by Kenneth Bae
When Mr. Park returned, we went through the writing dance again. This day’s questions were basically the same ones he had asked over and over since he started his investigation. I wrote until my hand cramped. I didn’t know how many times I could say the same thing.
Just as he had every other time, Mr. Park became red faced and angry when he read my latest essay. “More lies!” he yelled. “You say you brought in the disruptive materials by accident. I do not believe you. How stupid do you think I am? Do you take me to be a fool?”
“You can call my assistant and have her call the hotel in Yanji to release my computer to you,” I replied.
I had two reasons for suggesting this. First, I wanted to make sure Stream was okay. I had not been able to speak to her since I had been detained. Not knowing what had happened to her and the rest of my group was my greatest worry. My second reason was that I hoped seeing my brand-new computer with a nearly empty hard drive would convince Mr. Park that I was telling the truth. Perhaps I would then be released before the rest of the files on the hard drive were translated from English into Korean.
To my surprise, Mr. Park agreed. “We will contact her. We know where she is,” he said. Then he left the room.
A while later he returned. “She refused to hand the computer over to us without you telling her to do so,” he said.
“May I speak to her over the phone?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “Write her a letter telling her to cooperate.”
I did as I was told. But instead of releasing the computer, Stream wrote me a letter of her own, which was handed to me just a couple of hours later.
“Kenneth,” she wrote, “I was told to make a phone call to the hotel to give the authorities your computer, but I don’t know if this request is from you or from them. To make sure this is you, answer this question: What is my ex-boyfriend’s name?”
“Answer her and let’s get this cleared up,” Mr. Park said.
“Yes, of course,” I said. I grabbed a pen and started to write the answer to her question, but I froze. The ex-boyfriend’s name had completely escaped me. I remembered conversations with Stream about this man. She had dated him for a while.
Ten minutes passed. I knew the man’s name. I could hear her say it. But for some reason I could not remember it.
Finally I wrote, “Stream, for some reason I cannot remember your ex-boyfriend’s name. But here’s something only you and I know. Our office is on the twenty-fourth floor. Rather than take the elevator, you usually go up and down the stairs to burn some calories.”
My answer was enough for her, but it also worried her. She insisted she be allowed to speak to me on the phone. Again, to my surprise, the North Koreans agreed. Later that evening, I was able to call her on the phone.
“Kenneth,” Stream said in a tone that sounded almost desperate, “why couldn’t you remember something so easy? What are they doing to you?”
I became very emotional at the sound of her voice. Only a couple of days had gone by since I had seen her, but it felt much longer. “I am okay. Where are you? Are you safe?”
“Yes, yes, I am fine. No one else in the group has been arrested,” she told me.
I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. “I am so glad. Please cooperate with the officials. Please call the hotel to release my laptop to the DPRK authorities so they can inspect it.”
The tour group was scheduled to leave the next day, so I told her to leave the country along with them. She didn’t want to. “I want to stay here with you. I don’t want to leave you here by yourself.”
“Stream,” I replied, “you must leave with the group. I am your boss, and you must listen to me. Please contact the American consulate in Shenyang and let them know what is going on.”
I finally convinced her to leave. In my mind, the best thing she could do for me was to get out of the country and out of the reach of any DPRK agents who might try to abduct her.
The DPRK agent in Yanji brought my laptop from the hotel safe back to Rason and gave it to the officials investigating my case. Neither Stream nor I ever saw the laptop again. I’d had it less than a week.
Later that same night Mr. Park returned. “Your computer checks out. We now believe you when you say you intended to transfer files from the hard drive to your new computer.”
I was momentarily relieved. I shouldn’t have been.
“However, we are far from finished in our investigation of you. The materials on your hard drive raise serious questions. You will remain here until we learn the answers, but your group can leave.”
My hopes of release evaporated, but right then it did not matter. Everyone from my group was safe and on their way home.
When Mr. Park arrived for the fourth day of interrogation, he told me my group had crossed the border back into China that morning.
Thank you, Lord, I prayed. Now I am free to tell the truth without endangering anyone else.
Aloud I said, “I am ready to make a confession.”
Mr. Park grinned. “Follow me,” he said.
He led me to the living room of the suite. Three other officials sat in the chairs as if they had been waiting for me. I took a seat on a chair in the middle of the room that faced all four officials.
“I am ready to make a full confession,” I said, which made everyone in the room happy. I took a deep breath and then said, “I am a missionary and a pastor. I brought tourists into the country to worship God, to pray on behalf of the North Korean people, and to show the love of Jesus Christ to the people of this land. My tour company was a front for my missionary work. That’s who I am and what I have done.”
“Why did you do this?” one official asked.
“All of Korea had once been on fire for the Lord. I wanted to bring in believers who would once again pray and worship in this place and for these people, but to do so privately, where the people living here would not see it.”
I had kept everything a secret because I knew that if we tried to evangelize openly, we might endanger their lives as well as put ourselves at risk. But by coming into the country and demonstrating the gospel through our actions and interactions with the people who live here, we would pave the way for more sharing down the line.
