Do North Koreans Really Need the Bible More Than Food or Clothing?

Posted on August 13, 2016 by tdillmuth

DurUT Wrapping Biblesing the summer, our balloon rooms are always a bustling place. People from around the world work elbow to elbow. Small, blue bibles are stacked on each table. Some people sing hymns. Others share scriptures. Some muse to one another about how surreal it is to hold the same Bible that a North Korean will be holding only hours later.

One of these volunteers thoughtfully thumbed through a blue Bible.

“You know,” she said. “Bibles are great. But I think we should send something else in the balloons, too. Something the North Korean people really need.”

This volunteer was not the first person to have this thought. Why do we send Bibles in our balloons? Why not food or clothes or sanitary napkins? After all, North Koreans need food, clothes, and sanitary napkins so much more than they need the Bible.

Another volunteer immediately joined the conversation. “Human beings need God more than anything!”

These words are easy to say, but their meaning is very difficult to understand. Each day, thousands of North Korean citizens die from starvation. The government systematically starves these individuals due to their suspicious or rebellious behavior.

Many people in North Korea suffer in the monsoon season because they do not have rain boots or raincoats. Some are stricken by horrid cases of trench foot. People from North Korea say (only half-jokingly) that they would sell their wives for a pair of rain boots.

Women in the more rural areas of North Korea often do not have access to sanitary napkins. They must use cloths, instead. During the winter, these women risk hypothermia to wash these cloths in the frigid water.

Without any of these items, a person in North Korea can die. Claiming that the Bible is more important than any of these necessities is not a glib matter. It is a very serious one. But I believe that it is the correct claim. Let me tell you why.

Food, clothes, and sanitary napkins that are sent into North Korea will—very likely—be confiscated by the North Korean government. North Korean citizens are required to report balloons to the authorities. Not reporting a balloon is a punishable offence. Out of fear, the North Korean citizens will almost always report these balloons to the authorities. After all, punishment in North Korea is not only restricted to the individual criminal. Families (and sometimes even extended families) are punished as well.

The simplest solution, one might argue, is for the group of North Koreans who find the balloon to all agree not to report it. But, as the case of the Prisoner’s Dilemma illustrates, this solution is not always a feasible one. The night after finding the balloon, each of the group members will lose sleep. Each will worry that the other group members have reported the balloon. Each will worry that they have put their families in danger by refusing to alert the authorities. As the old North Korean adage goes, “whenever two or three are gathered together, one of them is a spy.”

The reason why the North Korean people need food, clothes, and sanitary napkins is not because their government is too poor to provide these items. It is because the North Korean government uses starvation, nakedness, and unsanitary conditions as a tactic to strengthen their government. The strength of the North Korean government is relative to the strength of the Juche ideology. Anyone who threatens the Juche ideology is an enemy of the state. These people are left hungry, naked, and filthy.

Those who support and adhere to the Juche ideology are nourished, clothed, and well-provided for. They live in cities of relative wealth and prosperity. They are able to afford items like televisions, cars, and computers. But even these people live in fear. One word to an official about how they do not adhere to the Juche ideology can land them in a concentration camp. Providing food, clothes, and sanitary napkins to the North Korean people is important. North Korean people need all of these items. (Our ministry actually does provide them through a more effective method in our “Ministry Pack” ministry.) But what North Korean people need most is a new system. They need a system which will feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and lift up the fallen.

The Bible introduces the North Korean people to this system.

Our Bible includes 46 different stories from the Bible. In every one of these stories, God shows his care, compassion, and trustworthiness to human beings. In every one of these stories, God instructs human beings to follow his example. God’s love is not a static love. It is a love that changes every person that it touches. This love has eliminated slavery, created worker’s unions, and built homeless shelters. This love is the only instrument powerful enough to transform North Korea.

While North Koreans do need food, clothing, and sanitary napkins, we can say with confidence that North Koreans really do need the Bible more than anything else.

Written by Margaret Foley . . . VOM Korea’s newest staff member!

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The Gospel Is The Smallest Hope For North Korea. Here’s Why That’s A Good Thing.

Posted on August 5, 2016 by Pastor Foley

When Dr. Foley and I started in North Korea ministry 15 years ago, certain Learned Men And Women Who Think About NK were opining, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, that North Korea would collapse any day. Preparing for unification, they insisted, was the urgent order of the day.

Meanwhile, other Learned Men And Women Who Think About NK were opining, as if it were the only responsible opinion to hold, that the physical needs of North Korean citizens were so urgent that funneling anything less than massive immediate resources into emergency aid in cooperation with the North Korean government would be a moral crime against humanity.

