Not Forgotten

by Kenneth Bae

  “And you would do what you call spiritual warfare there?” Mr. Park added.

  “Yes,” I said. As soon as I said this, I wished I could take the word warfare back. Mr. Park jumped on it.

  “We read about the spirits you say rule our great nation,” he said. One of the documents on my hard drive was part of the presentation I made to every group before they came into North Korea. In it I talked about spiritual warfare and the seven spirits that I believe dominate the country.

  “You call them the spirit of idolatry.” He paused after each one. “The spirit of fear. The spirit of lies. The spirit of hatred. The spirit of division. The spirit of pride. The spirit of control.”

  He looked at me. It was the first time I thought I saw genuine hatred in his eyes.

  “You call these spirits, but you are really talking about our government. This is how you really feel. The lies, the fear, the control—you say this about us. That is why you want us to be destroyed.”

  “I am sorry, I am sorry,” I pleaded. “This is a misunderstanding. I did not mean to offend you. I apologize.”

  “You say this is a misunderstanding,” Mr. Park said, suddenly switching to his good-cop persona. “Okay. Enlighten me. I want you to tell me all about Operation Jericho and explain to me how it is not a threat to our great nation.” He pointed at the paper on the desk. “Write it out. Tell me all your Jericho plans.” He turned to leave but stopped before he reached the door. “No lies this time. Tell me the truth.”

  Even before Mr. Park left the room, I started praying for wisdom. I needed God’s guidance on how much of the Operation Jericho plan I should share.

  I feel the same way now, three years later, as I write this chapter. As I mentioned, I was not the only undercover missionary working in Rason. Anything I divulge has the potential to endanger the lives of those trying to share the love of Christ in one of the most closed countries on earth.

  The plan for Operation Jericho came to me in 2010, during my second trip into North Korea. I had returned to the country to explore the possibility of bringing tour groups there. One day I went for a walk on the grounds of the hotel where I was staying in Rason, sort of like the walk I was on when the agents in the black sedan showed up to arrest me.

  As I walked across the hotel grounds, I felt the Lord say to me, My people’s eyes are blind. They cannot see. My people’s ears are deaf. They cannot hear. My people’s mouths are mute. They cannot speak. I will open their eyes so they will see my glory. I will open their ears; they will hear my voice. And I will open their mouths. They are going to praise my name and give glory to me. I will heal my people. I will redeem them. I will restore them.

  I remember not knowing what to say in response. I prayed, Lord, I don’t know what I can do. Talking about God with a North Korean is illegal. I didn’t know how I could possibly open their eyes.

  I had already started working on a plan to bring in tour groups as a way of opening their eyes to the needs of the North Korean people. Now I realized I could do more than simply show them the need. I thought of Joshua and the walls of Jericho. Huge spiritual walls encircle North Korea. Jericho was the first city the children of Israel encountered when they went into the promised land; Rason is the first North Korean city open to outsiders.

  The two thoughts went around in my head until I thought, We can pray down these spiritual walls! Our group in China had already prayer walked around multiple properties, and we saw how God answered those prayers, just as he answered the prayers of the priests walking around Jericho. We can do the same thing for a whole city and an entire country, because this is God’s idea. He wants to set these people free.

  When I returned to Dandong, I started brainstorming ideas that became the actual Operation Jericho. I wasn’t concerned about juche or the political system or the Leader. Instead, I felt such a burden for the North Korean people that I wanted to do something for them. I thought back to the soldier who had come out of the darkness to ask me for money and cigarettes. What I really wanted to give him was the love of Jesus.

  That was my underlying motive behind Operation Jericho. I wanted to take people into the country to love the North Korean people with the love of Jesus. These people live in such darkness. They know nothing of Jesus, but we have to show them Jesus before we can tell them about him. That’s why prayer was at the center of Operation Jericho. As people pray, the spiritual walls around the country will come down, one brick at a time. I also wanted the people I brought into North Korea to experience the beauty of the country and its people, and to hear from the Lord directly while they were there, just as I did.

  All Operation Jericho was ever meant to be was a plan to mobilize prayer warriors to intercede for the people of North Korea. That’s what I wrote down for Mr. Park: “I love the people of North Korea, and I want to be a bridge for them to the outside world.”

  Unfortunately, when I first wrote out the specifics of my plan years earlier on my computer, I used metaphors that could easily be misunderstood by non-Christians, especially by the DPRK authorities. Within the Word document I used phrases like, “We will mobilize the Lord’s army to bring down the wall,” but I did not mean a literal army. I was talking about people all over the world getting down on their knees to pray for the people of North Korea.

  Mr. Park did not see it that way.

  When he read what I wrote out for him during our interrogation session, he exploded. He knew more than I dared mention, because he’d read the document on my hard drive—the one I never thought anyone but me would read.

  “This is not the whole truth! This is not all of your plan. You plan to invade our great nation, claim it, and conquer it. Do not deny it! I have read these words that you wrote yourself.” He got up and walked across the room. “You are a dangerous criminal, Mr. Bae. You came here intent on destroying our great nation, but you have been stopped. Now you are going to pay for what you have done.”

  I did not say anything. I thought it best to keep quiet.

  “You have violated Article 60 of our constitution,” he said. “This is a very serious crime. Perhaps the most serious. Do you know what the penalty is for violating Article 60, Mr. Bae?”

  I shook my head.

  “Death,” he replied with a slight smile.

  SEVEN

  CONFESSION

  Truly he is my rock and my salvation;

  he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.

