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 Future - for North Korean Refugees

Though no one can predict what will happen, many experts are not optimistic that any real reforms will pass in China and North Korea while hunger will continue to drive North Korean refugees across the border in search of food and relief. But there’s hope. Information continues to trickle into North Korea from China debunking the lies the North Korean regime has told its people. This information is making a big difference inside North Korea.

In 2012 Intermedia, a consulting group specializing in research, did extensive research on the media consumption of North Koreans and how they heard about the outside world. The study found that 79 percent of the respondents cited word-of-mouth as their primary source of non state sanctioned information.

"Consistent with expectations in any tightly controlled media environment, word-of-mouth sources -people sharing with those they trust - are the most common sources of information for the majority of North Koreans. North Koreans commonly cite "rumors" as the most important source of non-official information available to them," the report states.

Sources of Information

Crossing Borders plays an integral role in this exchange of information. The more safe harbor we provide to North Korean refugees, the more information about the outside world will seep in via messages sent into the country and North Koreans returning to their country.

This degradation of trust North Koreans have for their government will only lead to a weakening of power for the Kim regime. One day this might lead to regime change and substantive improvements for the people but it might also lead to further oppression and despair for the people.

The good news is that you can change the course of many North Koreans today by doing four things:

1. Pray – Pray for reform in both countries. Pray that God would protect the workers who help and harbor these people. Pray for circumstances that will change the hearts of those who lead both countries.

2. Learn – There are many great resources available that will help you understand this complex situation better. Read books and websites. Watch movies and documentaries. Understand what is happening in China and in the North Korean refugee population.

3. Tell – Spread the word about the plight of the North Korean refugee.

4. Give – If you can, donate to Crossing Borders and other great organizations to help the hundreds of thousands of North Korean refugees in need.

This concludes our series about China and how their policies affect North Koreans in North Korea and North Korean refugees in hiding in China, living South Korea, or other parts of the world. We hope you learned something. Please feel free to contact us via Facebook or email if you have any questions.

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.

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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.

China Facts: China's Economy - North Korean Refugee Crisis

How do China's economic ties with North Korea affect the North Korean refugee crisis in China? In order for the Communist Party in China to remain in power, it must have a growing economy. Unemployed people = Unhappy people

Graph of China, US GDP Growth Rate Since 2000 Source: World Bank

Though China’s growth has made it the world’s second-largest country by GDP, because of the sheer size of the country, many of its people remain in poverty ranking 121 out of 228 countries.

China must support its breakneck economic growth by securing resources from around the world for cheap.

This is part of the reason why China wants to keep close economic ties to North Korea.

ChinaNKTradePie

China represents about 60 percent of North Korea's economy, according to the Congressional Research Service. And this relationship continues to grow.

ChinaNKTrade

What China gets out of this relationship are cheap raw materials, which are abundant in North Korea.

Natural resources accounted for 73 percent of North Korea’s bilateral trade with China in 2012, according to the Korea Times.

Over the past 10 years, China has effectively propped up the dysfunctional North Korean economy and provided little incentive for the regime to change its ways. It has done so at the expense of the people of North Korea, many of whom report to us widespread poverty in the country's outer-regions.

The people of North Korea continue to suffer while the elite in North Korea prospers. The Daily NK reported that Kim Jong Un spent $644 million dollars in luxury goods last year. North Korea recently requested $600 million in food aid.

China's economic ties to North Korea creates the situation from which the North Korean refugees flee from. These same North Korean refugees are those who China refuses to accept into their country. This is why the work of Crossing Borders is essential in the region. As North Korean refugees cross into China and as China refuses to offer any human rights to these people, we will continue to be a safety net for the people of North Korea, who have suffered so greatly.

Stay tuned for more facts about China.

China Facts: Communications - with North Korean Refugees

How does China's strict policies on communication affect Crossing Borders' efforts working with North Korean refugees? The Communist Party in China wants to retain power and this means that they stifle voices of dissent. This is why China restricts Internet usage, monitors phone communication and restricts freedom of the press.

