China Operations: 2021 Mid-year Update

A New Opening in China

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Crossing Borders has been unable to send our missionaries to China. Chinese regulations as of 2020 were such that any foreign traveler would have to quarantine for 14 days in a government-run facility in Beijing and then quarantine for another seven days if the traveler’s final destination was outside of Beijing. Even if our missionaries quarantined, movement is limited within China. Citizens including our field workers are routinely questioned at toll booths and by phone for traveling within the country.

Adding to the existing challenges of restricted travel, China has systematically deported most foreign missionaries from its borders. This has been the trend for several years now but the pandemic has accelerated it. Most foreign missionaries that Crossing Borders is in contact with have been expelled and not allowed to return.

By God’s grace, Crossing Borders’ missionaries were not expelled. But at the beginning of this year, we held internal discussions about how we could provide the level of information that we usually report to our donors and partners throughout the year with our missionaries no longer in China. As a stop-gap, we use coded language over the phone or internet to check in on our refugees. This ensures that our services are being administered properly and that there is no abuse, but it does not give us personal details into the lives of the refugees in our network. Those stories that are the hallmark of any Crossing Borders update are just not available for us at the moment. More importantly, it is becoming increasingly difficult to closely enforce the accountability that has kept our organization on the ground for so long.

Despite these overwhelming challenges, we prayed that God would keep the door open in China for us. Miraculously, we believe that God has answered our prayers.

The pastor in our network is trustworthy and a man who has served with much integrity for over a decade. While God has gifted this pastor in caring for refugees, he is not as strong in the area of administration and keeping detailed notes.  Finding field workers who are gifted in both areas has been a challenge within our network in Northeast China.

But a candidate recently emerged from our network who fits the qualifications that we need. She has experience working with large corporations that require details and accountability while also having compassion and a heart to serve North Korean refugees. As a Chinese citizen, she will have no problems with getting in and out of the country. She is truly an answered prayer.

We continue to pray for openings for our US staff to be able to visit, but we are confident that the staff that we have in place will be able to carry our work forward into the future.

The Underground Railroad in 2021

South Korea reported that in the second quarter of 2021, a mere two North Korean refugees came into the country. Our staff in China has noticed the difference as well. Our refugees in China often talked about the possibility of leaving the country, but these murmurs have stopped.

There are multiple factors that have contributed to the near halt of the Underground Railroad for North Koreans.  According to one of the pastors on our staff, the Chinese government has built a barrier on one of the major escape routes out of China. More concerning is the fact that North Korea went on complete lockdown when the pandemic became a real threat. The country shares a border with China and most of its trade is conducted with China. Shutting its country borders meant that movement between the two countries all but halted.

Many refugees who take the Underground Railroad have family in South Korea. These relatives pay for the expensive defections. And brokers arrange pickups at precise locations along the border at exact times. This activity has all but stopped.

A partner organization also told us that the brokers who normally use this route to shuttle North Koreans to freedom now cater to a different kind of clientele. Instead of North Koreans with no rights, wealthy Chinese are using their services to flee their own country from an ever encroaching government.

There is also the changing posture of the South Korean government towards these refugees. The Moon administration has taken a more skeptical approach to North Korean defector groups. They have cut funding to help North Korean defectors entering the country. They put all of the 289 defector groups in South Korea under investigation last year to make sure their paperwork was filed properly.

Our partners on the ground in South Korea have felt the pinch as well. Many of the organizations that Crossing Borders is in touch with have experienced sharp government cuts in their funding. Some are barely hanging on financially.

This perfect storm of events has led to this near cutting-off of North Koreans reaching South Korea. In the 18 years Crossing Borders has been operating in China, we feel as if our work has entered a different chapter. All of the organizations that were active when we started are now gone. Though there is much uncertainty in the near term, God allows us to continue our work. Through these unknowns, we look forward to seeing how God will continue to reveal his plans for North Koreans.

Cake: A Doorway to a North Korean Orphan's Heart

"Chun Joo" is one of the North Korean orphans in Crossing Borders' Second Wave group homes. It was Chun Joo's birthday when our team visited her orphanage. They went to an American restaurant with her, which served chicken sandwiches and French fries, the closest  to Western food our staff had eaten in over a week. Chun Joo received some small gifts and a paper crown on her head. When the candles on her gaudy cake were lit, she began to cry. Chun Joo could have been crying because she remembered the home she came from. The house she lived in prior to being brought into our Second Wave network was described by Crossing Borders’ missionaries as a “pig sty” with “no space to walk.”