Still other Learned Men And Women Who Think About NK were insisting that nothing would change in North Korea without outside agitation designed to amplify agitation inside North Korea. The overthrow of the North Korean government and the promotion of democracy were the urgent matters demanding attention of governments, media, and North Korean defectors.

Finally, other Learned Men And Women Who Think About NK noted that North Korea was hemorrhaging people–defectors, refugees, sex-trafficked women–and that nursing that bloodletting, through a modern underground railroad, required all of our energy and attention.

These groups didn’t agree on very much back then, and fifteen years later (with North Korea still in business, it’s worth noting), they still don’t.

But one thing that Learned Men And Women Who Think About NK have generally agreed upon is that it is neither urgent nor prudent to spend one’s time, energy, and money to drop Bibles from the sky, broadcast Scripture over the radio, and pepper North Korea and Asia with itinerant Christian preachers who risk their lives (and the lives of the those willing to learn from them) to evangelize and disciple North Koreans.

This is not to say that the aforementioned groups are hostile to the gospel. It has been my experience that they generally regard it as a kind of Happy Meal toy that is nice to add to the Big Mac of serious NK work. Thus, we get along quite nicely with all of the above groups, though no one gets too alarmed if we’re not at the Grownups Table at important North Korea meetings.

I am not troubled by this, and in fact, I expect it. I expect the world to do world-type things and governments to do government-type things and fundraisers to do fundraiser-type things.

But what has surprised me over the past fifteen years is the light regard many Christians have for the ministry of spreading the gospel in North Korea. If they do not view it as a kind of optional Happy Meal toy, many Christians nevertheless regard the gospel as rather a fragile thing, not altogether suitable for (or even capable of) carrying the heavy freight of world change.

That is no doubt in part because this is how many Christians experience the gospel in their own lives: As a deeply personal thing. As my truth. As practical advice for marriage, family, and career. But bringing the gospel to a gun fight–I mean, an honest-to-goodness shoot-em-up at the edge of the world? Better off with a butter knife.

Fifteen years into this particular gun fight, however, I’d want to let all Christians know: I have no regrets about spending all my time seeking to get North Koreans on the heaven train rather than the Seoul train. I’ve seen the Seoul train jump the tracks far too many times.

But the heaven train? When the Bible says that the Word of God never returns void or empty, I can testify that in the darkest lives in the darkest corner of the earth in one of the darkest deepest evils yet emerging to slouch towards Bethlehem, the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot put it out.

“What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it?” asked Jesus. “It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.”

Is the gospel the smallest hope for North Korea, when compared to United Nations human rights reports, humanitarian aid, USBs topped off with K-Pop and Korean dramas, well-funded radio broadcasts spewing political news and commentary, cultural/educational/business/technology exchanges, and trains to Seoul, New York, and all points West?

Yes, of course it is. But never mistake small for fragile, or big, loud, learned, and well-funded for effective. Because as a Christian you should never forget that the only thing that bears fruit is the seed that falls to the ground and dies.

It’s the one thing that has never disappointed. And it never will.

Especially in North Korea.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Forgiveness is not earned but freely given

Posted on August 4, 2016 by Joy Jeon

As Christians we are commanded to forgive. In fact, if someone slaps us on the right cheek, we are to turn to them the other cheek also. The question is, however, are we selective with who we decide to forgive? Do we turn the other cheek for some people while others we are ready to slap right back?

In Matthew 18:21-35, known as the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant, the king canceled the debt of the servant who owed him ten thousand bags of gold. He did not cancel the debt because it was likely that the servant would pay him back in the near future. Ten thousand bags of gold is an amount no average person can pay back in a lifetime. Did the king forgive the servant thinking he could get back that much value from him? The Bible says that the king forgave him out of pity, which means he did so without any expectations of a return.

We often forget that we were once that servant who owed ten thousand bags of gold. There was no way we could pay God back for the debt we owed. No act of kindness or hard effort could ever earn us God’s forgiveness. What makes us more deserving than others?

Who is the person you have a hard time forgiving? Why do we hold grudges against some people while we readily forgive others? Forgiveness is not based on what the other person can do for us or whether they’re likely to change. God loves it when we show mercy to others who have done wrong to us. What is the petty amount our fellow servant owes us compared to debt we once owed? Recognize the grace we have received and He promises to show us mercy the way we show mercy to others.

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