North Korea

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North Korean Mi Sun's parents were both Christians - but for years they hid their faith from each other - and their children - to survive

However, Mi Sun saw her mother's cross twice in her childhood, and she watched her mother meet with other women who suddenly changed the topic of conversation when she passed by. It wasn't until she fled to China that she understood the meaning of it all.

By Samuel

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Image above: For security reasons, we can't show a picture of Mi Sun, but her life story gives a rare insight into life as a Christian in North Korea. 

I meet Mi Sun in a spartan office in South Korea, where local Korean Christians, with support from Danish European Mission donors, are helping North Korean refugees. For security reasons, we cannot mention her real name here. Mi Sun has experienced the cruelty of the North Korean regime first-hand and has seen it affect her loved ones. Yet there is no bitterness to be found as she tells her moving story.

-When I was six years old, I saw that my mother had a scarf with a cross, which she treated with great devotion. I would wake up at night and hear my mother crying and holding the cross in her hand. As a child, I also saw my mother mumbling when she was in the kitchen - I thought it was a quirk of my mother's as she didn't talk to anyone. 

I woke up in the night and heard my mom crying and holding the cross in her hand Mi Sun

I saw my mom wearing the corset twice. "She said: You can't tell anyone, not even your husband.". At the time, Jesus was portrayed as a fraud in government propaganda in North Korea. I saw my mother meeting with other women, but they changed the subject when I arrived. Today I can see that they were Christians meeting in secret.

Mom didn't say "Jesus" and "God" but "Heaven"

During the end of the Korean War, there were many war widows who came to my mother for spanking - and I heard my mother tell a widow that if you talk to a man, he may betray you, but if you talk to Heaven, Heaven will solve your problem.

I thought: Who is in heaven? And I also remember mom saying that if you have problems, you will experience healing if you cry out to heaven. I don't think she had a Bible, but she told me to be honest and share everything with others. My mother was a doctor, so many people came to her, including pregnant women, and my mother taught them and gave her own clothes to people who were in need. Some people said that my mother was born to love others, that she was kind-hearted.

Not only the immediate family, but also other relatives could be arrested if it was discovered that my mother was a Christian. Therefore, when I was a little girl, my mother was not comfortable confiding in me as the slightest mistake could expose her. She therefore never said "Jesus" or "God", but instead "Heaven". She said: "Heaven knows your thoughts, good and bad, and you must have good thoughts and love others". I think it must have hurt my mother a lot not to be able to openly share her faith because of the danger. 

Therefore, when I was a little girl, my mother was not comfortable confiding in me, as the slightest mistake could expose her Mi Sun

My mother must have prayed a lot for me. Today I am very involved in Christian work, and it must be because of my mother's prayers. 

When I fled to China, I visited an underground church. There I saw a cross - and then I understood what mom's cross meant - and understood her tears. Then I understood that when mom talked about heaven, she was talking about Jesus.  

Image: Malnourished children in North Korea. According to a UN Food Program report, 41 % of the population in North Korea are malnourished. Mi Sun's own daughter died of starvation during the famine of the 1990s. 

So your mother sowed seeds in your lifeeven if she didn't tell you everything about the Christian faith?

Yes, I am very grateful to my mother who shared her faith under such difficult conditions. Therefore, I feel a strong obligation to do the service that my mother could not do and that is why I am very involved in mission. 

My husband was the grandson of a pastor who was part of the revival in Pyongyang in 1907. He saw many Christians killed by the North Korean government, including his grandfather. He was killed one day during early morning prayers when the North Korean army had been defeated in the Korean War and fled north. The soldiers were sleeping on the ground during the escape and heard the sound of my husband's grandfather preaching and singing in the church. He said, among other things, that we should welcome the United States. The soldiers broke into the church and shot my grandfather. 

My husband was only seven years old when his grandfather was martyred, but some time earlier he had hugged him and started mumbling some words. When my husband later became a Christian, he found out that his grandfather had prayed for him. 

Due to the death of his grandfather, which was a government execution, and because his parents had died in the war, he was sent to an orphanage. At school, my husband learned the North Korean propaganda where Jesus and priests were portrayed badly, but because he had heard about God as a child, he decided to hold on to the faith.