China employs a total of 250,000 to 300,000 people to monitor their websites. (Source: “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression,” 2013. King, Pan, Roberts.)

That’s about the population of Anchorage, Alaska.

China knows that messages of dissent can quickly spread through the Web so they do everything they can to squash them.

Dissedent Chinese artist Ai Weiwei reacts during a group interview at his studio in Beijing

In 2011, one of the most outspoken critics of the Chinese government, artist and activist Ai Weiwei, was arrested and detained for 81 days on what was believed to be trumped-up tax evasion charges following his harsh critique of the government’s handling of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Since his release from jail, he has been barred from leaving Beijing.

Crossing Borders is always vigilant about using the Chinese network to communicate. We assume China can listen in on our phone conversations and can look into most of our communications made over the Internet. Over the past 12 years, we have developed ways to secure our Internet connection and speak in code, among other things, to keep our communications secure. These measures and many more keep our North Korean refugees and workers on the ground safe so that our work can continue.

Stay tuned for more facts about China.

China Facts: Population - Trafficking of North Korean Refugees

Our second installment of our series about China is about China's massive population, which affects many North Korean refugees who seek help in the country. China’s sheer size is its biggest strength and its biggest weakness. China is the world’s most populace country with 1.3 billion people. The United States by contrast has about 300 million people and is still the world’s third-largest country by population.

A mass revolt in China would be overwhelming for the government. The government knows this. So the sheer size of the population has been a check on the government. As we mentioned in our last post, China’s ruling class seeks to hold onto power. This has been the driving force of the country’s turn to capitalism and subsequent economic boom.

In his book, “The Party,” Richard McGregor writes that the Chinese government "is all about joining the highways of globalization, which in turn translates into greater economic efficiencies, higher rates of return, and greater political security,"

China has a giant pool of cheap labor that is more than willing to take low-wage manufacturing jobs. But it is also a challenge to feed and control a population so large.

China has taken some measures to curb the growth of its population. One of these measures is the infamous One Child Policy, which went into effect in 1979. By law, most Chinese couples cannot conceive more than one child. This policy has been relaxed several times over the course of decades but the core of it remains.

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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 cruelest effects of this lopsided gender seesaw will be felt by the involuntary bachelors living in a culture in which marriage is expected,” wrote Susan Scutti in her January report in Newsweek. “These surplus men are sometimes disabled (20 percent), often illiterate, and nearly always the ones who have been left behind to live in rural communities with limited financial prospects.”

As a result, North Korean refugee women who enter China illegally have been sold to the poorest of Chinese men, many of whom are disabled.

The country that is responsible for this gender imbalance has, in effect, created this “market” for vulnerable women and on top of this, hunts these same women down and sends them back to North Korea where they will be tortured and even executed.

Crossing Borders has ministered to men and children who have lost their wives and mothers by forced repatriation. The practice leaves families devastated. Many turn to alcohol to cope.

An overwhelming majority of the North Korean refugees Crossing Borders has helped over the years have been sold to Chinese men. Some have been sold more than once.

Stay tuned for more facts about China.

China Facts: One Party - Effects on North Korean Refugees

What are the political conditions of the nation in which our North Korean refugees seek safety and shelter? China is an economic behemoth that is often difficult to understand. You might have seen reports that they're investing heavily in Africa, flexing their muscle in Hong Kong or quietly keeping North Korea afloat. But why? What is China's game plan? Why do they operate under the veil of such mystery?

Crossing Borders operates under the umbrella of the Chinese government so it is essential to understand China in order to understand the plight of the work that we do. Hopefully, our "China Facts" series will give you a better picture of how China affects North Korea and the North Korean refugees we serve.

Our first installment is about China's one party system.

China is a one-party system. The Communist Party in China rules the country. There are no conservative or liberal parties. China's government is centralized and ruled by those who are members of the Communist Party. Though it’s hard to generalize an institution so large, it is safe to say that one of the party’s main objectives is to hold onto power.

Chinese citizens have the right to vote for lower-level officials but these candidates often have to be endorsed by the party to make it to ballot. High-level officials are elected from within.