I was neither the first nor the only missionary to serve this way. Many missionaries currently work in North Korea, and nearly all operate legitimate businesses, including bakeries, noodle factories, and clothing factories. These companies provide much-needed essentials as well as jobs to North Koreans while also allowing their owners and employees to show the gospel through their actions.
To the DPRK authorities, missionaries are terrorists—operatives sent by the CIA to infiltrate foreign countries and disrupt their societies. Once the missionaries do their job, the CIA can overthrow the legitimate government and set up a puppet controlled by America. Essentially, that is how North Korea views South Korea—as nothing more than a puppet state of the United States.
I knew the authorities would not understand what a missionary actually does, which was one of the reasons I was so reluctant to divulge the true nature of my work. The North Korean view of missionaries, and their negative view of Christians and Christianity, is why I brought in teams to pray and worship but not to do evangelism. I know it sounds odd to think of a missionary who doesn’t tell people about Jesus, but I felt in my spirit that the time was not yet right for that.
Everyone in the room looked stunned, except Mr. Park. The corners of his mouth turned up just a little with a “Gotcha!” sort of smile.
“We know you are a missionary,” he said in a condescending tone. “We have talked to many people about you. We found the mission letters on your hard drive. It is good you finally confessed, but we already know who you are.”
Apparently they had translated enough
of my English files to know the real nature of my work. Undeterred, I retorted, “Then you also know that I brought this hard drive in purely by accident. If I wanted to sneak something into the country, I would have brought in a small USB stick, not a whole hard drive.”
“Yes, I know you made a mistake, a costly mistake. You accidentally brought in your battle plan, and now we have it. Now you must tell us where you got those video clips. Write down who made them and who had you bring them here.”
I immediately noticed the change in Mr. Park’s question. Before, he had asked why I had brought in these materials and what I planned to do with them. Now that I had admitted the true nature of my work, he wanted to know who the masterminds were behind my sinister plot.
“I have no idea. I haven’t watched most of them,” I said.
Mr. Park’s expression flipped from good cop to bad cop once again. He clearly did not like my answer. “They are yours,” he said with a firm but low tone. “You were going to put them on your new computer. How can you say you don’t know anything about them?”
“The only one I have watched is the documentary by Lisa Ling.” A couple of times I had used Inside North Korea as part of the orientation for outreach teams that came to Dandong to pray for North Korea without actually entering the country. The documentary follows Sanduk Ruit, a Nepalese eye surgeon, as he operates on one thousand blind North Koreans hand-selected by Pyongyang. When the bandages come off, the people respond as if they are at a Pentecostal healing service. They jump up and down in disbelief. Tears of joy flow as these people who once were blind now can see. But instead of thanking the doctor for giving them sight, they fall down in front of the photograph of Kim Jong Il. Weeping, they cry out, “Thank you, Great Leader, for giving me sight! We love you, oh Great Leader.”
“You say you haven’t watched them, but you have them. Who gave you all these videos?” Mr. Park yelled.
“I got them years ago. Someone sent them to me long before I ever started coming into your country. I never even watched them. I forgot they were on my old computer,” I tried to explain. “When I transferred files from my old laptop to the external hard drive, I copied all of them. I didn’t go through each one.”
“So you do remember who gave them to you.” That sly, gotcha smile returned. “Now we are getting somewhere. Who gave them to you? Tell me his name. Where is he now?”
While it was true I had forgotten about the videos on my hard drive, I knew exactly who had given them to me. One of the missionaries on my team in Dandong, a South Korean named Mr. Wang, had given them to me a couple of years earlier. He and his wife went through one of our first Discipleship Training Schools in Dalian back in 2008. When I started the Dandong center, they came with me and joined the staff.
I really did not want to mention Mr. Wang by name, because that would put his life in danger. Koreans in Dandong are not out of the reach of DPRK agents. Many have been abducted there, and there’s nothing that can be done to stop it. The last thing I wanted to do was put more people in jeopardy.
Instead, I told Mr. Park, “The man who gave me the videos was another missionary, Mr. Cho.” Mr. Cho was a real person. He had gone through one of my earliest training schools and had worked at our base as a staff, but he had passed away that summer. Since he was dead, I used his identity for Mr. Wang.
Mr. Park smiled and nodded his head as if to say, “Finally the truth.”
“But Mr. Cho died last summer of stomach cancer,” I continued. “I am afraid he is dead.”
“Are you sure he is dead?” Mr. Park asked. I could tell he did not believe me.
“Yes.”
“I see,” he said, skeptical.
I tried to hide my nervousness, but I don’t think I did a very good job. I knew God was with me. He promised to stand beside me, but I was not worried about myself. The longer this questioning went on, the more names were going to come out, whether I said them or not. What then? What would the DPRK agents do to my friends and coworkers if they could get their hands on them? And what did the North Koreans plan to do to me?
