A new way to help North Korean refugees

The fate of thousands of North Korean refugees rests on our ability to expose new people to our work. The more people know about what we do, the more people will act on behalf of North Korean refugees in China. And when more and more people act, the more and more North Korean refugees and their children we can help in Northeast China. Our goals for the rest of the year are simple.Think 20/30/40. We want to:

Visit 20 churches. Get 30 people from each of these churches to donate $40 per month.

Already we have scheduled several church visits to get the word out about the plight of the North Korean refugee in China. When the information gets out, we are confident that the ripple effects will be immense.

Each dollar will:

Improve quality of life through poverty alleviation, education and micro-loans

Foster spiritual healing through community building and Biblical counseling

Win freedom along the Modern Day Underground Railroad

We’ve seen the powerful effects when churches and communities engage in our work. Not only is it a blessing to the people we help, it’s a blessing to them.

If you are interested in inviting a Crossing Borders representative to your church, fellowship or community group, please email us at contact@crossingbordersnk.org.

North Korean Refugees' Instilled Reverence

A few years ago, we met a North Korean refugee whose house caught fire while home with his family in North Korea. He was able to save his wife and daughter, he said. But after the fire was extinguished he was arrested and imprisoned. Every North Korean household is given a picture of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. Each citizen must hang these pictures in a prominent place in their home and make sure they are dusted and straightened regularly. These photos are of utmost importance in the lives of North Koreans.

This man was arrested because he went into his home to save his wife and daughter, not the pictures. He was recently released from several years in prison and escaped to China as a North Korean refugee.

People often ask us how the North Korean regime is able to retain power. A western government that instilled such draconian measures, they say, would surely incite a revolt. But the North Korean regime holds power because it instills an unshakeable fear in the hearts and minds of its citizens. But times are changing and the vice grip the regime once had on the hearts and minds of its people is eroding.

North Korea's control on the minds of its citizens is an issue we have to deal with for many of the North Korean refugees we've met, especially when we started working with them in 2003. North Korean refugees would cower in fear when we would first meet them. They were taught that Americans are baby-eating monsters.

But things are changing. As information is creeping into North Korea from the outside world, the regime is losing its “reverence capital.” The result of this isn’t a callousness to authority and power, but quite the opposite, the people of North Korea have been left with a deep longing to honor a higher authority.

North Korean refugees are coming to China savvy of the situation they are in. They know about their government. They know about the prosperity of the outside world. But with this knowledge they are also seeking something else essential to their lives.

Melanie Kirkpatrick’s book, “Escape From North Korea” describes the conversion rates of North Korean refugees. Many people insist that North Koreans are converting in China because they are “rice Christians.” Meaning, they convert to receive aid. If this was true, we would not be seeing the robust Christian population of North Korean defectors in South Korea, most of whom claim that they converted in China, according to Kirkpatrick.

Crossing Borders believes the only thing that can satisfy the longing in a person's heart is God. We do not force this belief on anyone but many do come to believe what we do.

A version of this piece was originally posted in 2013. 

A Prayer Campaign for North Korean Refugees and Orphans

Sex trafficking. Abuse. Hopelessness. Abandonment. The struggles of North Korean refugees and orphans are well documented on this blog. When we share this information with people who hear it for the first time, the reaction is almost always shock and horror. This year, we want to equip people to do something about these modern-day atrocities. You will be seeing more ways you can actively participate in the health and well-being of North Korean refugees in China on our website and communications this year.

The first thing we want to do is equip you to pray for North Korean refugees in our new program, #Pray40NK, which will coincide with Lent.

The reason why we are calling people to pray is because we believe it is the most practical way that people can get involved. We believe in an all-powerful God who can change any situation according to His will. Prayer is the most effective and powerful first step to substantive change.

In our prayer guide, you will find a daily prayer item coupled with a Bible verse to meditate on. It is our hope that this will bring powerful change in the lives of many and also to bless you in your life.

Many of us on staff have been a part of this ministry for over a decade. We can all say that we have received exponentially more than we have given. We hope you will experience the same measure of blessing as you pray.

You can download the guide here. You can also follow us on Instagram (@crossingbordersnk) for daily reminders. Thank you!

PTSD and North Korean Refugees

For North Koreans in China, finding help from anyone can be difficult. This is especially true for finding medical care. But for those who struggle with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (or PTSD), finding help can be impossible. China struggles to deliver quality medical care to its citizens. The World Health Organization has ranked China’s medical care system 144 out of a possible 190 countries.

We found this to be true when we recently brought a doctor from the US to assess the medical needs of the refugees in our network. Refugees who had access to some medical care were often misdiagnosed or over prescribed medicines that didn’t treat the cause of their symptoms.

We also found that the refugees in our network were relatively healthy. They do not suffer from issues that many people in the developed world suffer from, such as heart disease or type 2 diabetes. Many of the symptoms that the refugees suffer from can in fact be related to PTSD.

Along with the internal symptoms of this condition (irritability, trouble sleeping, trouble concentrating, angry outbursts, etc.), many of our refugees display psychosomatic symptoms of PTSD. These are symptoms from a mental disorder that manifest themselves physically.

The symptoms that our doctor saw last year were all in line with textbook PTSD. Even in our new area where the refugees feel safe from immediate harm, they still display strong symptoms of PTSD.

It is important for us to handle this condition in a way that is consistent with our faith and is culturally sensitive.

The good news is that treatment for PTSD was already occurring. We have and are forming new faith communities. These communities are a place for our refugees to gather together for worship and fellowship.

This is happening in our communities now. This year we started three churches in the new area we are working in. Already, these churches are thriving and they are helping our people deal with the trauma they experienced in North Korea and China.

We will continue to improve our services but the bulk of their needs are being met. Please pray for us as we continue to support these churches and further expand our reach.

