Enduring Love - Honoring North Korean Moms

As we honor and celebrate moms on Mother’s Day, we pause to recognize a few moms we have encountered in our years of helping North Korean refugees. While their stories don’t always have happy endings, we pray for the day when restoration and healing can take place for these moms and their children.

Crossing Borders has shared stories of children who have been separated from their mothers, oftentimes violently. Children who lose their mothers are profoundly affected. Their whole lives are upended and even their development is slowed by this traumatic event. Add on top of this the devastating realization that their mothers might be suffering in a North Korean prison camp.

On this Mothers Day, we remember the enduring love of these moms who will do whatever it takes. We also remember their children whose lives have been profoundly changed by these separations and yet have shown so much promise. Despite the inherent challenges this situation might bring, some North Korean children in China have found the will and strength to carry on while waiting to see their moms again one day.

YA and Kyung Tae

Our first story is about Kyung Tae, whose mother repeatedly attempts to reunite with him after being captured in China and repatriated to North Korea.

Read Part 1 - Escape from North Korea, marriage and a police raid

Click to read part 1 of Kyung Tae’s story

Read Part 2 - Betrayal in North Korea and hope for Kyung Tae’s future

We pray that YA and her son Kyung Tae will have a chance to be reunited again.

Pyunwa and her mom

Our second story comes from 2011. It is disheartening to see an entire decade later how little things in North Korea have changed.

We thank God for his hand of healing in both Kyung Tae and Pyunwa’s life. While we hold out hope that their mothers will escape to China again, we continue to support these children through their post secondary education and most importantly, we share the hope of the gospel with them. Find out more about how we support North Korean Orphans.

Kristine and her sons

Finally, we want to share an update about one mother who is currently with us at Elim House. “Kristine”, as we call her, has two teenage boys, 12 and 17. She came to us with her boys several months ago to escape her brutally abusive South Korean husband. They recently had a run in with him that left her and her oldest son severely beaten. The future of her situation is still uncertain as Kristine and her sons try to find legal protection from her husband. But time at Elim House has enabled Kristine and her sons, who have suffered the entirety of their young lives, to start receiving professional counseling.

Kristine shared recently that for the first time in their lives, she had a chance to tell her oldest son that she was sorry for all that she had done and for the pain that he had to endure until now.  Her son began crying and also apologized to his mom. They said they loved each other for the first time in their lives and hugged.

Looking ahead with hope

There are many complexities of Kristine’s situation that will take time to untangle and to finally allow her and her sons to live a life free from fear and violence. The road may be long but we will continue to support and love her. As we honor moms this month, we recognize the hardships moms like Kristine endure. We also celebrate the victories that God provisions, however small or big they may seem.

Crossing Borders has very little control over the horrific occurrences in these people’s lives. We could not stop the Chinese police from repatriating Pyunhwa and Kyung Tae’s mothers. But what we can focus on is the emotional and spiritual healing of the refugees and orphans who have to live with the terrible aftermath of these events.

This is why Crossing Borders offers North Korean refugees and their children opportunities to thrive by providing physical care, emotional healing and spiritual guidance in a safe community.

Though the chaos of this world is often outside of our control, we work to help shape the path forward for these people. And though their past is often riddled with tragedy, we see their future as full of hope.

North Korean Mothers, Chinese Fathers: Caught in the Middle

“Amy,” a North Korean mother who lives in the U.S., has not seen her daughter, who lives in China, in over a decade. Amy’s ex-husband purchased her at the height of the Great North Korean Famine in the early 2000s, when she had arrived in China as a North Korean refugee. She fled China and chose to make her home in America. Amy lives in the Midwest, has a steady job and has remarried.

We recently met Amy in Chicago. She had an odd request: To obtain guardianship over her daughter from her ex-husband’s family and so they could be reunited in the U.S.

Amy’s ex-husband’s family will not grant her request unless she promises to help her husband get a work visa and a job in the U.S., a request that is impossible for Amy to fulfill because she and her ex-husband are not legally married. Amy is also scared that, if her husband comes to the U.S., he might harm her. Crossing Borders told her that we couldn’t help because it is outside the scope of our mission.

Half-North Korean children such as Amy's daughter are often in the middle of disputes that they have little to do with. Many North Korean children in the care of Crossing Borders are in similar predicaments.

Kyung Min, a teenage boy who has been in our care since 2009, has a North Korean mother who fled China for South Korea. Kyung Min’s caretakers say that his mother “lives to get revenge on his father’s family” because she was abused after they purchased her as a forced bride. She often uses Kyung Min to slight his father’s family by making promises to them, then reneging or by sending messages to the family through Kyung Min.

This has gone on for over five years. And though Kyung Min’s caretakers have tried to shield him from this ongoing battle, he is entering into adolescence and is more aware that he is at the center of an ongoing dispute. It is hard for him to not have seen his mother in years, but to realize that much of her contact with him has been to manipulate him to hurt his father's family is a difficult matter for Kyung Min to cope with as he matures.

The lives of these children and their relationships with their North Korean mothers are complex. To say that we have put systems and rules in place to tackle all their issues is foolish. The best we can do is make sure our workers on the ground have been engaging with our children’s every need. We can say that our current workers truly love our children and that they make sure every hair on their head is in place and every problem they have is attended to.

Crossing Borders cares more about people than systems. As we continue to grow, we want to make sure we don’t lose this.

Please pray for us as we deal with diverse and complicated matters in families of Chinese fathers, lost children, distant North Korean mothers. Pray for our caretakers who deal with these problems day in and day out. And pray for our children, who are trying to make sense of their complex situations.