This system has given China a decided economic edge because the decision-making process is agile and the country is able to quickly respond to changes in the global economy. Where this system lags is in the area of human rights.

In their 2014 World Report, Human Rights Watch says about the country:

"Rapid socio-economic change in China has been accompanied by relaxation of some restrictions on basic rights, but the government remains an authoritarian one-party state. It places arbitrary curbs on expression, association, assembly, and religion; prohibits independent labor unions and human rights organizations; and maintains Party control over all judicial institutions."

What this means for the estimated 200,000 North Korean refugees in China is that they are granted no human rights because China sees cooperating with North Korea in their best interest. There is no legal recourse if a Chinese citizen murders a North Korean refugee.

This is why Crossing Borders has and will continue to operate underground. This is why we change the names of the people we help and the people who help them. This is why we blur the faces of the individuals we help.

Stay tuned for more facts about China.

To Stay or Leave - North Korean Refugee in China

You’re starving. You’re about to be arrested in North Korea for something that you wouldn’t give a second thought to in the free country. So you run. You walk through the night to elude the police. Avoid contact with people during the day. You’re tired. You’re starving. You wade across a river and make it to China.

But when North Koreans cross into China, they are not in the clear. They are often in danger and need assistance.

This is what is happening now to a North Korean refugee we are in contact with. She is a young woman who we will call “Soon Me.”

Soon Me went to China when she was in her teens. Her mother was sold to a Chinese man so Soon Me was left on her own to find safety and work. She picked up Mandarin quickly and started working at local restaurants as a waitress. For years she has lived like this. She works hard and stays in touch with her mom.

Recently, her step-father visited the restaurant she is working in and revealed to the owners where she was from for reasons unclear to us. He demanded the owners pay him to keep quiet.

It is illegal to help to a North Korean refugee in China. You can be jailed for giving a North Korean a meal. But now Soon Me is outed. She cannot work anymore and she is afraid to leave her house.

These are the issues North Korean refugees face on a daily basis in China. Even the possibility of someone revealing their identity can send fear through them. Soon Me is looking for safety.

Crossing Borders is working with her to see what her best option is. We can move her to another city or we can send her through the Underground Railroad that will take her to Southeast Asia where she will be granted refugee status and where she will be able to move to many free countries throughout the world.

The consequences for either of these options are daunting.

If she stays, she will live under a cloud of fear. Perhaps her father-in-law can find her and threaten her and the people who are helping her. Perhaps someone else will find out the truth and she will have to run again. She will most likely have to cut off ties to her mother.

If she takes the Underground Railroad, she might be caught, arrested and sent back to a North Korean prison camp where she will be tortured and even executed. Also, there are many unsavory people who operate as mercenaries on the Underground Railroad. Soon Me can be mistreated along the way. She could get on an operator’s nerves and be left behind with no one to help.

These are just a few of the daunting consequences we have to consider with Soon Me before we move her.

Over the past 11 years we have helped people like Soon Me who were in predicaments like these and take extra precautions to mitigate the dangers. Many North Koreans around the world have found freedom and many more receive life-sustaining aid through our partnerships with donors.

Please pray for us as we make our next decision with Soon me. There are no perfect answers, only perfect peace through Christ.

**Update**

A couple months ago, we connected Soon Me with another organization who has a vast amount of experience on the Modern Day Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad stretches from Northeast China to Southeast Asia and has delivered many North Korean refugees safely out of China so they can start new lives in countries such as South Korea and the US.

Soon Me was instructed to meet a Underground Railroad guide in a public place and when she did, she told us that she was mistreated and was again in hiding.

She made it to one of our workers one day to seek help and after staying with her for a couple weeks, she again left, this time in the middle of the night. She only left a note saying she was thankful for our help and would contact us soon.

She has not contacted us and we do not know where she is. Our field worker said that she didn't seem unhappy or that Soon Me expressed any desire to leave.

The lives and motivations of North Korean refugees are complicated. Crossing Borders helps them if they want help but don't press them. They are in fear. Often times their fears are unfounded but we respect that this is how they are.