Next Steps: Reaching back to move forward

Second Wave is a program Crossing Borders operates to show the compassion of Christ to the children of North Korean refugee women. According to a US Government report, 70 percent of all North Korean refugees are women and 80 percent of them have been trafficked.

Let’s do the math here. If there have been an estimated 500,000 North Korean refugees who have fled to China since the famine, then approximately 350,000 of them are women. This means that 245,000 North Korean women have been sold in China.

An important fact to remember, that helps us understand this astonishing statistic, is that every North Korean refugee in China is an outlaw. China denies these people the most basic human rights, even though the country signed the UNHCR Refugee Convention of 1951. It is illegal to help a North Korean refugee, according to Chinese law. North Korean refugees are hunted down, arrested and deported to North Korea and sent to prison camps where they face torture and possible execution.

This leaves many children who have been born to North Korean mothers at risk. Many of these children have had mothers stolen away from them at the hands of Chinese authorities.

When Jong was about 6 years old, his mother was captured by Chinese officers and has not  been heard from since. He vaguely remembers what his mother looks like. He is in his teens now.

Jong’s father is a farmer and walks with a limp in one leg. His father has had brain surgery in the past, and is very forgetful. Because Jong’s father is not able to take care of him, Jong was brought to a Crossing Borders group home and has been under our care since.

Jong is a kind-hearted boy, who often looks for the approval of his caretaker, teachers, and other adults. He has often struggled in school, and has been described as slow by his teachers. Because of this, he has lacked effort and interest in his studies in the past.

However, Jong’s attitude changed last year, when two new boys were brought into his group home. Jong was told that he had to serve as an example for these two younger children and he took this call to action to heart. This past year, he has been much more studious and has been making better grades at school.

On a visit to China by our team last winter, Jong was found in his bedroom studying by himself while the rest of this housemates were playing games.

This summer, Crossing Borders sent a team to run a camp for children in our Second Wave program. During free time, the counselors reserved a room where children could talk to counselors about their problems and ask for prayers.

Jong met with one of our team members  and shared that he was beginning to remember his mother. Memories of her come in brief flashes but had a powerful impact on him. As the counselor prayed for him, Jong cried. For the first time in his life, Jong realized he really missed his mother, and wished he could be with her.

Crossing Borders understands that though progress and healing is underway, some of  the wounds in the hearts of these children are deep and often suppressed. China is a land of progress and many children are encouraged to forget painful memories from their past and work toward a brighter future. But in our work, Crossing Borders has found that sometimes, this isn’t possible. For children like Jong, old wounds come back regardless of how much a child tries to stifle them.

At the heart of Crossing Borders’ work is an effort to give these children an avenue to express their pain and to teach them to deal with it through principles taught in the Bible. This is our primary task as an organization in the face of such hardship. As we add programs and structure, this will not change.

What will become of Jong depends upon how he can process these old memories. It is our hope that he would be able to do so in a healthy, productive way and that he would be ready for whatever life throws at him.

This story can be found in our Newsletter, which was published last week. To get a copy of our newsletter, click on this link and sign up.

Next Steps: Planning for the future

Crossing Borders started Second Wave in September of 2004 to address the needs of children who were born to North Korean mothers and abandoned by them. This was in the wake of the Great North Korean Famine, which claimed millions of lives in North Korea and caused hundreds of thousands of refugees to spill over into China. When we started Second Wave, the average age of our children was about 5. This year the average age of the children in Second Wave entered into its teens at 13. Over the years our goal has always been to show the compassion of Christ to these children but this can take many forms. Is it enough to house them, feed them, educate them, and love them or do we need to do more?

As we look into the, now, very near future, we have set some priorities for our organization and our children. The skill we are focused on teaching these children is goal setting. We will know that we are achieving this organizational priority when more of the children in our network have clear career paths with short and mid term milestones to attain them.

This summer a team from the US traveled to Northeast China to address the spiritual and emotional needs of our children in a summer camp program, which lasted about a week. At this camp we had our first ever career seminar.

We had each of our children list their interests and talents and we had them map these on a matrix. From this matrix we were able to tell our children what types of jobs they were best suited for. Our intention was not to lock them into a specific career path but rather to get them thinking about what they might want to do when they finish their education.

We also had a seminar on how to set long term goals and then set short term goals on how to reach these long term goals. This winter we will host another seminar for these children where they will set a long term career goal for themselves and set smaller milestones on how to reach these goals. But, we are not under the delusion that this is our most important task. Most of us are parents and we know better.

Parenting is a grind. It is a selfless task that bears fruit -- good or bad -- decades later. As we raise these children, it is not our ultimate goal to have all of the children in our network employed by a certain date. It is also not our goal to only love them and nurture them for now. Raising children is challenging because parents have to think of both now and decades later.

What good is preparing someone for a good job if they lack character? How empty is a life filled with money and security if it lacks love?

Each day we carry our work forward with this in mind, asking God for grace for the things we might overlook.

The Black Mushroom Project - Charting New Territory

On a random bus ride through one of China’s largest cities last year, a pastor gets on to start his day. The pastor, an ethnic Korean who is a Chinese citizen, hasn’t heard the Korean language spoken in public in years but this day he did. He went to speak with the two women who were quietly talking to one another and learns that they are North Korean refugees. Over the course of the ride, he gains these women’s trust and they tell him they are from North Korea but live in rural China, away from the North Korean border, and that there are many, many more like them.

The pastor started making regular visits in 2014 to this area to see if they need help and to share the gospel with them. Early this year, he contacted Crossing Borders. We decided to investigate, despite the fact that we have not ventured out of Northeast China since our operations started in 2003. What we found was an area where North Korean refugees experience much less government scrutiny but still struggle with issues related to poverty.

This new area is an interesting endeavor for us because we have never worked where North Korean refugees live and work in such freedom.