It could have been because she remembered, in this moment, witnessing her father abusing her North Korean mother repeatedly until she "looked like a panda bear." She may have been crying in part because her mother left her behind to flee from her father. Following her mother's departure, Chun Joo's father began to abuse his daughter as well.

Worried for her, wanting to comfort her, our staff asked Chun Joo why she was upset. Chun Joo simply replied that it was because she was happy.

Crossing Borders' team spent a week with Chun Joo and North Korean orphans like her in Northeast China teaching them English and about the gospel. She was very shy at first but with much effort and the work of God, she opened up and began sharing with our teachers. She participated in the activities. She even prayed with our staff.

Our team knew Chun Joos' story going into the camp before they even met her. She had experienced a very harsh and difficult life as a North Korean orphan in China. Her report, however, read, “... she has totally transformed from when we first met her. Where she was shy and sad, she now always has a smile on her face.”

In a few years this fragile little girl has gone from being frightened, nervous and hesitant to being a joyful, gentle young woman. When our summer team played games with her she would always be the first to laugh at her own mistakes. She formed close bonds wit h our volunteers.

The only thing that our team knew for sure as she sat silently crying was what she told us: that she was happy.

We pray that our North Korean orphans' happiness would not be based solely on exterior circumstances but because Jesus loves them and wants to share his compassion for them.

North Korean Orphans: Sex and Half-North Korean Teens

China’s population of half-North Korean, half Chinese youths are beginning to reach adolescence, which means the introduction of adolescent problems. This is something we have seen in our group homes for North Korean orphans. Last year, a boy in one of our orphanages was caught downloading pornographic materials. His caretakers did not know what to do. In China, sex is a taboo subject. In our children’s schools there are no sex education courses and parents rarely speak to their children about the birds and the bees.

In that same orphanage, two of our girls began menstruating.

In response to this, our missionaries decided to hold a seminar about sex in a biblical context. Here is an excerpt from their report:

"We also talked about an amazing Chinese character –性 (xing) means sex, it has two words together, the first part 心 means ‘mind’, and 生 means body. So, true sex means body and soul, it matches what the Bible says.

The most important thing is that the children are committed to keep their bodies and hearts pure for the true love in God’s time for them. Children believe that God has a beautiful plan that is ordered and designed in a way to bring God glory and also will bless them."

This week, please pray for these North Korean orphans who are entering into adolescence without a family to support them. Their mothers have either abandoned them or have been sent back to North Korea by the Chinese police. Their fathers live in abject poverty and there are no people to raise them except for outsiders like Crossing Borders. Please also pray for our caregivers who do their best to address the problems of each of our children in a loving and biblical way.

North Korean Refugees and Orphans: We Need People

After Jim and Mary’s youngest child graduated from college they knew it was time to make good on a commitment they had made long ago. It had been a dream of theirs to help North Koreans refugees and orphans. But they only had one problem: they didn’t know how. By luck or providence (maybe a little bit of both), their eldest daughter married a director of Crossing Borders and the rest has been history.

Jim and Mary’s commitment to North Korean refugees and orphans we have helped has been unmatched. We have often times gotten into heated debates trying to convince them not to use all of their monthly salary to help our refugees. We have never seen a couple so fit to run our field operations. They are compassionate and they are tough. They know when to hold their tongues and they know when not to.

You probably hear all too often from groups like us that we need money. And we do. We also need prayer (hence this blog) for North Korean refugees and orphans. But one of the most understated, underestimated need that we have is people.

God doesn’t work through money alone. He doesn’t work through prayer alone. God works powerfully through people, imperfect and fallible vehicles of His grace.