North Koreans grow up under a cloud of scrutiny. They can be punished for expressing their feelings. So it is often difficult to read them.

It is likely Soon Me has moved to another city in China and has started a new life. She has our phone numbers and we have expressed to her that we will always be there if she needs help but for now, she's gone.

It is sad to think about the tens of thousands of North Koreans who, like Soon Me, are living on the run with no plans for their future and living day to day. They carry with them the pain of leaving their homelands and the suffering of entering a country who does not welcome them.

Crossing Borders exists to help people like Soon Me, this generation of North Koreans who are starving, hurt and lost. Though we have helped thousands find safety in China and freedom outside of China, it is stories like Soon Me that affect us the most. Our doors will always be open for her and our phones always on.

North Korean Orphans: Lice and Other Curious Transactions

“Meena,” a North Korean orphan we support in our Second Wave program, came to English Camp this year with a short, boyish haircut. This was surprising to many of us because her personal style has always been very girly with lots of pastels and frills. She has had long hair for several years. We later found out that she had lice. Her caretakers think that she contracted it from school. She had to cut her hair just before camp started.

At English Camp, our annual, four-day retreat where we take many of the children in our programs out of the city and into the wilderness, 10-year-old Meena slept next to her counselor, a woman from the US.

After the team arrived back to the US, her counselor noticed little insects in her hair. She realized that she had contracted lice from little, sweet Meena. The counselor had to cut her hair too.

This exchange of lice expresses the beauty of our organization. Not only do we want to feed, shelter and pay for our children’s education, we want to love them intimately and try our best to provide the care that their parents would.

Meena’s mother was sold to her Chinese husband as the effects of the Great North Korean famine were still wreaking havoc on the country. In 2003, her mother fled her country illegally and was sold to the highest bidder. Their child, Meena, was born stateless. China did not recognize her as a citizen because of her mother’s status and North Korea did not recognize her because she was born in China.

When Meena was an infant, her mother escaped her life of enslavement and shortly after, Meena’s father left town to find work. This left Meena in the care of her aunt, who contracted an unknown disease that left half her body paralyzed in 2010.

There was no one to take care of her.

Crossing Borders took Meena in and has cared for her for about four years. During this time she has experienced the love and affection of her caretakers, a local pastor and his wife.

Our organization aims to love and care for North Korean orphans like Meena. We take pains to ensure that she grows up in an environment filled with love and affection. Like our mission statement says, we aim to “show the compassion of Christ to North Koreans and their children in China.” That is exactly what we are doing for Meena.

Every child has their moments of pain, times when they act out. This deeply wounded population of North Korean orphans have many scars from their past. Our people are there for these children to absorb their pain in exchange for love. We believe that this is what it means to show to compassion of Christ to these people.

Isaiah 53:5 says that Jesus “was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.”

Just like the loving counselor who took on lice so that Meena could have someone to sleep next to at night, we believe that Christ has done the same for us a million times over.

When asked if she would do it all over again, knowing she would contract lice, our counselor did not hesitate to say, “Yes.”

Our caretakers do the same, daily. Our missionaries have given up a comfortable life in the West for close to a decade. Our staff and volunteers have given up their time, prayers, sweat and tears to make sure this organization is running.

At the heart of Crossing Borders is an attitude of sacrifice to show this love to the people we help.

North Korean Orphans: An Impossible Question

We recently held our second annual English Camp for the North Korean orphans in our Second Wave ministry. The children in this ministry are born into forced marriages with Chinese men who purchased North Korean women, the children's mothers, as brides. The camp lasted a four days and a number of our children were able to attend. In this time we had the opportunity to teach them English and provide spiritual counseling. Most of the North Korean orphans in Second Wave have lost their mothers, who escaped to South Korea, were captured by the Chinese police to be sent back to a North Korean prison camp, or have run away from their repressive marriages.

One of the North Koreans, “Yung” attended camp. Yung was abandoned by her mother when she was three-years-old. Her mother left her on the day Yung had open-heart surgery, which was about six years ago.