He kept his grandfather's past a secret because it could put him in danger, and he hid it from me, his wife. It would have been a great blessing if we had shared our faith with each other and with our children. 

It would have been a very big blessing if my husband and I had shared the faith with each other and with our children. Mi Sun

My husband had a dream of freedom in South Korea. He had a good singing voice and went to music school. At school he got together with a cousin and they tried to escape to South Korea via Russia. He was punished with ten years of hard labor in coal mines in the north of the country.

We met as teenagers before he was punished with 10 years of mining. We got married when we lived in the mining town. It's a miracle that he survived as he worked at the bottom of the mines, which were poorly secured. Every day there were accidents. It is God's protection as there were many widows in the mining area. He could play the trumpet and sing and excelled. 

Which one songbun (social class level in North Korea, ed.) was you and yours man on during punishment work in the mines?

My uncle was tortured by the Japanese (during the Japanese occupation of Korea in 1910-1945, ed.)so my songbun was good. My mom watched my dad get killed. In North Korea, there is a special grave for North Koreans who were executed by the Japanese. In South Korea, there is a museum that shows the torture of Koreans by the Japanese. 

My father was a military doctor during the Korean War and was killed by the Japanese, which, together with my mother being a doctor, contributed to us having a very high songbun. Also, my uncle was officially recognized as a war hero.

My husband fled to China but was turned in

He fled to China in 1996 without telling us. In China, he met a Korean-American in China who was involved in a church. My husband started going to church, became a choir leader and started studying theology. 

The pastor once gave my husband money for clothes. However, it was discovered once when the pastor needed some shelves for a carpenter to put up. The carpenter turned him in and he was arrested by the Chinese police. The carpenter also took the money from my husband.

My husband knew he would not survive long in North Korea. So he called my sister and told her everything. My husband was forcibly repatriated to North Korea with a message that he had been in contact with a church and South Koreans (which means very harsh prison sentences in North Korea, ed.). He was violently tortured for six months for naming names. 

Image: Mi Sun's husband was tortured for six months. The image shows one of the many torture methods used in North Korean prisons.

In prison, father told his children about Jesus for the first time

The family had contact with a party leader who found out he was still alive and the family was able to talk to him. 

Back then I was very poor and starving (around the time of the famine in the late 1990s, how many died of starvation and folk tried to survive by eating bark, ed.) and I couldn't give a gift to the interrogator, so I couldn't visit him.

But two of our children, a 17-year-old son and a 15-year-old daughter, somehow got hold of coal, stole it, sold it and bought a gift to give in prison. They were allowed to speak quite freely. At one point, my husband took our son's hand and wrote in it: 1. Believe in Jesus. 2. Pray to Jesus and he will always answer. 3. Keep praying when you have problems. 4. Even if you don't see him, he is there. He also said that he would not survive, "but if I survive, I will tell about Jesus". He also told them to escape and he told them about the church. My son and daughter told the four messages and said: "Our father has always been so good - so Jesus must be good too".

At one point in prison, my husband took our son's hand and wrote in it: 1. Believe in Jesus. 2. Pray to Jesus and he will always answer. Mi Sun

The children now understood that the propaganda they had grown up with, which talked down the Christian faith, was wrong. My son, daughter and I started praying together and everything we asked for, we got. 

One day I met a North Korean woman in China who gave me a piece of paper wrapped in cloth to smuggle into North Korea. I was told that I had to learn it by heart - it was the Lord's Prayer. 

When I came to China, I saw a Bible for the first time where I found the Lord's Prayer. In May 1997, my daughter, 27 years old, died of starvation in North Korea. Many people started stealing to raise money for food. My daughter had done hard physical labor to earn money, but it was not enough and she died at home. My other daughter and son are both here in South Korea with me.  

I was forcibly repatriated twice to North Korea from China, went to prison and begged on the streets. I finally came to South Korea via Thailand and Burma," Mi Sun concludes.

Mi Sun is happy and smiling as she finishes her story. Her smile and joy is a testimony to God's faithfulness and intervention in the lives of people in North Korea, a country where government brutality is unfathomable. 

Support

Facts: Danish European Mission has been helping North Korean refugees since 2003. I 2003 Danish European Mission donors began helping North Koreans fleeing the country with shelter, food, and escape assistance. I 2010 began the medicine project, which was later supplemented with food.