Our first priority in working with North Korean refugees in China is to find a place of safety for them. Without safety, people cannot move forward with their lives. They cannot heal. They cannot grow.

As we mentioned in our previous post, almost all of the ingredients for success were in place for our first Black Mushroom Project loan except the most important: safety.

So if we remove the very powerful element of fear, we have the freedom to operate under a new set of rules and expectations for our refugees. This is what we have found for this area where police are not trained to spot North Koreans and the government is not active in pursuing these people.

Most of the North Korean refugees we’ve worked with in the past have lived under stifling fear that, if they are in the wrong place at the wrong time, they will be caught, hauled off to North Korea where they will face time in the country’s infamous prison system and face execution.

This is why we skipped the important first step of providing monthly support for the refugees in this area and went directly to helping them with medical care and providing ways to help them make a living.

This area is virtually untouched by Western influence. There is no church. People are Buddhist or believe in other indigenous superstitions. We made contact with this area through the pastor who had been visiting since 2014. We decided that the best thing we can do in the region is to help this pastor start a church, which will be completely self-funded.

Through this church, we can mount efforts to improve the quality of life for the refugees and their children in the area. It gives us an efficient contact point through which we can show the compassion of Christ to these people.

The North Korean refugee crisis started in the 1990s and continues to affect North Koreans and their children in the region. Over time the severity and nature of the issue has changed. As Crossing Borders continues to help this population, we have been able to change with it, providing a new kind of help to North Korean refugees in different kinds of situations. We will keep you posted on the developments of this new and exciting site. In the meantime, we ask for your prayers.

The Black Mushroom Project - What has happened, what we've learned

In 2013 Crossing Borders launched a new initiative called "The Black Mushroom Project." The project was aimed at helping refugees support themselves through income-generating projects that would combat poverty. Over the past 18 months, we have been able to make a significant difference in the lives of those who we help through The Black Mushroom Project, though the ways it has helped has been unexpected.

One of the first people we helped through this project is "Me Hae." By going through the loan process with her, we have been able to learn how to shape this project going forward.

Me Hae grew up in rural North Korea. Her father died when she was eight-years-old. While he was alive, he would beat her mom so hard that they had to close their business selling small wares at the market because of the injuries she sustained. So Me Hae had to work odd jobs from an early age.

When she was in her teens, she went to a border city to find work but instead she was taken to China without her knowledge and sold to a Chinese man. Unlike most of the other refugees we help, Me Hae had never heard of China. She was never told that, if she moved there, she could eat and find work.

After just a year in China, Me Hae was captured by the Chinese police and sent to a prison camp in North Korea. She went back to China after she was released. All she wanted was to stay for a short period of time to make money on her second trip. She was staying with an aunt. Next door to her lived a man who fell in love with her. They married shortly after they met.

For more than a decade, they lived happily in Northeast China and had two children together. This was despite the systematic police raids that would happen in their village since the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

When we launched The Black Mushroom Project in 2013, we thought she and her husband would be the ideal candidates for the project because of their strong relationship and the hard work both of them put into their farm.

But the raids persisted. The village where they lived is near China's border with North Korea and was home to a Chinese military installation. Earlier this year the Chinese authorities performed the most aggressive sweep of the area that Me Hae had ever seen. Many of her friends were either captured and sent back to North Korea or were so scared, they left on their own.

This left Me Hae with a difficult choice. After careful consideration, she chose to take the Underground Railroad with the funds she earned through The Black Mushroom Project. She has made it safely to Southeast Asia with one of her children and has promised to bring her husband and other child to South Korea as soon as possible.

In spite of her challenges, she was able to pay back her loan with interest.

The Black Mushroom Project worked for Me Hae because she was able to draw from the funds she earned from her loan to pay for her freedom. It didn't work as planned because the loan didn't give her sustainability, which is the primary goal of this project.

We have taken a hard look at this program and we have realized that it will only work if the refugee is in a place of safety. This is why it is so important for Crossing Borders to keep survey data on our refugees. Through our annual surveys, we can track how we are doing in our efforts to bring these people to safety.

Believe it or not, this is possible in China.

China's border with North Korea has a lot of military activity. Though China does not see North Korea as a military threat, they know that their ally North Korea is unstable. The closer one lives to the border, the more vigilant the Chinese authorities will be.

There are areas in China where the authorities are not trained to look for North Koreans. We have been engaging with villages in these outer regions to help the North Koreans who have found their way to these areas. The outlook and perspective of these refugees is completely different from the ones who live anywhere near the border.

We have found a promising location with a population of North Korean refugees, which number into the thousands. The refugees here have told us that they feel safe but that they need help generating revenue for themselves.

We will tell you more about this area in our next post. Stay tuned.

North Korean Refugees Now – Part 3: Reunification

If you ask those around the world who work on behalf of North Korean refugees and North Korean people, there are differing opinions on what should be done in North Korea to alleviate the suffering in North Korea. Some say that all the North Korean people need is an open economy. Others say they need political freedom. Some say that reunification is the only path to lasting peace and happiness.

Reunification is an intriguing option that can bring many changes to the North Korean peninsula and even greatly benefit the 200,000 refugees in China. It can erase the border that has divided the peninsula for 70 years. It can join the vast mineral resources in North Korea with the industrial might of South Korea. It can bring the tens-of-millions of people in the North vital resources like food and medicine. It can bring the gospel into the country.

In today’s post we will explore the status of reunification and spell out how it can affect the 200,000 North Korean refugees in China, the peninsula and the region as a whole.

South Korea’s youth grows increasingly wary of their neighbors to the North and their interest in reunification is waning. This generation has only read about a united Korean peninsula in history books and have heard about it from their grandparents. They have no personal ties to cousins, aunts and uncles they may have in the Hermit Kingdom.