During camp, one of our counselors was able to form a very close bond with Yung. Towards the end of the camp, Yung asked the counselor, “Can you be my new mom?”

The best way to describe Yung is spunky. She has a personality that compensates for her diminutive height. When we took her measurements, she fell well below the average 5th percentile for height and weight in her age group.

Yung lives with her father in rural Northeast China. We make frequent visits to her home, which out missionaries have described as a pigpen. In a recent visit in January, dirty dishes were strewn on their small living space and Yung was covered in ash from a poorly maintained, coal-burning heating system. She had a heavy cough.

She is loved and cared for by her father but her desire for her mother is obvious.

We teach our counselors to answer our children honestly, especially when they ask for the impossible, like Yung did this year. Our counselor answered, “I can’t be your mother but I want to see you again.”

Yung began making appointments immediately.

One of the purposes of our camp is to teach our North Korean orphans a language that can be very useful to them; it is also for the purpose of bringing the healing hope of the gospel to these children. We try to remind them that they are not forgotten but that there is a God who loves them and cares about them.

To sponsor a child like Yung, please visit our Child Sponsorship page.

Field Update: 8 North Korean Orphans

Recently, Crossing Borders took in eight new North Korean orphans into our Second Wave ministry, bringing the total number of children we help to 62. Through Second Wave, we help children of North Korean refugee women who have been sold as forced brides to Chinese men. The population of North Korean orphans is in the tens of thousands, according to experts.

Many of the children born into these forced marriages are separated from their mothers, making them orphans, according to the United Nations, who defines children who are missing one or both of their parents as orphans. Most of their mothers were captured by the Chinese police, sent back to North Korea, placed in concentration camps and never heard from again.

“Jung” is a 13-year-old boy we have recently taken in. He is the son of a North Korean refugee woman who had been sold to his father. His mother was captured by the Chinese police and sent back to North Korea when he was young. His father works far away in another region in China. Jung’s elderly grandmother is the only one able to take care of him but she is so old that she needs help with basic chores around their home. A neighborhood man comes to their home daily and helps.

Jung is autistic. He attends a school in the region for special needs children. He plays well by himself and has a keen interest in electronics and computers. He does not engage in conversations with other people but understands what is said when he is spoken to and can read out loud.

Jung was taken to church and his church laid hands on him to pray for him. He didn’t like this but over time he began to warm to the people there. Recently, he put his hand on a hymn and began to cry. Since that day, he enjoys being prayed for.

To find out how you can help children like Jung, go to our Child Sponsorship page.

Over the past two years, Crossing Borders has been able to nearly double the number of North Korean orphans we help because of the success of our Child Sponsorship program.

Twice a North Korean Refugee

“We never had enough firewood in the winter,” Yae Rin, a North Korean refugee in Crossing Borders' care told us. “My dad and I would go very early in the morning to the mountain and cut down a pine tree to bring home. We would have been in such big trouble if we were caught. When there was enough snow on the ground, we could take a big tree and slide it down the mountain.” Yae Rin is a young woman. She is less than five-feet-tall. She has a bright disposition and innocence about her. It’s hard to tell that she is a North Korean refugee in hiding in China. It is shocking to learn of the hardship she endured growing up in North Korea. Yae Rin crossed the border into China with nothing and subsequently had to live for years with the fear of repatriation by the Chinese government.

In North Korea, Yae Rin and her family shared a house with four other families and struggled to find enough work to eat on a regular basis. “I had to get out, so I planned to cross the border into China. I went to my friend’s house to prepare to leave but somehow my father found out and stopped me. We cried together and I went back home.” But a few days later, Yae Rin crossed the river into China. She hasn’t seen her family since she escaped.

Soon after crossing over into China, Yae Rin was found by a local Christian who took her to an underground church for safety. Countless other North Korean refugee women are trafficked into China from North Korea or found by wrongdoers and sold as wives or prostitutes. Experts estimate the number of North Korean refugees to be in the hundreds-of-thousands, those who have crossed illegally into China since the Great North Korean of the 1990s.

