’s nation, my family story. My father really influenced me to become a missionary to the North Korean people.”

Tens of thousands of poor North Koreans are forced by their government to work in China and other countries each year and send their wages back to North Korea. They are allowed to keep only a small percentage of their earnings.

Joon-ki often tries to share the gospel with North Korean leaders who oversee units of 10 to 15 workers. He seeks these leaders because of their influence and because they generally don’t have to report to a superior in China. Still, he meets with them privately so the laborers do not report them. “They are so cautious and alert about people possibly reporting them to authorities, so the gospel isn’t shared in one single meeting,” he said.

Showing the North Koreans love is Joon-ki’s approach to sharing the gospel. “As I build a relationship with them, sometimes people can become sick or they need financial aid, and they ask me to provide something,” he said. “When they receive my help, the relationship deepens. Then the North Korean people begin to realize that the people who are called Christians are somehow different. That is how the conversation goes on and on.”

The man he spoke with in the coffee shop, a North Korean government official and former military leader, was in China to supervise 15 North Korean women working at a restaurant. As the unit’s leader, he monitored each of his workers to ensure they didn’t betray their country’s official religion, Juche. Those who sway from the ideology of self-reliance often face harsh punishment.

Joon-ki’s biggest opportunity to show him love was when the man became ill and needed medicine. Joon-ki purchased the medication he needed and made sure he received it.

Then, one day in October 2017, he went a step further and sent the man a Bible. When the man opened the package in front of 10 of his workers, he acted angry about receiving it. But the anger wasn’t entirely genuine; he knew he had to act angry so no one would report him for having a Bible. In the end, though, he was a little upset by the package.

“I put him in a dangerous situation, so basically the relationship was a little unstable for a moment,” Joon-ki said. “After a while, I came to him again and apologized that I unintentionally put him in a dangerous situation. He accepted my apology. The relationship was restored.”

Later that month, the North Korean man invited Joon-ki to his home — a big step in their friendship. The man had been suffering from liver problems for some time, so Joon-ki brought him more medicine. As he entered the home, he was greeted by pictures of North Korea’s three successive Communist dictators: Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un. Several books on Juche were stacked on a table, and files of the women in his unit were strewn around the room.

Joon-ki knew their meeting went against everything taught in the books stacked on the table. “North Koreans are prohibited from meeting foreigners, even Han Chinese in China,” he said. “It doesn’t matter who they are. So if he opens his house and brings a foreigner over, that is really dangerous. He put his life on the line.”

Joon-ki continued to visit the man at his home, praying with him and discussing the Scriptures, and eventually the man started reading the Bible and listening to sermons on his own. Finally, after months of talks, the man who had once pledged loyalty to the North Korean government confessed his need for Christ’s atoning work on the cross.

His declaration to follow Jesus didn’t come lightly; he knows he will likely be killed if anyone in North Korea suspects he is a Christian. And in a country where stealing is almost a necessity for survival, he knows he must stop stealing in order to obey God’s Word. That alone could be seen as suspect.

“He has to live the life of a Christian, and that is truly against the North Korean way of life,” Joon-ki said.

In December 2018, at the end of his three-year assignment in China, the man returned to Pyongyang. Although he has reunited with his family, he is not the same man. He now willingly bears a cross, which comes with heavy consequences should he be discovered as a Christian.

Joon-ki prays for a way to meet his friend in Pyongyang, and if the door ever opens he will be there. For now, he smuggles letters into North Korea to encourage him, knowing their fellowship isn’t over because they’re now brothers in Christ.

After turning away from Christ in the early days of Kim Il Sung’s Communist regime, a North Korean woman was led back to faith by a single Bible verse.

Rhee Soon-ja has vivid memories of her father reading the Bible to her and her six siblings when they were children. She remembers that the verses were printed vertically, rather than horizontally. And although now 82 years old, she can still picture the phrase “Christ Is Lord of This House” hanging from a wall in their home.