The chart above depicts the shifting sentiments of the Korean people. In 2011, 41 percent of South Koreans in their 20s polled said that reunification was necessary.

In 2014, the Asan Institute for Policy Studies asked South Koreans what words they would use they would associate with North Korea. The results (shown above) depict a population in South Korea that does not use the word “family” or “one nation” in their descriptions of their neighbors to the North. And why would they?

The once united Koreas are yin and yang today. One is rich. The other is poor. One is a democracy. The other is a totalitarian dictatorship. To reunite, many experts say that it will cost South Korea an estimated $2 trillion and disrupt the surging economy of South Korea.

South Korea’s president, Park, Geun-hye has made reunification a key component of her presidency. Some experts say that it’s the country’s last-ditch effort as interest in her country wanes.

In light of the decreased interest of the South Korean people to reunify, Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University, Sue Mi Terry spelled out three likely scenarios for reunification in Foreign Affairs magazine.

The first is what she describes as the “soft landing” in which North Korea improves their economy, engages with South Korea and willfully dissolves under democratic rule. The second involves an implosion of North Korea under economic pressures, in which case South Korea assumes control of the peninsula. The third is a military conflict in which the South and its allies gain control of the North by force.

The most likely, according to Terry, is the second scenario. North Korea implodes due to economic failure or political in-fighting and is absorbed into South Korea.

However, an implosion would send North Korean refugees into China and South Korea, creating an unparalleled humanitarian crisis. Such a scenario, though possible, is unlikely in the status quo as China, North Korea’s largest benefactor, will not allow this to happen for many reasons we discussed in an earlier post.

China sees North Korea as a key, strategic partner for many reasons, namely, to keep the US army far from its borders.

North Korea, on the other hand, has embraced isolationism. Its “rogue state” status has left the dictatorship no choice but to hold onto power in their failed state. They are keen to the fact that any scenario in which the regime topples would mean trials in international courts and possibly execution at the hands of its own citizenry.

The US and its allies have little time to devote to a meaningful solution to the problem of North Korea with wars in the Middle East and its dependence on Chinese imports. Reunification, to world leaders, will likely be an expensive if not bloody process and one which would require too much political will.

But this is, to many, is a short-sighted view. If there is no North Korean dictatorship, the largest destabilizing force in East Asia would be eliminated. 25 million North Korean people would be free from their imprisonment and add South Korea’s dwindling workforce. South Korea would eventually prosper with access to the rich mineral wealth North Korea cannot afford to extract on its own.

Reunification will likely mean that the 200,000 North Korean refugees caught in limbo in China can return home and will not have to live in fear of forced repatriation for the “crime” of their escape.

It sounds almost too good to be true. There are many variables in this process that can harm North Korean refugees. A simple misstep by either of the Koreas, China or the US can cause irreparable damage for this population and the millions of people living on or near the peninsula.

It is a risky and expensive proposition, which politicians do not like. But the alternative is, arguably, even riskier. North Koreans are still hungry. There are tens of thousands in political prison camps. They have no freedom. And they are at the whim of the few at the top who live in opulence and care little about those they oppress.

The real risk isn’t in doing something to free these people, it’s if the world, with all its riches and bounty, does nothing.

We are not saying reunification is the ultimate answer but, in light of the suffering, we believe that something needs to be done.

North Korean Refugees Now - Part 1: Changing Economy

In our new blog series, we will explore the newest developments in the world, which affect the flow of North Korean refugees in China. If there is any silver lining to the Great North Korean Famine, it is that North Korea was forced to fundamentally change the way that it distributes goods and resources throughout the country.

The famine killed up to 3 million people and put the country in a tailspin from which it has still not recovered.

Resources during the famine were so scarce that the country had to start a PR campaign to ask its people to eat two meals a day. At the famine’s height, many were left to eat grass, tree bark, pets, and other people.

Much of the starvation in the country can be attributed to a failed distribution system. The irony of the famine is that there was food sitting in warehouses for people to eat. But distributors were afraid to go to the outer regions for fear of starting riots. They also had no incentive to distribute food because, under the old system, they would get paid regardless. So the people starved.

Amidst the chaos, North Korea allowed the economy to be privatized under heavy restrictions.

As a result, private markets popped up all over the country and distributors were paid based on the deliveries they made. Experts say that there is actually less food in North Korea today but people are not dying of starvation because of better distribution.

North Korea has said that this is a temporary solution to the country’s food problems. But the current system has remained intact for almost 20 years.

This has sparked what many have called the Jangmadang, or Black Market generation. This generation carries cell phones, styles their hair to mimic the South Korean pop stars they have seen via illegally imported DVDs, and, most importantly, have not lived through famine.

Change is also coming to the country's vast number of farmers. North Korea is making strides to incentivize farmers for greater yields. After giving their share to the government and paying their operating expenses, farmers can now share profits with their workers.

Manufacturers have also been given more leeway to operate based on market principles. They can negotiate contracts with foreign entities and also pay their employees what they wish.

All these factors have, along with beefed-up security at the border, slowed the pace of North Korean refugees spilling over into China.

But many experts say that these changes enacted by the North Korean government are not drastic enough to revive the moribund economy and to cause change.

“In the economics sphere, the regime seems to lack any real strategic vision,” Marcus Noland, of the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics told the Associated Press earlier this year.

Food remains the biggest issue. There might not be a famine but much of the country is still malnourished and very hungry. All this while food aid is on the decline and experts predict a smaller harvest this year, due to an unusually dry winter.

How this will affect the flow of North Korean refugees into China is yet to be seen. Regardless, Crossing Borders will continue to work in China to give vital protection and aid to these people.