Yae Rin found work in China and Crossing Borders was able to help her with rent and obtain an ID so she could apply for jobs. She would find work at different restaurants, often working 7 days a week. The field staff at Crossing Borders would meet her regularly during this time for encouragement and prayer. Our missionary couple shared many hours during Yae Rin’s time off talking about her past as well as hopes for her future.

After a few years of struggle and weariness, Yae Rin felt ready to go to South Korea. The trip along the Modern Day Underground Railroad to freedom can take weeks. In addition, South Korea requires each North Korean refugee to take several months of reeducation courses before entering mainstream society. Yae Rin made the trip safely and took all the required coursework in South Korea.

This past year, our field staff who shared time caring for Yae Rin in China were able to meet her just outside a subway station soon after she got her own apartment in Seoul. They hugged and wept for a long time out on the street. They went to her new home and prayed to thank God and cried together again.

Yae Rin, now 26 and a North Korean refugee twice over, through the dangers of China and now in the modern day rush of South Korea, shared one of her first thoughts landing at Incheon airport in South Korea. “I’m finally in Korea. I don’t have to worry about hiding.”

Then while on the bus crossing the long bridge into the city in mid-winter she thought, “I wish my family could be with me now.”

Adjusting to a new life provides many challenges for North Korean refugees but Yae Rin shares that she is happy and now she finally has the freedom to fulfill some of her hopes and dreams. Today, Yae Rin is studying hard and has plans to become a nurse. She may never escape the memories of her past but maybe she feels it’s now her turn to do some healing.

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.

Director's Notes: Usefulness of Suffering

The following post was written by Crossing Borders' Executive Director, Dan Chung and was originally posted in 2014. The story has been updated to reflect the changes in the life of the North Korean orphan he references.  

At the age of eight, I began a dark stretch in my life. I started to have night terrors. Every night through my early teens, I would be caught in a terrible dream where I was running from some terrifying, unseen force. This dream would manifest itself into reality. Each night I would get out of bed screaming and run around my house and sometimes my neighborhood.

Some mornings I would awake to find myself sleeping on the curb.

As a result I was afraid of sleep and would do anything to delay the inevitable. And to this day, I have trouble falling asleep, even as I lay exhausted in bed.

But in some intangible way, this small bit of suffering has laid the foundations for my life as an adult. The pain, which was deep and seemingly unending, drives my work as executive director of Crossing Borders today. As I’ve sat and listened to a countless number of resilient North Korean refugees tell me their stories since 2003, my heart still breaks. And I know that it is in part because of the small quantum of pain I experienced as a child.

Today half-North Korean orphans in Northeast China experience a much greater pain. I saw it in the eyes of "Haneul," a North Korean orphan we helped. Haneul and her family have told us her story. 

Standing out on the streets, a wandering North Korean orphan was crying and looking for anyone to help her. Haneul was six-years-old.

Her North Korean mother fled China through the Underground Railroad and cut off all communication to the people she knew in China, even her daughter and her husband, who purchased her in 2001. Haneul's father left for South Korea to find his wife and to find work.

He would send money back to a friend in China, who was taking care of Haneul. But after a while the money stopped and he was never heard from again. Some say he died. Some say he moved to a different country. No one knows for sure.

Shortly after her father’s money stopped, Haneul was abandoned in the middle of a busy city by her guardians.

She wandered around and somehow found her uncle, a poor Chinese man. He took his niece in. He has a half-North Korean daughter, who is a little younger than Haneul. He too had a wife who he purchased. She left him after their daughter was born. He is poor. He has worked odd jobs here and there but nothing permanent. And he has no idea how to take care of these two girls.

In early 2014, when I visited Haneul at her uncle’s house, She was living in squalor. The soot from the coal that locals burn underground to heat their homes was caked her skin. She was shivering and had a runny nose. There were pans with crusted ramen noodles on the floor of their small living space.