As we have shared our plans to expand the scope and depth of our care, the only way this will happen is through people who are willing to serve North Korean refugees and orphans. Here’s what we are looking for:

- A minimum of five years of ministry experience, lay or pastoral at an evangelical, Bible-believing church - A proven track record of integrity and excellence in their personal life and interpersonal dealings - A minimum of seven years of professional experience in which you have tangible examples of excellence - Membership and good standing with an evangelical, Bible-believing church - Fluent in Korean - Ability to communicate in English - Asian by appearance. Ability to blend into the Chinese population

We are willing to bend on some of these qualifications (except the last three). However, above of all of the aforementioned necessities, we are looking for workers who are willing to love North Korean refugees and orphans, as well as the Chinese people. We are looking for individuals who are willing to listen first and speak last.

If you can’t pick up and move to China or do not know someone who may be able to, please join us in prayer as we try to change lives and a region through the people God provides.

Prayer for North Korean Refugees: A Quiet Migration

North Korean refugees have been making their way through China to South Korea for about 15 years. About 27,000 of them have made it through the Modern Day Underground Railroad through Southeast Asia to freedom in South Korea and the rest of the world. But there has been another migration from China to South Korea that has been impacting North Korean refugees in the area. Koreans in China have been migrating to South Korea in droves over the past few years. The Chosun Ilbo recently reported that more than 600,000 Korean Chinese have migrated from China to Korea in 2011. And Bloomberg News reported in 2009 the beginnings of a mass migration of South Korean citizens from China back to their homeland.

This secondary migration has made it even harder for North Korean refugees to hide in the region. There are fewer people who are sympathetic to their needs and fewer members of the underground church to aid them as they seek refuge from the world’s most repressive regime.

Recently, Crossing Borders took in a young girl named “Sunnah”. Sunnah's mother is a North Korean refugee who fled to South Korea through the Underground Railroad. Sunnah and her father were beckoned by her mother to South Korea, where they lived until 2010. In a new country with new possibilities, her mother began to ignore Sunnah and her father. Sunnah's parents began to fight and eventually Sunnah's father returned to a life of poverty in Northeast China, bringing his daughter with him.

To make things worse, Sunnah’s father has a degenerative bone disease. He can no longer walk. They stayed with Sunnah's uncle, who also lived in abject poverty.

Their local underground church was poorly equipped to help because many of their members had moved to South Korea in search of economic opportunities. Our missionaries report rapidly diminishing numbers in congregations of underground churches. Many are left with only the elderly in their congregation.

It was by God’s providence that we met Sunnah and her father through friends of friends. She is being put into a boarding school and is doing better.

Please pray for North Korean refugees in this rapidly changing landscape, many of whom are finding it harder and harder to find help.

Prayer for North Korean Refugees: Missing Missionaries in China

As we pray for North Korean refugees and those who work on the field, please pray for two missing missionaries who have recently disappeared in Northeast China. One of the missionaries is a US citizen. The US State Department has been notified and is conducting the necessary research. There isn’t very much information that we can share publicly but we can say that there has been a string of disappearances of missionaries in the region. The missionaries who have disappeared are not associated with Crossing Borders, but are part of a network of Christian missionaries in Northeast China who minister in the region. It is too early to say who is responsible for these disappearances.

China is a strange combination of dictatorship and democracy it is neither and it is both. If you’ve traveled there, you no doubt have experienced both freedom and the watchful eye of the government - cameras on every street corner, the censored Internet sites and quiet whispers of the locals as you walk by.

If you stay long enough, you might get lulled into thinking that nobody cares what you are doing until something like this happens. Events such as these serve as a chilling reminder of the power the Chinese government possesses over its guests and the evident danger of missionary work. This is something through which we pray for our own missionaries as they serve North Korean refugees with caution and secrecy.

Please pray for the two missionaries to return, for their safety and for gospel to continue to spread in this region without fear. We pray that God would continue His work, despite earthly authorities, and that the gospel would reach many North Korean refugees living in hiding. For His glory!

Prayer for North Korean Refugees: Harvest Workers

Crossing Borders has been fortunate to have a string of missionaries in China who have driven our work to new heights. Our current missionaries aiding the North Korean refugees and orphans in our care are fantastic people. Two years ago our staff member made a visit to our work in China and was able to spend quite a bit of time with our current missionaries. They noted on the trip, "They're twice my age but they were running circles around me as we moved from task to task. At one point I asked if we could slow down. They didn’t."