FIVE
THE POWER OF PRAYER
“If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”
—MATTHEW 21:22
MR. PARK STORMED INTO my room, angry. Up until his arrival my morning had been very pleasant. I started the day by filling the tub with hot water and soaking in the warmth. The guards made me get out after only five minutes, but for those five minutes I felt only peace.
After my usual small breakfast, the guards ordered me to sit in a chair. Sitting still was supposed to be punishment, but I used my time to meditate on God and worship him. With no phones or e-mails or anything else to distract me, I was able to focus on connecting with God in a way I never could in the outside world. I had been in custody for a week, and this time alone with God had turned my detention into a spiritual retreat.
My sense of peace flew out the window when Mr. Park burst into my room, his face even redder than usual.
“We know what you have been up to!” He spit the words at me.
“I told you,” I replied. “I am a missionary.” I did not understand why he was so upset. In all my seventeen previous trips, I had never given out one Bible or converted one North Korean person. I did not start an underground church or engage in any subversive activities. All I had done was lead groups of people from North and South America, Europe, Africa, Australia, and Asia to worship and pray privately, just among ourselves.
“I came here because I love the people of North Korea, and I wanted to pray for them. Why does this upset you? You don’t believe in God. Why should it matter to you if we pray to a God you don’t believe is even there?” I said.
“We have a god,” Mr. Park replied, “and his name is Kim Il Sung. You came here worshiping a different god, and that is a crime. And you say you came to pray for us, but I know you. Since you believe in a different god, you came to pray against us and against our Great Leader.”
“How can this be so dangerous if my God does not exist?” I asked. I did my best to keep from smiling, but I found this conversation more than a little funny.
“Because you are just getting started. Your whole work is designed to undermine faith in our Great Leader and to destroy our country.”
“How?”
Mr. Park shook his head. “You know how,” he said in a low voice. “You come here with Westerners, with more Christians. And no matter what you say, they will talk. They will tell people about their god, and someone will believe their lies. The lies will infect our people like a virus, because it will spread from one person to two. Then those two will become ten, and the ten, twenty and thirty and a hundred, and then the hundred will become thousands, and more and more people will lose faith in the Great Leader. When that happens, our great nation will be destroyed, which is exactly why you have come here.” He stopped and stared at me for a few moments.
Wow! I thought. He really gets the power of prayer and the power of the gospel to transform an entire society. He gets it. They all get it. That’s why they are so afraid. I’m not dangerous, but Jesus is.
I thought back to my seminary classes in St. Louis, where professors tried to explain what happens when faith in Jesus really takes hold. I’m not sure most Christians understand it, but here, in the most isolated country on earth, the people in charge do. They know how powerful faith in Jesus is, and it scares them to death.
“So what do you have to say for yourself, Bae Junho?” Mr. Park asked.
“Nothing,” I replied. Everything he said was true, with the exception of his inferring that bringing down the DPRK government was my ultimate goal. I came because God sent me to show people he loves them and has not forgotten them. That is all.
“‘Nothing?’ You will say more than nothing,” Mr. Park said. �
�I want to know exactly what you have been up to the past six years. You will write out for me everything you did in both Dalian and Dandong. Tell me who sent you there, who you worked with, and all your activities. You moved to Dandong, just across the border from us. Why? Why didn’t you stay in Dalian? There are many North Koreans in Dandong where you operated your training center. Give us the names of all the North Koreans you trained in your center.” He then smiled his good-cop smile. “All I’m asking you to do is tell the truth. Please, no more lies. Just give me the information I need, and things will be much better for you.”
Mr. Park left me alone at my desk with the familiar stack of paper and a new pen. My new writing assignment presented a much greater problem for me than any before. He wanted names, but I could not tell him all the names of the people involved in my work in Dalian or Dandong. At the same time I could hear the Lord speak to my heart, Just tell the truth. How could I tell the truth and protect my friends and family?
The story of my missionary work is not a story about me but a story of God’s faithfulness. A year after I graduated from San Francisco Bible College, I moved my young family to St. Louis, where I attended Covenant Seminary. My family and I arrived in St. Louis with all of fifty dollars in my pocket. I didn’t know how we were going to make it. Then God presented me with two jobs, one as a youth pastor and the other as a janitor at a Christian school. Beyond my work, I found a letter at my school mailbox not long after my first semester of classes started. Inside was fifty dollars and a note that said, “Dear Kenneth, I have been praying for you. The Lord told me to give you fifty dollars a month until you graduate, and that’s what I am going to do.” I still do not know the identity of the sender. It remains a mystery to this day.
After graduating from seminary I served in a variety of positions at several churches, including a one-year stint with a ministry in South Korea. In 2003 we moved back to the United States, where I served as children’s pastor with a church in Georgia. But I resigned a year and a half later, when my marriage fell apart. I felt as if a giant boulder had fallen out of the sky and crushed me. When I realized my marriage could not be saved, I moved to Seattle and moved in with my mother. I had hit rock bottom.