Some experts say that North Korean orphans in China number in the tens-of-thousands. Though many have family who care for them, most live in abject poverty. Some wander the streets looking through bins for trash they can sell. Most long for their mothers who have either taken the Underground Railroad and have found greener pastures or have been captured by the Chinese police, sent back to North Korea and have never been heard from again. All North Korean orphans suffer in some way, shape or form at a young age.

David Brooks of the New York Times published an article titled “What Suffering Does.” It is an interesting reminder about how suffering can be used to bring meaning and purpose in a person’s life.

He says that suffering “means seeing life as a moral drama, placing the hard experiences in a moral context and trying to redeem something bad by turning it into something sacred.”

Though the North Korean orphans in our care have suffered much in their lives, we have hope that they can use this pain as a vehicle to do good. The best way we see this happening is through a vibrant relationship with Christ.

Haneul is on the path to redeeming her experiences. In 2015 she was reunited with her mother in South Korea. She goes to school and is very happy, according to our missionaries who visited her in 2016. 

As we pray for the innumerable North Korean orphans lost in China, let us remember the importance of suffering, that the deeper it is, the more capacity people have to redeem it. It is our hope that these children can take the deep reservoir of their experiences and unleash it back into the world to transform it.

North Korean Refugees: A Meaningless Epidemic

What is it like to realize that everything you once thought true is not? How does it feel when you realize up is down and down is up? This is happening to tens of thousands of North Korean refugees and people today today. "Eun," a North Korean refugee, lived a relatively normal life in North Korea. She worked odd jobs, as a child, through the famine. She had full belief in her government until she heard a knock at the door of her home. It was a North Korean woman who had returned from a stay in China. The woman was pregnant and about to give birth.

Eun worked as a midwife when she was 12. She helped this complete stranger deliver a baby in her living room. When it was discovered that the baby was conceived in China, word spread quickly to the authorities and the woman and child were sent to prison. Eun was interrogated harshly for days about her association to this woman.

“It was then I began to question the regime and everything that I knew,” Eun said. “I was lost.”

Many North Korean refugees speak of a point in their lives when they began to question what their country taught them. North Korean children are indoctrinated at a very early age to believe in the god-like power of their founder, Kim Il Sung. They are also taught that they live in paradise on earth.

North Koreans do not have legal access to any information that can dispute their government’s claims. All foreign media is banned. They have no Internet access. They are in a bubble of lies. When the bubble pops, they are often left in shock, grief and lives that feel as if they are void of meaning.

With information from the outside world leaking into North Korea and North Korean refugees spilling out, there is a crisis of depression growing in North Koreans around the world.

This weight of self-doubt and betrayal only adds to the already treacherous and terrible conditions many North Korean refugees suffer in China. Most women who enter into China are sold as commodities to the highest bidder. Many are treated like slaves and forced to cook, raise livestock and farm.

North Korean refugees are also hunted down by the Chinese police and forced to live in terror. If caught, they are sent back, imprisoned, tortured and even executed. Many women in China stay inside and keep an eye on a window. Fear and insecurity rules over their every waking moment.

It is in this crisis that Crossing Borders enters into the lives of North Korean refugees. Many tell us how that they disjointed they feel after they realize they’ve been lied to their whole lives.

North Koreans are taught to hate Americans and especially Christians. Americans are supposed to be cannibals. Christians are supposed to be evil, wicked people who will bring them pain. When North Korean refugees realize that their only means of sustenance and safety are delivered by American Christians, they feel upside-down.

Crossing Borders works to bring meaning into the lives of North Korean refugees by empowering them to follow their dreams. Eun arrived in China with her father, who unable to receive proper treatment for edema. He died shortly after they arrived in China. When our missionaries first met her, she was afraid, mourning in the wake of her father’s death.

Eun experienced great mistreatment following her father's passing because she was recognized as a North Korean refugee. She hid in the guardianship of a woman who used her for long hours of unpaid labor as a maid. Eun worked so hard that the skin on her hands began to crack. She came to us only as she realized that her "guardian" was in the process of negotiating a deal to sell her to a Chinese man in a forced marriage. Having encountered the world outside of North Korea in such a harsh and cruel way, having lost her father and all hope for a life outside of fear and poverty, Eun felt as if her life was crashing down around her.