Raising North Korean Orphans - Planning for the Future

"Byung Wook" was at home when his mother was dragged away by the police. He said he heard the police raid the home but was too afraid to come out of his room. When he came out the next morning, his mother was gone and his father was sitting on the floor in shock. This is how Byung Wook became a North Korean orphan. Byung Wook came to one of our group homes in 2009 and has struggled academically more than any other child in our network. His performance in school was so bad that his teachers refused to give him any tests to prevent him from bringing down the class average. They put little effort to bring Byung Wook up to speed in his studies and he spends most of his time in class sleeping.

Such is the challenge of raising an academically challenged child in China, where opportunities are harder to come by and it is harder to catch up if a child is behind.

Last year Crossing Borders received sobering results from the surveys we administered. One of the biggest things we learned was that our North Korean orphans are ill prepared for the future. Just 20 percent of our children have a realistic career plan with short, mid and long-term steps on how they will reach these goals.

This is something we can help with.

As our North Korean orphans grow into maturity, it is vital that we equip them with the tools they need to be self-sufficient. The average age of our children is now 12.5-years-old.

Thinking about career paths poses a challenge for our field staff, most of whom have been raised in a rural environment. It is difficult for them to see the importance of getting the right training to suit the type of career each child wants.

China is rapidly changing. Over the past 30 years the economy has shifted from a mostly agrarian economy to one that is highly industrialized. This means that the old way of obtaining and finding employment has been upended. Our workers need to be able to adjust so that our children can find meaningful employment and even be a benefit to the community at large.

It is also difficult for them to think about such things as they deal with the daily needs of the children. This is why we feel that it is vital for us to educate our caretakers and give them practical tools to help each child become productive members of society.

By the end of this year, we want to work with each child age 14 and older to have a clear and attainable career path. We will also work with their caretakers to make sure these plans are practical in the context in which each of these children live.

This is why we believe that it is necessary to deal with the challenges North Korean orphans face from an organizational standpoint. While our caretakers provide a stable, loving and nurturing environment for each child, Crossing Borders can come alongside these caretakers to provide additional help.

They say it takes a village to raise a child. It is a unique “village” that Crossing Borders has created. We connect donors from around the world with experts both in the U.S. and around the world to provide the love and care that each of these children need.

You can be a part of this community of help by sponsoring a child. Through our Child Sponsorship Program, you can donate $40 or $80 per month to provide for the needs of children in our network. Find out more here.

Raising North Korean Orphans - Technology

It was an abrupt ending to what was a wonderful time with our North Korean orphan, "Jae Hwa". One evening about two years ago, a child in one of our group homes said she was leaving for a boarding school nearby. The house fell under a muffled silence after she left, as if covered in a thick blanket. Jae Hwa had been planning this with her father for months but nobody in the home knew.

Like all the children in this home, Jae Hwa’s mother was North Korean refugee who was purchased by a Chinese man. Her mother was captured by the Chinese police and sent back to a North Korean prison camp when Jae Hwa was eight-years-old. She came into Crossing Borders’ care in 2011, when she was 13-years-old.

Jae Hwa’s father went to South Korea to find work and kept in touch with his daughter by text message via the smart phone he purchased her.

The children in this home were allowed to have smart phones for this very purpose. As time went on, these phones became a nuisance. The kids were using them to play games and to text with their friends. It became harder to hold their attention and this led to conflict as the caretakers of this home would sometimes take these phones away.

Parents around the world are grappling with how to control their children’s smartphone use and so too are the caretakers of our North Kroean orphans. Not only do they have to deal with them as distractions but they must also be wary of the way our children portray their living conditions in these homes to their parents.

Jae Hwa would tell her father that she felt trapped in her home, that her caretakers were too strict and that she was unhappy. These accounts, one must note, were filtered through the lens of a teenage girl. She didn’t report any abuse or specific incidents of wrongdoing. What drove her away was the rigid structure of the home, something teens around the world struggle with.

Teenagers are impulsive. They make poor choices. They are reckless.

In 2012, National Geographic Magazine published a fascinating study on the teenage brain. It was once thought that brains are fully developed by the age of 10, recent studies found that teenagers have brains that are about 90 percent developed. This development could be one of the reasons why teenagers are so impulsive, the study said.

“These studies help explain why teens behave with such vexing inconsistency: beguiling at breakfast, disgusting at dinner; masterful on Monday, sleepwalking on Saturday,” the writer says. “Along with lacking experience generally, they're still learning to use their brain's new networks.”’

This might explain one of the factors to what we consider a poor decision on the part of Jae Hwa.

She thought that living in a dorm would allow her to do what she wanted. She thought that she would be able to go to play games at a local PC gaming business through the night. She thought she would be able to go to parties.

She realized that this wasn’t true at all.

Her dormitory has strict rules and in some ways is even stricter than her Crossing Borders group home.

Our caretakers are adjusting now. They are now loosening the grip they once held on our North Korean orphans. They are now allowed to go to birthday parties and their schedules are less rigid but for now, smartphones are banned in this home.

Jae Hwa visits the home every weekend for church and even brings her classmates along. She looks thin. She doesn’t like the food at the dorm and it does not offer meals on the weekends.

Every weekend our caretakers take Jae Hwa grocery shopping and they cook her any meal that she wants. They tell her repeatedly that she could come back to the home but she does not. Her father will not allow it based on the testimony she once gave him.

For now, all we can offer her are some meals, prayers and an open door.

Update: A North Korean Refugee’s New Life in Seoul

We posted earlier about a refugee we were supporting in China. We refer to her as “Bo-ah.” Bo-ah spent years working in Chinese restaurants hoping to both make a living and to receive training in the restaurant industry. She hoped to open her own restaurant one day.

These hopes deteriorated over the course of three years. Bo-ah’s employers knew she was a North Korean refugee but said they would pay her a reduced salary. Her pay became less and less frequent as time went on and eventually she wasn’t being paid at all.