“My parents prayed that God would use me as His servant,” she said, recalling another childhood memory. “I grew up dreaming of becoming an evangelist.”

Those were the days before Korea split into North and South, communist and free. Those were the days when the Christian faith flourished in northern Korea.

“There were many Christians,” Soon-ja shared from her living room in South Korea. “I attended the Methodist Church. All the congregations gathered every Sunday.”

When Soon-ja was a young girl, her family was among the first to experience persecution under the rule of Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s first leader. Today Christianity is illegal there, and those who choose to follow Jesus are sent to a concentration camp, where they are starved, tortured and often killed. Soon-ja has experienced a lifetime of pain, but when she looks back on her life she sees God’s hand in it all.

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persecution arrives

Soon-ja was born in 1937, the fifth of seven children. Her father, a mine worker, was known for his Christian faith — well enough that many people, including his relatives, criticized him for it. They thought he was too bold in sharing the gospel. But having read the Scriptures, he knew persecution was simply part of following Jesus.

“He taught us that the more we are persecuted, the more we need to trust in the Lord,” Soon-ja recalled.

At the end of World War II, when Korea was freed from Japanese colonialism and divided into two countries, the brutal Communist Party in the north forced most pastors to flee to the south. Kim Il Sung became North Korea’s first premier in 1948, the year North Korea and South Korea gained formal independence as sovereign nations.

“As the Communists became more powerful, even my father became uneasy,” Soon-ja said. “He asked three of my brothers to move to South Korea to earn a living. But my father did not leave North Korea. When our pastor left, our father took his place and kept the church.”

The Communists began to occupy church buildings as North Korea gradually became an atheistic state. “Many of the church buildings were destroyed, and we had to begin worshiping in our own houses,” Soon-ja said.

Around that time, Soon-ja had to complete an entrance exam and interview to enroll in junior high school. But when administrators saw that she had stated her religion as “Christian,” they denied her application, and her father had to find another school for her to attend.

These subtle forms of persecution quickly became the norm, and life became increasingly difficult for Soon-ja’s family. The government was already promoting the idea that religion is a drug used to control people and was mandating that all North Koreans follow the official state religion, Juche, venerating Kim Il Sung.

“My father used to say, ‘No matter how much persecution there may be, we must persevere; we have to endure persecution even when we don’t have anything to eat,’” she recalled.

Soon-ja’s family took time to worship God in their house regardless of the obstacles presented by the atheistic Communist government. They were aware, however, that they could be killed if they were ever caught.

losing hope

In the mid-1960s, Soon-ja’s brother hosted a prayer gathering at his house. Recognizing that many people were worshiping Kim Il Sung as a false idol, he burned a portrait of the North Korean leader following their time of prayer.

One person at the prayer meeting reported the act to authorities, and Soon-ja’s brother was quickly arrested and sentenced to 20 years in prison. In addition, Soon-ja’s family was separated and forced to leave Pyongyang, and her parents were required to work in mines for several months.

Soon-ja was 28 at the time and had been married for three years. She and her husband, whose relatives were high-ranking Communist officials, had two young sons. Since Christians were considered enemies of the state, the government ordered her husband to divorce her, giving him sole custody of their 3-year-old and 8-month-old sons.

“My husband asked me to go out from the house,” she said tearfully. “Our 3-year-old boy was holding my leg and asked me not to go anywhere. At that moment my husband kicked me out, and he started beating the boys. They kept asking, ‘When are you coming back?’ To comfort them, I told them, ‘I will come back after a few days.’ That was the last time I saw them.”

After losing her husband, children and home because of her Christian faith, Soon-ja lost all hope and began to waver in her faith. “I remember standing on the riverside thinking of committing suicide,” she said, “but the words of my father kept me from doing it. He had said that our lives are not our own but God’s. I couldn’t die.”

After her parents were released from their work in the mines, Soon-ja moved in with them. Her mother was then able to visit her brother in prison, but what she saw was disheartening. On the first visit, it was clear to her that he was malnourished and had been severely beaten. On the second visit, guards told her that he wasn’t available. And later, the family learned that he had died.