Our missionaries brought our staff to a remote farming village in Northeast China where there are many North Korean refugees in hiding. Refugee after refugee lined up to tell our missionaries their stories and their troubles. In response, each one was treated with kindness and compassion. With each North Korean refugee, our missionaries listened and ministered avidly, passionately. Tears flowed and prayers were shared.

After several years on the field, our missionaries continue to show remarkable care toward the individuals they have met time and time again, with each and every new North Korean refugee who enters our Refugee Rescue program. Missionaries in our line of work tend to get hardened and burnt out. These two got better with time.

But now their commitment is up and they are looking to move on. Though we fully support this decision, we are at a loss as to how we are going to find people to fill their shoes.

We remain hopeful and see this as an opportunity, not a setback. We pray in eager expectation to see what God has in store for us. We pray that this will make our organization grow, not shutter.

For this we ask you to join with us in prayer. This is a specific need that we need met and before we get into specifics about what we are looking for, we really want to spend time in prayer about it.

Please join with us as we pray asking God to send workers to His harvest field of North Korean refugees in China.

“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

- Matthew 9:36-38

Why We Let North Korean Refugees Use Newspaper as Toiletry

The following post was written by a Crossing Borders staff member: It was perhaps one the most meaningful exchanges I’ve had with one of the North Korean refugees in our care. And it was the day that I realized it was okay to let our refugees live in sub-American standards.

I was escorted by our missionaries into Ae-young’s apartment on a dark night. It was in the outskirts of a small city in Northeast China. The roads had no streetlights, the buildings had no power in their stairwells. We used a cell phone to see if we had the right address. Ae-young and her 10-year-old son welcomed us in.

Ae-young is a North Korean refugee. When she crossed the border from North Korea into China, she was sold to a Chinese man and later, with their son, escaped. On her way out she had a chance to grab only one thing: a guitar.With Crossing Borders' support and security, the guitar now hung on the wall of her dim apartment we had relocated her and her son into.

“Do you play?” she asked.

“A little,” I said in broken Korean.

The guitar was dusty. Four of its six strings were intact. The tuning keys creaked as if they had never been turned. I played and the five of us, me, our two missionaries, Ae-young and her son, sang old hymns quietly so we wouldn’t disturb her neighbors. I broke one more string as I played but no one seemed to notice.

After we sang the missionaries and Ae-young spoke while I played with her son. Then I excused myself to the bathroom. I noticed a healthy stack of newspaper within arms reach of the toilet and realized they used this stack of coarse paper to wipe in the bathroom.

When we left I told our missionaries that I wanted to go to the store and get Ae-young and her son some toilet paper. It was a nice gesture, I thought. But our two missionaries, surprisingly, advised against it.

Ae-young was happy with her current situation. She had been provided with this apartment recently. Her new home was an immense upgrade from the conditions she was living in before she had been taken in by Crossing Borders.

Crossing Borders’ goal is not merely to address the living standards of the North Korean refugees we help. Our goal is also not to simply supply refugees with materials we think they need. We try to help them by giving them a safe, clean environment to live in, to meet their needs of food and shelter so that they can figure out what they want to do next. We want to help them to build towards their future independently, responsibly and self-sufficiently. We will guide them to the means to do this whether it is in building a life in China or in taking the steps to flee to South Korea.

I knew this before I had encountered Ae-young and her son but it’s hard to realize that things like nice toilet paper are luxuries. We are used to living with so much that we can forget that our work is not to provide only material happiness.

A lot has been said recently of compassion and the damage organizations like ours can cause in the life of a person with material needs. The perception is that groups like ours come in and take “compassion” on North Korean refugees' standards of living, making them dependent on our aid. In cases this can become a real, detrimental issue. I have seen the damage that money without wisdom and oversight can do in a country that is just beginning to get a taste for Western materialism.

But the injustice in the North Korean refugee crisis isn’t that they can’t afford iPhones, or even toiletries available to modern countries. It is that they have been lied to and spiritually decimated by their government. It is that they have been frozen in fear and made fugitives to victim mentalities.

The goal of Crossing Borders isn’t to bridge the material divide between North Korean refugees and American citizens. We exist because there is a huge injustice in the world and we believe that it is our calling as Christians to go help, to empower them with Christ's compassion.