This is on top of the fact that she was a North Korean refugee in China. She had to watch out for police who could send her back to North Korea where she would be sent to a prison camp and possibly executed.

Bo-ah had no legal recourse to recover the money she worked so hard for.

She made the difficult decision to take the Modern Day Underground Railroad to Southeast Asia to gain refugee status in South Korea.

But in South Korea, Bo-ah’s struggles continued. She had the equivalent of a 3rd grade education in North Korea but she was in her early 20s.

Bo-ah has climbed back and has finished her high-school education and will be attending college in the fall.

When North Koreans began to pour into South Korea in the late 90s, the population struggled. They had a hard time adjusting to the advanced culture in South Korea and many suffered from depression from the things they experienced both in North Korea and China.

Though these struggles still persist, there have been many success stories. The average income for this population has gone up and the people appear to be adjusting, an expert familiar with the population in Seoul told us.

One of the biggest hurdles for these people to overcome is discrimination. The two Koreas have been at odds for over 60 years now and each side has demonized the other. In the 80s, one could be arrested in South Korea if they spoke with a North Korean accent.

The North Korean accent is distinct from that of the South and people can easily be identified as North Korean by the way they speak. But many North Koreans have learned the new accent. They have learned the new phrases and terms that are commonly used in South Korea. As a result, they have been able to blend in much better.

Many co-workers of North Korean refugees do not know that they have come from the North.

Perception is also changing about North Korean refugees in South Korea. South Korea now airs a television show whose title roughly translates to “ Now On My Way to Meet You,” which focuses on humanizing North Korean refugees living in Seoul. It has become popular and has effectively shifted the perception about North Koreans to many South Korean watchers.

Bo-ah and many of the 27,000 refugees who have made it to South Korea are now on the road to recovery. Yes, there are horror stories and successes but on the whole they are on the rise.

In 2011, it was estimated that North Korean refugees send about $11 million in remittances back to North Korea in a very reliable money transfer system.

Though this population carries much pain and heartache, they are beginning to show signs of growth and improvement.

We see these early refugees not only as survivors with an iron will, they are pioneers who are forging a new way to freedom for the many who will dare follow their lead.

Click here to provide life-giving support North Korean refugees in China through Crossing Borders.

Forging Ahead: Into the Garbage - North Korean Refugee's Story

First of all, we want to thank each and every one of you who donated to Crossing Borders in 2014. We were able to take in three North Korean refugees because of the generosity of our donors in 2014. We will look to add even more people to our care this year. Here is the story of one person we took in:

Sook-hee lived with her husband and daughter in a North Korean mining town. After her husband died in an accident in North Korea, she had no means of supporting herself and her daughter. She decided to take the dangerous journey to China to find work.

Crossing Borders has never encountered a North Korean refugee who has lived in China for longer than Sook-hee. She has been in China for about 20 years, which means that she was one of the first to flee to China during the Great North Korean Famine.

Sook-hee was sold to her current husband who is severely disabled from a fishing accident. He does not have arms and is blind because of an explosion on his fishing boat. She was told her husband was severely disabled by her traffickers but was offered no alternative.

She and her husband live in Northeast China in utter poverty. They scour their city everyday looking for garbage they could exchange for money. They live on just $50 per month, which is considered extremely poor for her area. Their resources are even more stretched because they have a teenage son.

A few years ago, Sook-hee found out that her daughter in North Korea died. Her daughter was 11-years-old when Sook-hee left. She found out about her daughter’s death when she received a picture of her daughter’s famished body. Sook-hee had been saving money to bring her daughter to China.

When we first told her that we could help her, she was suspicious.

“I can’t join your church because I have no money,” she said. There is an acute distrust of Christians in her city because there have been cults and other churches in the area who have swindled money from the people there.

During our staff’s lunch meeting with her, Sook-hee was very uncomfortable and was not able to eat anything besides vegetables and rice. She repeatedly asked what she needed to do to receive the aid but we assured her that she didn’t need to do anything.

For the first time in her life, Sook-hee was being offered a helping hand. The concept was so foreign to her that she didn’t know what to do.

In addition to her abject poverty, Sook-hee, as a North Korean refugee, is an illegal immigrant of China. When she collects garbage with her husband, she has to watch out for any potential threats to both herself because of her legal status and her husband because he is blind.

We hope that, through our aid, she will be able to feel the love, security and compassion of God.

Thank you to all of you who are involved in her restoration.

Rebounding, Part 3 - North Korean Refugee's Story

In the early 2000s, it was estimated that the number of North Korean refugees in China could be anywhere from 100,000 to 300,000 individuals. Today, a conservative estimate stands around 30,000 to 60,000 people while others continue to state that at least 200,000 North Korean refugees and their family members hide illegally in China. North Korean refugees still have no rights in China. There are still systematic raids carried out by the Chinese police targeting North Korean refugees, their children, and the people who help them.

This past summer China expatriated about 1,000 missionaries who worked along the Chinese-Korean border.

“The sweep along the frontier is believed to be aimed at closing off support to North Koreans who flee persecution and poverty in their homeland,” Reuters reported in August.

The constant scrutiny and raids carried out by the Chinese government along with the diminishing population of ethnic Koreans in China has left the region ill-equipped to handle the slow but steady drip of North Korean refugees into the country.

"Mrs. Jo" came into China from North Korea when this drip of North Korean refugees fleeing the country was better described as a pouring of North Korean refugees during the Great North Korean Famine of the 1990s. She was introduced to one of Crossing Borders’ missionaries in 2012 and began receiving help in 2013.

The transformation we have seen in her is astonishing. Of the $40 she receives in aid from Crossing Borders per month, she tithes half to contribute to her church and to charities.

Her back is still not straight and her inner wounds have not fully healed, yet her smile is bright. She spends most of her days working on the nearby mountain to find herbs and mushrooms to sell at her local market.