“We think my brother was killed as an example for other Christians because the government hates religion,” Soon-ja said. “The moment I learned that my brother died in prison, I felt there was no God. I lost my hope and vision as an evangelist.”

a new family

In the early 1970s, Soon-ja’s father told her about a North Korean widower who might make a good husband for her. The man, who also had Chinese citizenship, had eight children, and Soon-ja’s father thought Soon-ja would be a good mother for them. He worried that without a husband she would have no future. Soon-ja’s mother opposed the idea because the man was not a Christian, but that was not an obstacle for Soon-ja, whose faith had long faded. Although she initially refused to consider it, she eventually decided to marry the man.

“It wasn’t easy to raise another woman’s children when you have had to leave behind your own children,” Soon-ja said. “However, my heart grew toward the children.”

Eventually, Soon-ja and her second husband had two more children, giving Soon-ja 10 children to raise. While her husband and children all had Chinese citizenship, Soon-ja was never able to obtain it despite her husband’s hard work to get them out of North Korea.

In late 1994, she obtained a three-month visa allowing her to join her family on a trip to visit her husband’s relatives in China. While walking around in a Chinese city with her family one day, she heard someone reciting John 3:16, a verse she remembered reading in her youth. When she turned around to see who it was, no one was there. She asked her husband if he had heard anything, but he had not.

“I stopped praying after I lost my brother,” she said. “I stopped worshiping. I never thought about God, but in that moment I was stunned by the words in my head. In that moment, I said, ‘I have to go to church.’”

Soon-ja soon began an intense Bible study with a pastor she met in China, but her husband never joined them. As they studied God’s Word, the pastor encouraged Soon-ja to flee North Korea with her family and live in China. They even set a date for her to flee.

As Soon-ja’s visa expired, she left her family in China and returned to North Korea. But as the date approached for her to flee, she could not muster the courage to make the dangerous journey on her own. She did, however, remain in contact with the pastor who had encouraged her to leave North Korea.

Two years later, at age 60, Soon-ja decided she was ready to escape. On a hot summer evening in July 1997, she told some neighbors that she was going to bathe in the Yalu River, which serves as part of the border separating North Korea from China.

“I didn’t feel afraid,” she said. “I already had lots of experience in suffering. It was nothing to me.”

a calling realized

As she waded into the Yalu River, Soon-ja sensed that the secret police were watching her. Her heart raced as she quietly trudged through the cold water, which gradually rose to the level of her chest.

After climbing out of the river on the Chinese side, apparently unnoticed by North Korean border guards, she met the pastor and reunited with her family. At the pastor’s suggestion, the family soon moved to a small Chinese town, where they lived for three years. During that time, Soon-ja continued to grow in faith; her husband, who never became a follower of Jesus, was finally able to buy her Chinese citizenship for $1,000.

Soon-ja’s two youngest children, then in their late 20s, decided to move to South Korea, and in 2001 she and her husband moved there to be near them. Her husband, however, was allowed to stay for only three years before returning to China, where he died in 2011 from an illness.

“I had to start working as a housemaid immediately to survive,” Soon-ja said. “Fortunately, I met a good homeowner who was a deacon at a church.”

Today, Soon-ja continues to live in South Korea with her son and granddaughter. She has graduated from a VOM-sponsored discipleship program and participated in missions trips, including one to China. During the trips, she meets with other North Korean women and tells them how she recommitted her life to Jesus.

“I cried a lot when I met North Korean women in China who were sex-trafficked,” she said. “I shared my testimony. They were in their 30s and 40s. For them I was like a mother. I just hugged them, and they were just holding my hand and starting to cry. I really felt pain when I saw them.”

Soon-ja is not sure she would try to visit her two oldest sons if the border with North Korea opened during her lifetime; she thinks it would be too painful. She continues to pray for their souls, but she knows they are living a comfortable life in North Korea because of her first husband’s social class. “I have a heart of mother’s love toward them, but I don’t worry about them,” she said, crying.

