It was late evening in northeast China. I was visiting a church with our partner Helping Hands Korea. The church was a kind of underground church. It was not hidden as you might imagine. Out in front of the church there was a neon cross. Inside the building, I was meeting with five women. They were all refugees from North Korea and victims of human trafficking. One of them was afraid that she would be executed by the authorities in North Korea, so she had fled to China.
Lured with "gold and green forests"
When we entered the church, we sat down on a linoleum floor in a room that was about half a meter above the adjacent room. There was a sliding door between the two rooms. Food was placed on the floor in front of us. As the evening went on, the women talked about their experiences. They had all been lured with "gold and green forests", but it turned out that each of them had been cheated by those who were supposed to help them get to China. Instead, they had been married off to local men. It wasn't exactly what they had dreamed of. But in the midst of the darkness, the women had found "light" through local Christians in the area.
Suicide by rat poison
The woman Kim* told me that her neighboring family back in North Korea had eaten rat poison one day. Apparently, the hunger had become so overwhelming that the family decided to commit suicide. This is rare in North Korea because it is considered treason against the country's leader Kim Jong-Il. Surviving family members will most likely be punished afterwards.
Indoctrination
From childhood, people are indoctrinated to believe that they live in a communist paradise and that conditions outside the country are terrible. One of the women said that in North Korea she heard that South Koreans were begging for food from Americans. They also reported that old clips from South Korea were shown on TV in North Korea to give an impression of the poor conditions outside the regime. But the women said that the people had gradually seen through some of this hypocrisy and discovered that conditions in the South were far better.
God is also in North Korea
Kim* - said she became a Christian three years ago. In North Korea, she prayed to God, but she wasn't a Christian then. She had gone out at night and cried out in desperation, "Help me!" Later, she had fled across the border to China, where she was sold to a man. In China, she came into contact with Christians. It had later touched her deeply to find out that she had really prayed to a living God in North Korea. HE had led her all the way.
In North Korea, as part of the army, she had been involved in confiscating the people's agricultural products. According to Kim, this meant that the army was hated for their actions. Unfortunately, there has been a lot of speculation that the North Korean army is also known to take a large part of the relief supplies that come from abroad.
Today, Kim works in a restaurant in China. Her husband in North Korea is dead and her new husband lives in another city.
A good father-in-law shows Lee* the way
Lee*, one of the five North Korean women, also accepted Jesus in the church I visited. Her father-in-law had given her a Bible and one day he took her to church. There she saw a Christmas play that made a big impression on her. The text touched her heart. She then wanted to attend a Christian seminary, but traveling in China is not possible as she has no Chinese identification documents.
The witness of the Christians in the area has meant that Lee is a Christian today.
Help for mom
Another woman told me that she has a mother who still lives in North Korea. She is able to send money to her mother through an intermediary who admittedly takes almost a third of the money to do the job. When he delivers the money, he lets the mother talk to her daughter on a cell phone as proof that help has arrived.
All the women are married to men in Northeast China and have been victims of human trafficking. According to Tim Peters, Helping Hands Korea, the North Korean women have no recourse to the criminal justice system in China. This makes them extremely vulnerable to human trafficking.
- If they tried to report the trafficking to the police, they would be sent straight back to NK, a fate they fear almost as much as death itself," he says.
But the happiness in the midst of misfortune is that they have met Christians in China who are helping them and their children find Jesus Christ.
* For security reasons, all women's names are fictitious.