Recently, there was a dispute between two other North Korean refugees at Mrs. Jo’s church. One of them left the church vowing never to return. Mrs. Jo called the one who left and from the Bible, instructed her about why it is important for her to return. The two women made peace and both are attending the church again, receiving life-sustaining aid from Crossing Borders.

Mrs. Jo’s husband recently returned from South Korea after 10 years. They are living together and happy, she said.

“I’m living a life of thankfulness,” she said.

Think for a moment how remarkable this statement is. A woman who lost everything in the North Korean famine and sold as a commodity in China twice, is saying that her life is full of thankfulness.

This is why Crossing Borders exists, to show the compassion of Christ to North Korean refugees, the widows and orphans of North Korea. We have made a difference in the lives of thousands of people and we want to continue and expand and grow.

For all the calls to give and posts we make online, we hope that just a fraction of those who find out about us will be compelled to give out of the thankfulness in their hearts.

As many of us close out the year and perhaps take account of the good and the bad, it is our hope that we place these occurrences in a broader context. Perhaps we can use the example of Mrs. Jo to remind ourselves of how blessed we are and that, even at our lowest of lows, we can sing a song with sincere thanksgiving in our hearts.

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well with my soul.

Rebounding, Part 2 - North Korean Refugee's Story

The Tumen River runs from Mount Peaktu to the East Sea. It serves as part of the border between North Korea and China. In the winter it freezes solid. In the summer it flows heavy and is hard to cross for North Korean refugees. Both sides of the river are lightly populated for most of the river’s length. The Tumen is mostly surrounded by mountains and trees. On the North Korean side, there are signs with propaganda messages in bright red. There are hidden military bunkers along this side with thin, horizontal windows for soldiers to peak and point their guns out of.

Mrs. Jo crossed the river in the summer. It was pitch dark. Just as she was instructed, she gave the guard the name of the boy’s uncle. And she was able to cross unmolested.

The Tumen River still is a major crossing point for North Korean refugees today. But the North Korean government has made it harder to cross. Border guards are changed regularly and are instructed to shoot to kill anyone who attempts to cross. Seemingly endless barbed wire fences line on both sides. Explosives are hidden under the river’s currents, according to recent reports.

After Mrs. Jo crossed, she was instructed to go to a boy’s uncle’s house nearby. She did. She was given a meal, new clothes and was told to wait in a room with a few other North Korean women.

The women, all younger than Mrs. Jo, were picked one by one by Chinese men and taken away. Mrs. Jo soon realized that they were being sold.

Most North Korean refugees are women and a large number of them, an estimated 80% of the women, are sold to Chinese men as forced brides to supplement China’s gender imbalance.

This imbalance between men and women is one side-effect of China's One-Child Policy. Chinese couples are forced to help keep the country’s population under control. With the introduction of ultrasound technology in the 1980s, it became easy for couples to make a decision on what gender they wanted. Many have chosen to have a boy.

In 2010, The Economist reported a gender ratio of 275 boys for every 100 girls born in some of China’s provinces. This is almost a three-to-one ratio. What has resulted is an almost hopeless gender gap. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences stated that by the year 2020, there will be 30 to 40 million more men than women in China.

The demand for women is high in China and the country’s poorest men have to go to the open market to find a wife.

Mrs. Jo was duped by the little boy in North Korea. She was on the selling block and could do nothing to stop it. This boy was part of a coordinated trafficking ring, which paid for her bowl of noodles, paid off the border guards and captured tens of thousands of North Korean women to sell.

Mrs. Jo watched as the women around her were sold. But because she was older, it took over a month to find her buyer. She was eventually sold to a pig farmer as a slave.

For a year Mrs. Jo carried large buckets of water from a well to give the pigs water. She was beaten when she didn’t understand orders, which was often since she didn’t speak Mandarin. She begged her owners release to release her for months. One day they let her leave, but not on her terms.

Her captors found someone else to purchase her. At this point, her back was so strained from her time on the farm that she was permanently hunched, a condition she is still in today.

The man who purchased Mrs. Jo did not mistreat her. He was an ethnic Korean man and he was older, with grown children. They lived together for about a year in Northeast China. But then he received a South Korean work visa. Within a week he was gone.

The South Korean economy has advanced so much that the country now needs to import a pool of cheap labor. It is estimated that there are about 500,000 Korean-Chinese people who have legal work status in South Korea. This is about 20 percent of China’s ethnic Korean population.

This mass migration has decimated the working-age Korean-Chinese population in China. There are less people to help North Korean refugees. Many Korean-Chinese churches in China are almost empty of working-age congregants.

Mrs. Jo’s husband would send money to his children but not to his purchased wife. She was again in need. He would call infrequently and make promises to her that he hardly ever fulfilled. She took to picking herbs and mushrooms on a mountain nearby to sustain herself. But she still couldn’t make ends meet.

This is when she met another North Korean refugee woman connected to Crossing Borders who said there are Americans who can help her.

Part three of “Rebounding” will be posted in one week.

Rebounding, Part I - North Korean Refugee's Story

North Korean refugees have striking stories of the hardships they have endured and what their difficult lives were like in North Korea. “Mrs. Jo’s” story stands apart to many of us who have heard story after story of the suffering that has occurred amidst North Korean refugees. She lost all three of her children to starvation. But her will to survive and thrive are unlike anything we’ve seen.

North Korea suffered one of the worst famines in human history in the late ‘90s. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the country began to flounder. North Korea launched a PR campaign called “Let's eat two meals a day” in 1991 to convince its people to eat less to ease the government's burden of feeding its country. By the late ‘90s, the country was awash in starvation. It was common to see dead bodies lining the roads and piled in train stations, according to the accounts of North Korean refugees in our care. The death toll from starvation reached seven figures.