Looking back on her life, she said her biggest regret is that she didn’t listen to her father’s wishes when she was younger.

“If I can meet my parents [in heaven], I want to say sorry to my father because I couldn’t live as a good Christian when I was in North Korea,” she said. “My father kept asking me to be an evangelist, but I didn’t follow this.”

Her regrets are slowly fading, though, in the light of an ever-growing faith that her father once prayed she would have. “God is using me and my vision, and now I am living as an evangelist,” she said. “I think maybe my parents’ prayer is being answered.”

Once fearful of even seeing a Bible, a former North Korean border guard now embraces it.

Nearly every day for 11 years, Park Chin-Mae dutifully monitored North Korea’s border with China. From 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., he watched for North Koreans attempting to defect or smuggle contraband into the country.

Chin-Mae took pride in his work as a border guard, even though he was guilty of the same illegal activities for which he arrested others. Like many North Koreans, he relied on illegal smuggling simply to survive.

becoming the enemy

When another guard reported Chin-Mae’s smuggling ring, he spent 60 torturous days in prison. And he hadn’t even smuggled the most dangerous item into the country — a Bible. “Those who let Bibles into North Korea had a more severe punishment than someone who kills people,” Chin-Mae said.

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For Chin-Mae, getting caught smuggling meant being reduced from a respected soldier to a worthless prisoner. For the first 10 days, he was forced to stand in a bowing position and was allowed to move only to use the restroom. If he moved, even during the night, he was beaten mercilessly with a wooden baton. For the next 50 days he was forced to remain in a position of his choosing, but he said even sitting for 24 hours straight became very uncomfortable. “Sometimes, as time went on, it was more comfortable to be beaten,” he said.

Despite the punishment he suffered, Chin-Mae returned to smuggling as soon as he returned to work. Financially, he had no other choice.

One day, Chin-Mae agreed to help a woman from his village smuggle a shipment of DVD players into North Korea, knowing he could make money in the deal. When the woman arrived at his post with 30 boxes, Chin-Mae opened a random box to give the appearance of inspecting the shipment. But the box he opened happened to also contain six Bibles.

Suddenly, his heart filled with fear. Although he had never seen a Bible before, he had been taught that they were subversive to Juche, the North Korean religion that requires worship and subservience to the Kim family. He was torn about what to do, but he finally decided to let the Bibles pass. “We didn’t see anything today,” he told his friend. “You and I, we keep the secret until we die.”

North Korean border guards must follow a strict protocol when they seize one or more Bibles. They are forbidden from opening a Bible and must report them to their superiors, before enduring 10 days of interrogation.

Chin-Mae knew guards who had been through the process. And he also knew that he could be killed if another guard had seen the Bibles and reported him for allowing their entry.

“They know that the Bible is the enemy,” he said of North Korea’s border guards. “It is something they choose to avoid at all times. I wouldn’t even dare open it because of my Juche ideology.”

finding freedom

After Chin-Mae finished his mandatory military service, he decided to flee the country. A friend who had fled to South Korea years earlier had occasionally told him about life there, and Chin-Mae decided to experience it for himself.

One evening in late September 2017, Chin-Mae, then in his early 30s, set out to cross the border he had sworn to protect. With years of experience as a border guard, he knew how to cross without detection. “I was not afraid of being caught by the Chinese police,” he said.

Chin-Mae had arranged for his sister in China to pick him up at a certain spot on the other side of the Yalu River, so once across he went to her house, where he stayed for a few months. He then spent time in southern China and Laos before settling in South Korea, where all North Korean defectors are able to obtain citizenship.

After arriving in South Korea in November 2017, Chin-Mae underwent the standard three-month entry interrogation at the National Intelligence Service (NIS) to ensure he wasn’t a spy. He also entered counseling, and the man who counseled his group of defectors was a Christian.

