DaYeon (right) meeting with one of our missionaries this past winter.
In the cold winter of 2019, Crossing Borders missionaries visited a Chinese city enshrined in ice and snow. The trip to meet a group of North Korean refugees in our network took long hours of driving through freezing winds and was pervaded by several security checkpoints along the way. More than usual, the missionaries found it difficult to travel without being stopped again and again by police or roadside officers. It was more than an annoyance. The work of Crossing Borders is more dangerous than ever.
The missionaries’ efforts to reach the Chinese city were rewarded with warm greetings from the North Korean refugees in Crossing Borders’ network of communities. One of the women was “DaYeon.”
DaYeon crossed the border from China to North Korea in 1997, during the Great North Korean Famine. From 1997 to 1998, up to 3.5 million North Koreans are estimated to have perished due to illness and starvation. DaYeon and many individuals like her watched family and friends die all around them. After over a decade in China, DaYeon misses her hometown.
As she greeted the Crossing Borders missionaries in the snow, she reminisced about her home. In the winter, DaYeon says that so much snow fell in her North Korean village that it rose above her knees. It was the hardest time of the year for DaYeon’s family. Nevertheless, she misses eating the sparse, North Korean dishes from home.
In her hometown, DaYeon ate corn and potato noodles often. At times, it felt like that was all that her family ever ate. Today, DaYeon has the rice that she craved growing up. But she still misses the flavors of home. DaYeon’s favorite food in North Korea was aged, dried and salted fish. She commented on the same fish she had tried to buy, “Markets don’t sell the same kind of pollack in China.”
DaYeon and her family lived near a mountain that people from the village used as their sparse farmland. DaYeon loved taking hikes and seeing her village from the mountain’s cliffside. In the spring, the hills were prone to mudslides. When the famine began, DaYeon discovered that someone in her village had cannibalized the corpse of a man who had died of starvation. She fled to China.
Less than half a year after her arrival in a foreign country, DaYeon was trafficked in the black market and married a Chinese man. Almost 10 years later, in 2009, she met Crossing Borders missionaries. For the first time, she heard the gospel and came to faith.
When missionaries first met DaYeon, they reported that her skin was yellowish, with dark spots. It is not uncommon to see North Korean refugees who have suffered various illnesses due to years and years of malnourishment. DaYeon began to receive financial support from Crossing Borders and started attending a local church in Crossing Borders’ network. She was grateful and grew in her faith.
With years of hard work, DaYeon and her husband opened a small restaurant in 2012. In secret, she began distributing small booklets about the Christian gospel to her patrons. It became a place for her to welcome both attendees at her church and Crossing Borders’ missionaries.
By 2017, DaYeon’s restaurant was so successful that she turned down the ongoing monetary support from Crossing Borders. Instead, she asked that the organization distribute the support that was being given to her with the poorer refugees in the organization’s network. But DaYeon’s life grew very busy with the monetary success of her restaurant.
But DaYeon’s life once more entered a season of struggle. She discovered that she had thyroid cancer. After a series of treatments in 2019, DaYeon was healed but forced into staying home and seeking rest. At first, it was a struggle. But over her time of rest, DaYeon realized that she had become a workaholic. She began to see that her monetary success had caused her to forget how she had arrived into her success and sense of satisfaction. At home, DaYeon spent time praying and reading the Bible.
When she met with the missionaries this past winter, she had many questions about faith. They reported that she is growing in humility and joy. We pray for DaYeon to continue to grow in her thankfulness and peace, as she finds both the hope for work and the comfort of rest in the message of the gospel.