Mrs. Jo lived through these times and like many loyal citizens of the communist country, she did her best to keep the country going. In 1998, as the country was deep in the throes of the famine, she lost her 16-year-old daughter to starvation. Later the same year, her husband died of a liver disease. The hospitals did not have the medicine or manpower to treat him.

In 1999 she lost another son. Later that year her last child, a boy, wasted away in her arms as she sat on the floor of her home. He told Mrs. Jo that he wished to eat one bowl of white rice before he died.

“Yes, my son,” Mrs. Jo said. “I will go to the market and sell my shirt and buy you a bowl of rice.”

He slipped into unconsciousness and when he came to, he smiled, touched the button on her shirt and breathed his last.

Mrs. Jo hadn’t eaten in 15 days, she said. But she knew then that she had to leave her homeland or she too would perish. When she made it to a border city in North Korea, she was at the brink of death.

A boy around the age of 11 found her and bought her a bowl of noodles.

“Miss, what’s wrong?” he asked.

“I’ve been starving for so long,” Mrs. Jo said. “I want to leave.”

“My uncle lives around the border. Go there and tell him that I sent you. He will help you,” the boy said. “To get there you have to pass three military gates. If you tell them my uncle’s name they will let you pass.”

She followed this boy’s instructions and survived. Mrs. Jo was now a North Korean refugee.

Part 2 of “Rebounding” will be posted next week.

China Facts: The Result - Effects on North Korean Refugees

What has happened as a result of China’s policies on North Korean refugees has been a human rights disaster. Tens of thousands of North Korean refugee women have been sold to Chinese men.

Approximately 70 to 80 percent of North Korean refugee women are trafficked into forced marriages, sexual exploitation, and abusive labor, according to Mark P. Lagon, Ambassador-at-Large and Director, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, U.S. Dep’t of State.

This has caused a world of suffering for the women who have been sold and the children who have been born into these marriages.

power-and-control-wheel

Some women Crossing Borders has assisted have reported brutal treatment in the marriages they were forced into. Many were physically abused. One woman told us that she was locked in a shed and was "shared" by five farmers who couldn't afford to purchase a wife on their own.

Many North Korean refugees have children with their Chinese husbands. It is estimated by some experts that the population of these half North Korean, half Chinese children is about 60,000. Since China actively seeks out these women and many others flee these oppressive marriages, there is a growing population of children who do not have mothers or fathers who are willing to care for them.

Crossing Borders runs group homes to meet the needs of these children. We also provide scholarships for other children who live with family members.

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The human cost of the North Korean refugee crisis cannot be measured. Children who have seen their mothers hauled off by Chinese police are haunted by these memories. The women who have been beaten and raped by their "husbands" live with these scars.

Stay tuned for the final installment of China Facts later this week.

China Facts: The Fear of Refugees

To understand Crossing Borders, one must understand China. Over the past few weeks, we have been shedding light on facts about China and how they relate to North Korea and North Korean refugees. Like war, instability of any kind is a threat to China’s economic growth. During the late 90s and early 2000s, it was estimated that there were between 100,000 to 300,000 North Korean refugees in China. This is a number generated by the hundreds of thousands of North Korean refugees who fled for their lives during the Great North Korean Famine.

These refugees represent a destabilizing threat to the government. North Koreans can take jobs away from the Chinese. A large number of them could sap valuable resources away from Chinese citizens and can slow economic progress.

This is why the government takes a Zero Tolerance stance on North Korean refugees.

North Korean refugees in China are:

1. Given no rights

It is illegal for a Chinese citizen to feed a North Korean refugee. A North Korean refugee could be murdered by a Chinese citizen with no legal recourse. This is why many North Korean women have been sold to Chinese men as forced brides and prostitutes.

2. Captured

China actively seeks out North Koreans and the networks that provide help to them. Over the years, China has gone on active sweeps to arrest North Koreans for illegally entering the country.

3. Repatriated

China has arrested thousands of North Koreans and sent them back to their country where they are sentenced to forced labor and even executed. North Korean refugees in China are afraid to go outside, speak and seek help because these might all lead to them getting caught, arrested and sent back to certain torture.

In recent years the two countries have worked in concert to stem the flow of refugees across their shared border. They both have erected long, barbed-wire fences. North Korea has also made significant improvements to its border security in order to keep these refugees in ranging from increased rotation of border guards to explosives planted along the Tumen River.

With the economic leverage China has over North Korea, it is not far fetched to think that China could ease its Zero Tolerance policy toward North Koreans while maintaining its economic and military ties with the country.

Crossing Borders will continue to feed, protect and minister to these refugees until China changes their stance on North Korean refugees.

China Facts: North Korea as a Buffer Zone - North Korean Refugees

How does China's continuing political relationship with North Korea affect North Korean refugees? The Korean peninsula is still at war. No peace agreement has been signed as fighting between North and South stopped in 1953. There are about 29,000 US troops and marines currently stationed in South Korea. South Korea adds about 655,000 active troops to this force.

The Demilitarized Zone (or DMZ), which splits North and South Korea, is currently the most militarized border in the world.

For China to continue to grow economically, they must maintain stability. What this means is simple: No war.

Korean Military forces

China wants to keep this military standoff, involving not only the Koreas, but the United states, as far from its borders as possible.

"For the Chinese, stability and the avoidance of war are the top priorities," Daniel Sneider, the associate director for research at Stanford's Asia-Pacific Research Center, told the Council on Foreign Relations.

China has many interests in North Korea as a strategic partner, none of these interests are in the people who have been suffering since the mid-1990s, many of whom have, as North Korean refugees, come into their borders in search for help. It is, in fact, in the best interests of the Chinese government to reject the North Korean refugees who cross into China, as its desire to appease North Korea as their buffer zone is greater than its desire to harbor North Korean immigrants.