When the man asked Chin-Mae if he had ever heard of God, he replied, “I believe there is no God.” Later, however, he began to consider what the counselor had told him about God. He was then given eight books on Christian apologetics, which explained various cases for the existence of God and the historical validity of Scripture. He soon became interested in the Christian faith.

After his release from the NIS, he entered a settlement center for defectors, where he spent another three months learning about life in South Korea. North Koreans at the settlement center are encouraged to choose a religion to help them navigate their new life, so Chin-Mae decided to attend a church service to learn more about Christianity.

He volunteered at the church to help set Bibles out before the worship service. And as he placed Bibles on the empty chairs, Chin-Mae realized he was holding the very book that would have gotten him killed in North Korea.

“I was so joyful,” he said. “I rejoiced at being able to set out the Bibles.”

During his three months at the settlement center, he never missed a daily prayer service. His love for the church and the Scriptures continued to grow until he eventually rejected the Juche religion and placed his faith in Jesus.

“I knew the only way I could survive in South Korea was to stick to God,” he said, “just grab Him wherever He goes. I kept that in my mind whenever I read the Bible. I didn’t just read it like any other book; I read it and I took every word of the Bible into my heart.”

Chin-Mae also saw God answer his prayer for an older brother who had called from North Korea asking for financial help. After telling his brother that he had no money to help him with his business, he began to pray daily that God would provide for his brother’s needs. After 10 days of prayer, he learned that a friend had lent his brother the amount he needed.

“I prayed, and God answered my prayer,” he said. “I began to know how God works. God hears my prayers.”

Chin-Mae also met a VOM worker at the settlement center, and he is now receiving help from VOM as he starts his new life in South Korea. He asks people to pray for North Korea and to pray for him as he adjusts to a new country and new way of life. Many North Koreans battle depression as they adapt to a completely new way of thinking and interacting with others.

As he faces these new challenges, Chin-Mae has hope — something he never had in North Korea. And he finds his hope in Christ, the central subject of a once-feared book that has led him to new life.

In 1995, however, just a few years after Choon-yei’s birth, North Korea experienced the worst famine in its history. Millions died of starvation. And even though her father was a military officer, Choon-yei’s family received only two fistfuls of corn flour each day — not nearly enough to feed a family of four.

In desperation, they gave up on the government’s ability to provide for them and began dealing on the black market. But the extra corn flour that her mother had obtained from a relative and sold illegally still barely provided for their family.

“Any North Korean who survived that time period is a living miracle,” Choon-yei said. “North Koreans had to break the law just to eat a meal. State security agents would confiscate anything they uncovered on the black market and eat it themselves.”

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The famine was just the beginning of Choon-yei’s suffering. Her parents died when she was in her early teens, and soon after their deaths, when Choon-yei was 15, her sister got married. Not wanting to be a financial burden on her sister and brother-in-law, Choon-yei decided to live on her own. Her only option was to earn money illegally.

The North Korean government, intent on confiscating money that people like Choon-yei had earned through the black market, announced a “currency reform” in 2009. Citizens were given one week to exchange all existing currency for the new currency, and anything exceeding a maximum amount set by the government was confiscated. While many who had saved more than the allowable sum lost their money, Choon-yei managed to avoid financial ruin and keep her illegal transactions undetected because she wisely had been trading only in Chinese currency.

A Terrifying Message

In 2012, when Choon-yei turned 20, a friend invited her to come along on a business trip to the Chinese city of Changbai, on the China–North Korea border. Her friend, who visited China often, had told her about people she had met there, including Deacon Jang and Pastor Han Chung-Ryeol.

During their visit to Changbai, the women stayed in Deacon Jang’s home. While there, Choon-yei noticed a picture on the wall of a cross and a man — Jesus — holding a sheep. “The house felt different to me than other places,” she said.

