Strangely optimistic

It’s 100 years since Korean revival prayer meetings began. Of all places, its roots are found deep inside North Korea. One of AsiaLink’s staff went inside this most persecuted of countries.

Sinuiju doesn’t have much to commend it. This once bubbly logging town turned industrial community now has few signs of life. Its buildings are colourless, its people exhausted. Our train crawled alongside rolling stock that looked like it had been bombed.

The railway tracks had fared little better. We were halfway through the 27-hour train journey from Beijing to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. Crossing the border into this tightly controlled country, we immediately understood why so many North Koreans make the suicidal escape into China. This is a silent, eerie land.

Stories from the border area are not hard to come by. One North Korean woman who had barely escaped repatriation by the Chinese troops told how her sister had fallen behind, was accosted and marched to the border. The woman had watched in agony as her sister was literally dragged across the frontier by a metal hook the guards had shoved through her jaw.

Unseen refugees

These are the world’s unseen refugees. Starvation began forcing North Koreans across the border in the mid-1990s and, to date, around 300,000 people have made the harrowing journey. Rumours of cannibalism won’t go away. This country has stalled and people are desperate to flee. The grass is barely greener in China. Some refugees are now working as slaves for a pittance. Bride-trafficking has become a vibrant industry. Others stay hidden with relatives, concealed in houses or in far-flung, rickety shelters, all the time trying to out-manoeuvre the terrorising North Korean secret police. And these are the fortunate ones.

It’s the worst of times to be a refugee. A ragtag mix of missionaries and small charitable groups do what they can but it is all very precarious. The refugees have no concept of God. To be a believer is to invite death. For those refugees who convert to the Christian faith, forced repatriation to Korea constitutes a particularly grim fate.

‘Contact with Christians?’

Such was the case of one family of four whose faith flourished in the care of an undercover missionary in China. The family was discovered by Chinese police and sent back to the North Korean border town of Namyang. The attempt to keep some portions of their religious reading material hidden in their clothing was discovered. Countless refugees have testified that the very first question asked repatriated refugees by interrogators is: ‘Have you had any contact with Christians in China?’

Although many newly-converted refugees choose discretion as the better part of valour, this family was firm and forthright in their profession of faith. Following their bold declaration to authorities, a number of eyewitnesses testified that the four were led to the so-called Hepatitus Street, a small courtyard adjacent to the liver ward of a hospital in Namyang. As a five-soldier firing squad was hurriedly assembled, the residents of the neighbourhood were summoned to observe the execution. The message to the stunned cluster of neighbours was unmistakably clear: anyone who attempts to exercise a religious belief other than the worship of the ‘Dear Leader’, Kim Jung Il, would meet the same fate.

Pitch black

We eventually rumbled into Pyongyang station. It was dark when we clambered aboard a coach for the 300- yard trip to our hotel. Something wasn’t quite right and only after a few minutes did we figure out what it was. It was pitch black outside. There were no street lights, the huge blocks of flats covering the city were only sporadically lit … and, despite the cement roads with perfect white lines and traffic police busily pointing their flags every which way, there was no traffic. A car crawled past us only every few minutes and we were right in the middle of the capital city. We looked up the sides of the 45 floors of our hotel and realised that only certain floors had electricity. No wonder the train had taken so long. This is a country devoid of energy. The infrastructure is on its knees. There’s an amusement park but no one’s happy. There are hospitals but no medicine, and there are people but no life.

Our trip would take us to wherever we were allowed to go. The third day began and a few of us were praying silently on the bus. Throughout the trip, none of us felt free to forget where we were. We constantly committed ourselves, and those we met from this population of 22 million atheists, to God. Imagine our utter amazement when our government guide climbed into our bus, closed the door tight and announced: ‘You know, the important thing is the Son!’ At least that’s what I thought I heard him say — and others thought so, too. Evangelical theology at its deepest and most intimate and from a Communist tour guide inside North Korea? When we looked up, we realised he was just glad the sun was out that day! ‘The important thing is the sun!’ he repeated, with a beaming smile and clear relief that his planned day would not be obliterated by the winds and rain that had chilled us the previous afternoon.

Our guide (plus minder) took us to a place with more history than even he was aware of. Far more. We had travelled four hours east to the very place that paradoxically breathed optimism into our whole visit. Wonsan, this fishing town nestling above the picturesque beach, was the birthplace 100 years ago of the most amazing of revivals that swept across Korea. It was by these very beaches where we stood that Methodist missionaries gathered to beseech God to do something majestic. The prayer meetings eventually spread to Kaesong on today’s border with the South and then to Pyongyang in 1904. The Korean revival had begun.

Revival

Church history documents the events that took place.

‘The evening meeting began January 6, in the Central Church (in Pyongyang), with more than 1,500 men present. Women were excluded for lack of room. After a short sermon ... man after man would rise, confess his sin, break down and weep, and then throw himself on the floor and beat the floor with his fists in a perfect agony of conviction ... Sometimes, after a confession, the whole audience would break out into audible prayer, and the effect of hundreds of men praying together in audible prayer was something indescribable. We would all weep together. We couldn’t help it. And so the meeting went on until 2.00 am, with confession and weeping and praying ... We had prayed to God for an outpouring of his Holy Spirit upon the people and he had come.

‘Then began a meeting the like of which I had never seen before, nor wish to see again unless in God’s sight it is absolutely necessary. Every sin a human being can commit was publicly confessed that night. Pale and trembling with emotion, in agony of mind and body, guilty souls, standing in the white light of their judgment, saw themselves as God saw them’ (Clark, A.D., A History of the church in Korea / Blair, W., and Hunt, B., The Korean Pentecost, Banner of Truth).

Believers in gulags

That was 100 years ago. Today, North Korea is a madhouse. This failed state portrays an immense lie to an outside world that can see what is happening — if it cares to look. Refugees relate horrific testimony of the gulags where perhaps some 150,000 believers are held. It is a scene that beggars belief. You have to be less than human not to be profoundly disturbed by it all.

Yet my own experience was strangely optimistic. It is appalling, but, from a missions perspective, there is real hope. Firstly, North Korea has just one homogenous people group — that’s one people, one history, one culture that binds these people together. (Laos, by contrast, has 138 different dialects, hindering sporadic witness.) Here, everyone speaks the same language and that’s great for spreading the Good News.

Secondly, North Korea invests in education. Schooling is a priority resulting in 100% literacy. This, of course, helps the spread of Kim Il Sung’s propaganda, but it is also wonderful news for people who may just have a page or two of the Bible buried somewhere, or who one day may even possess a copy of their own. Everyone can read it!

Highways for the gospel

Thirdly, we travelled everywhere along a vast network of roads. Pyongyang is a hub and the motorways stretch out across the open countryside to the principal cities. Some countries have no real road network. You can’t get from A to B. North Korea is different. How much easier it will be to travel with the message when the gospel does break through!

And lastly, revival prayer groups in Wonsan led to the whole Korean peninsula being transformed. North Korea is violently evil. It mercilessly abuses its own. It tramples the church, leaving believers singing in silence. This country appears utterly soulless and beyond hope. But is there any doubting these ‘dry bones can live again’?

For information on ministry to North Koreans, contact AsiaLink, 2 Kingswood Close, Lytham FY8 4RE, or visit http://www.asialink.org.uk

Reporting on a recent visit to North Korea