Crossing Borders worked quickly to verify Eun’s story, understanding that time was of the essence. Once we determined she was telling the truth, we helped her escape China. She was able to attain North Korean refugee status on the Underground Railroad and enter South Korea.

However, like many North Korean defectors, Eun had difficulty in South Korea, where she was discriminated against. She thought she would be better off in Canada, where she lives today.

It is an amazing thing to see Eun living now, outside the oppressive conditions of China and North Korea. She recently gave birth to a healthy baby boy with her husband who is also a North Korean refugee. She emails our staff pictures and thanks us for helping her. She wrote this in one of her emails to our staff:

“Teacher, I will live diligently for the day of reunification of North and South and for my home village in North Korea. I have a dream. Some people tell me that my dream cannot come true. But, I believe my dream will come true someday if it's Jesus' will. And, in whatever I do, I want to be a person who spreads good news about God.”

Eun is now living a life of meaning. Not only because she has gained freedom from Chinese and North Korean authorities. It is because through her journey, she was able to find God's compassion in our work, to find meaning in the gospel which drove us to such lengths to help her. Crossing Borders is thankful to have been a part of the process of sharing and revealing God's love for her in our work to free her from physical and spiritual bondage.

Please pray for Eun and the tens of thousands of North Korean refugees who have not experienced the liberating power of the gospel. Please pray for Crossing Borders to continue to show the compassion of Christ to these people.

North Korean Refugees: Ok-seo’s Struggle for Peace and Heat

Crossing Borders has two organizational functions: first, to raise funds and second, to use these funds wisely to help North Korean refugees in China. But sometimes it is easy for us to think that the funds that we raise can solve every problem. As you pray with us this year, please pray for that we would rely on God for everything. The ongoing life of "Ok-seo", a North Korean refugee in our care who we have shared about before through our blog, continues to remind us that the most important thing for us to do is to ask God to take control in the life of our refugees.

Ok-seo has trouble picking up her husband’s native tongue: Mandarin. This causes a lot of trouble in her household. She gets into fights with her husband and is often physically abused by him. But she cannot leave her family because they have a son and it would be difficult for her to run away with her young child.

Ok-seo’s family went without heat this past winter. We have been helping her with a small, monthly stipend for the past couple years to cover living expenses. Ok-seo's husband, however, decided late last year to stop working for reasons unclear to Ok-seo and our workers on the ground.

Her husband is described as extremely lazy by Ok-seo and our missionaries. He was coddled as a child and is unable to handle adversity, according to our sources familiar with the couple.

China’s northernmost recesses are extremely cold in the winter. Ok-seo lives near the border of Siberia, where it can reach 30 to 40 degrees below zero Fahrenheit without the wind chill. It’s hard for us to imagine how hard it is for the family to stay warm without heat.

It would be easy for us to raise funds to give the couple extra funds to heat their home but we fear this will give Ok-seo's husband even less incentive to work. We could also cut our support to them all together to encourage her husband to work but this would leave the family without enough food.

Last year we posted a video of Ok-seo singing a song she wrote about God’s grace in her life. This song is based on a traditional North Korean tune used to praise Kim Il Sung.

North Korean Refugee Sings a Song She Wrote from Crossing Borders on Vimeo.

Her song is an example of how Ok-seo, like many North Korean refugees in our care, has replaced a man-made idol for the true and living God. Through her struggles she continues to lean on God to carry her through.

As she was explaining her situation to our staff member, Ok-seo expressed her thankfulness at how God had changed her heart. Her circumstances might not have improved but she has something that she never had before.

“Before I had no hope,” she said in a recent interview. “Now I have hope.”

Though Ok-seo’s circumstances are dire, her soul continues to soar with supernatural strength and courage.

As we continue to pray for Ok-seo and North Korean refugees like her, we pray not for more money but that God would get involved in her marriage and that in Christ her husband might change. Please pray with us as we continue to seek wisdom in helping Ok-seo.