Another curiosity to Choon-yei was the Bible she saw sitting openly on a bedside table; it was the first one she had ever seen. “I just opened it,” she said. “Out of curiosity I did it, but I was really afraid, scared, because anyone who sees a Christian Bible becomes a political criminal. I heard from people that anyone who smuggled or brings a Bible, even if a smuggler didn’t know there was a Bible in a box, they are sent to a concentration camp right away.”

After opening the Bible and touching its forbidden pages, she began scanning the text. “I felt the Bible come into my heart even though it was my first time reading it,” she said. Just hours after she and her friend reached Deacon Jang’s home, Pastor Han arrived and immediately started sharing the gospel with Choon-yei, offering reasons why she should place her trust in Jesus Christ.

“The whole thing made me very nervous, because what we were doing was illegal by North Korean standards,” Choon-yei said. “I avoided looking at him and instead read the Ten Commandments that were printed on the inside cover of the Bible. The crosses in the home terrified me because I knew that being in a place with that symbol could cause me to be sent to a concentration camp when I returned to North Korea.”

After listening to Pastor Han and reading the words in the Bible, however, Choon-yei could not understand why the North Korean government hated Christianity so much. “Christianity seemed to be telling the truth,” she said. “At first I thought Christianity was superstition. But when I saw the Ten Commandments, I realized that if everyone in the world followed them, we would all be very happy and the world would be a much better place.”

Choon-yei learned more about God by reading the Book of Genesis. “The trees, all nature, I didn’t know that God created all this,” she said. The concept of a Creator God is new to North Koreans, whose understanding of creation is limited to the theory of evolution. In addition, the North Korean view of reality is purely materialistic, so the idea of an unseen God is incomprehensible. Sharing the gospel with North Koreans, therefore, often begins with the Book of Genesis, which sets the groundwork for faith in an unseen but real God.

As Pastor Han began to tell her more about Jesus Christ, her body shook with fear. She knew what it would cost her if the North Korean government found out she had placed her faith in Christ or even heard the gospel.

The following day, Pastor Han returned to Deacon Jang’s house to speak with Choon-yei again. He wanted to tell her as much as possible about Christ before she returned home. “At that time, I felt much better because it was the second time to see him,” she said. After four more hours of teaching, Pastor Han placed his hands on her head and prayed for her. “I felt uncomfortable,” Choon-yei recalled. But when the pastor prayed for her protection crossing the border back into North Korea, she said she felt at peace.

Before Choon-yei and her friend left for their return to North Korea, Pastor Han talked more about Christ and how to find peace. “He told us whenever we have a difficult time, to pray like this and we need to look for God, Jesus,” she said.

The pastor’s teaching never left her. “Pastor Han explained to me that God is Creator and God is listening to our prayers,” she said. “So whenever I had any difficult times, I always began to pray, ‘Lord God, please help me in this and that.’ Without recognizing that I was praying, I naturally came to pray.”

Choon-yei would need to remember Pastor Han’s words in the days to come. As she and her friend began their dangerous return to North Korea, her friend warned her to stay quiet about their visit in China.

Escape in Pajamas

Shortly after Choon-yei returned home, North Korean state security agents rounded up several hundred people associated with Pastor Han and Deacon Jang’s ministry. North Korean spies had traveled to China pretending to be interested in Christianity and acquired the names of North Koreans who had met with the two Christians. The friend who had taken Choon-yei to meet them was among those arrested, and, under the stress of interrogation, she gave authorities Choon-yei’s name.

Choon-yei’s worst fears were realized one morning when state security agents arrived at her sister’s house, where she was staying. Still wearing her pajamas and slippers, Choon-yei sneaked out through the kitchen and ran to a nearby friend’s house, where she borrowed clothes and shoes. She told her friend that she had to leave suddenly because her sister and brother-in-law had gotten into a fight.

Choon-yei’s sister tried to stall the security agents, but eventually they realized she was lying to them and called for reinforcements to help them search for Choon-yei in nearby homes. But Choon-yei was far ahead of them. Using her sister’s ID card, she had boarded a bus heading for a relative’s home two days away, where she would hide until she felt safe.

