Jesus of Pyongyang
Via. The Ex-Marmot, a look at North Korean human rights from a Korean Christian worldview
SEOUL After spending 18 months illegally in China in the mid-1980’s and converting to Christianity, Kim Tae Jin was locked up for four years in North Korea’s infamous prison camp No. 15 at Yodok.
He fled the North a few years after his release and found his way in 2001 to South Korea, where he is co-chairman of NK Gulag, a private group that focuses on human rights in North Korea. While securing those rights is an important goal, for Kim, 50, it comes second to a far more consequential one: evangelizing in North Korea."God never ordered us to fight for human rights, but he ordered us to spread the word to the end of the earth," Kim said, adding that the group’s leaders were North Korean converts to Christianity.Their faith, he said, buttressed their political work. "Because we are North Koreans and Christians, we feel responsible for leading the fight for better conditions in North Korea."
The means justify the end? With that in mind, the goal of the Christians decribed in this article is to spread the faith into North Korea. Because the DPRK bans Bibles and has a long record of persecuting Christians, Korean Christians use the promotion of human rights as a means to open the DPRK up for evangelizing. I do not doubt that most Christians believe in North Korean human rights, but it seems they may have used tactics that may endanger the lives of some North Koreans. I wish it were easy to convince these groups to be more careful when conducting field work inside North Korea, but believers are resistant to change. Plus, there is absolutely no need to exaggerate defector’s accounts when the truth is already damning. That being said, Korean Christians have their hearts in the right place.
LiNK touts itself as a non-religious organization, and for good reasons. However, there are LiNK chapters within churches and other religious communities. There’s one only a short drive from where I live. The article only speaks for Christians in Korea, so I do not know how my local church chapter feels. I am certain that their desire of human rights is linked to their faith, if anything. It’s something worth exploring further.