After several months, Choon-yei decided it was safe to return home. The government had not abandoned its pursuit of Pastor Han and Deacon Jang, however. In November 2014, North Korean state security agents abducted Deacon Jang in China and imprisoned him in North Korea. Months after his abduction, state security agents arrived at Choon-yei’s home and told her that Deacon Jang had been arrested. They pressured her to testify against him, claiming that he had discussed overthrowing the North Korean government.

While she admitted to visiting Deacon Jang’s home, Choon-yei told the agents that she hadn’t heard him say anything against the government. “The agent kept assuring me that nothing bad would happen to me if I just gave them the statement they wanted,” she said. “But I refused. I was really afraid at the time, but I think that ever since Pastor Han had prayed for me, God has always taken care of me.”

Sold into sex trafficking in china

Several years later, in 2017, one of Choon-yei’s friends persuaded her to return to China for an opportunity to make money. When she arrived in China, Choon-yei learned that her friend was a sex trafficker who sold North Korean women to Chinese men as wives. Having no knowledge of Chinese and no way to escape back to North Korea, Choon-yei and six other women had no choice but to await their sale to Chinese men.

North Korean women are often targeted by sex traffickers, who deceive them with promises of moneymaking opportunities. Stuck in China, some have been unable to contact their families in North Korea for more than a decade.

Choon-yei was the first woman in her group to be sold to a Chinese man.

Fortunately, Choon-yei’s Chinese husband and family were kind to her, which is rare in sex trafficking. More often, North Korean women are abused by their Chinese husbands and are forced to stay in hiding to avoid detection by Chinese authorities, who routinely return them to North Korea for arrest and prosecution.

Despite her husband’s kindness, Choon-yei was troubled and refused to eat. Eventually, after contacting some relatives who had escaped to South Korea, she managed to escape from her husband and his family. Surprisingly, when they learned of her escape, they wired her money to ensure that she could buy food and arrive safely in South Korea.

Choon-yei never forgot what Pastor Han had told her. During her escape from China, she prayed to God: “Lord, if You are real, then make my journey safe going to South Korea; then I am going to follow You.”

The Cloud of Witnesses

After her long journey to South Korea, Choon-yei was sent to a resettlement center where North Korean defectors are taught basic life skills to help them function in South Korean society. While at the center, she learned that Pastor Han had been killed.

“My anger toward North Korea increased because North Korea had killed such a good man [who helped] a lot of North Koreans with food and money,” she said. “I felt like I was seeing the real face of my country. He tried to help North Koreans survive. What was his crime?”

While at the resettlement center, she also thought about her Chinese husband. He was a sincere, honest man, and he had taken good care of her despite the fact that he had purchased her. “It was so painful for me to leave him behind,” she said. Eventually he was able to join Choon-yei in South Korea, where he, too, became a Christian. “He goes to church with me and is getting to know God more now,” she said.

Though Choon-yei’s husband does not speak Korean and she is still learning Chinese, they are committed to building a Christian marriage. They attend VOM’s Underground Technology discipleship-training program in Seoul, and a Chinese translator helps Choon-yei’s husband understand the lessons.

As Choon-yei considers the difficulties she has faced in life, she now sees how God has intervened and drawn her to Himself. “I am grateful for everything,” she said. “I will be grateful if God uses my husband and me in any way.” She also prays that her isolated homeland of North Korea will be opened for the gospel. “North Koreans need to know quickly,” she said, “as quickly as possible they need to know the truth. They should know who the Creator is.”

Choon-yei is especially grateful for the way God used Pastor Han and Deacon Jang to reach her with the gospel. She asks Christians around the world to continue praying for Deacon Jang, who has been in prison since November 2014, and for the families of both Deacon Jang and Pastor Han. “The Bible says we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses,” she said. “They are part of that cloud. And now is my hour to faithfully run the race for which Deacon Jang and Pastor Han first trained me.”