  My salvation and my honor depend on God;

  he is my mighty rock, my refuge.

  —PSALM 62:6–7

  OPERATION JERICHO WAS the last straw for Mr. Park. It confirmed all his suspicions about me. I had confessed to being a missionary, but now, because of Operation Jericho, he seemed convinced I was just the front man for a much bigger conspiracy.

  “Who sent you here?” he demanded the next time he came to interrogate me.

  “I told you. God called me here,” I replied.

  “Who sent you here?” he asked again as if he didn’t hear me.

  “God.”

  “Who sent you here?” he asked again, his patience wearing thin.

  “I have tried to explain it to you. God spoke to me and called me to be a bridge to North Korea,” I said.

  “Do not lie to me!” he yelled. “Do you think I am a fool? Do you think I cannot figure out who is really behind all of this? We have been patient with you, but our patience has limits.”

  “I understand,” I said, “but I have told you that I am just a missionary.”

  “Do not say you are just a missionary anymore,” Mr. Park said in a soft voice. His personality had swung back to the good cop. “We know you work for YWAM. There is someone over you there, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “His name is John, and he oversees the work in Dandong.”<
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  “And who is above John?” Mr. Park asked.

  “I guess that would be Loren Cunningham, the man who started Youth With A Mission,” I said.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere. And above Loren Cunningham is Obama. That’s who sent you to our country to terrorize us and bring us down. So you must actually work for the CIA. Obama and the CIA are behind this,” Mr. Park said.

  I did not know what to say to such strange logic.

  “You deserve to die for what you have done,” he continued. “First, you have dishonored our Great Leader’s name with your anti-DPRK materials. For that alone you deserve to die. Second, you conducted your Operation Jericho, twisted the minds of North Korean people, and sent them back into our great nation as missionaries working against us. You have attempted to overthrow our government through prayer and worship and bringing in outsiders. The penalty must be death, or perhaps a life sentence. But no lower than that.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  That set Mr. Park off. “What? You don’t care that you may die for your crimes? We don’t even have to wait for a trial. If we wanted we could just take you out right now and chop off your head and be done with you. Human life is worth less than a fly’s here.”

  “You know what? Do whatever you want,” I said. I wasn’t trying to be brave. I had just had enough. I was too tired to go on with this farce. For four weeks I had endured Mr. Park’s questioning from 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. every day. I had taken about as much as I could endure. If they wanted to kill me, so be it.

  “Do not threaten me, Mr. Bae. Don’t you realize your life is in our hands?” Mr. Park replied.

  “My life is in God’s hands,” I said. “You say you might kill me. Don’t you know that will just make me a martyr? That is the highest honor that a missionary can ask for.”

  I thought to myself, You have no idea who you are dealing with. I am an ambassador of the most high God. God sent me here. He is still in control, no matter what.

  Mr. Park blinked at me. He didn’t know what to say. I had never talked to him like this. I don’t think anyone ever had.

  I expected another angry tirade. Instead, Mr. Park responded with silence. After a few awkward moments he got up and left the room.

  Later in the evening, Mr. Park returned. “I have good news for you,” he said. “You are going to Pyongyang, and you will get to go home from there.”

  Now I was really confused. A couple of hours earlier, he was threatening to chop off my head and dump my body out in some remote corner of the country. Now he was telling me I may get to go home soon. I let out a slight groan. “How?”

  The look on his face told me he had been waiting for this moment. “Even though you have committed such a serious crime, you have behaved and cooperated with us. There may be something our government can do for you.”

  “What do you want me to do? What do I need to say to go home?” I was ready to do anything.

  “If you confess to what you have done, and if you offer a sincere apology for your crimes, our government may well show you mercy,” he said.

  “So what do I have to say?” I asked.

  “Now these must be in your own words,” he said.

  “Yes, I understand,” I said. “But what am I supposed to say? Just tell me what you want me to write down that will get me home, and I will do it.”

  Over the next hour or so, Mr. Park told me different things to write, and I wrote them down. “Confess how you attempted to overthrow the government with prayer,” he told me. I also had to include details about Operation Jericho, about how I had trained North Korean people as disciples of Jesus, and about how one of these people came back to start a Christian orphanage. Of course, I also had to confess my crime of disrespecting the leadership of the DPRK.

  I wrote what I thought Mr. Park and everyone else behind the scenes wanted to read. I believed that if I confessed to everything they had accused me of doing, they would finally let me go home.

  After I wrote my confession, Mr. Park took it and left for a very long time. Eventually he returned with a paper in his hand. “We took the liberty of writing your confession for you,” he said.

  “Okay,” I replied. “Do I just sign it?”

  “No, no, no, of course not,” he said in a way that made it sound like I had just suggested something completely absurd. “The confession needs to be in your words and your handwriting. Take this and rewrite it to make it your own. But make sure you include everything in it. Do not leave a single word out.”

  I sighed. How was I supposed to do that? I grabbed a pen and started on my assignment. As best I can remember I wrote:

  I, Kenneth Junho Bae, violated the law of the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) by attempting to overthrow the government by the means of prayer and worship. Using my mission work as a cover, I served as an instrument of an American imperialistic devious attempt to take over the nation by corroborating anti-North Korea propaganda and supporting the crushing isolation policies of the United States and South Korea. I brought in more than three hundred Christian intercessors from over seventeen countries to the DPRK, disguised them as tourists, and had them pray, worship, and love the people of the DPRK with the love of Jesus Christ. Under a plan named the Jericho Project, I purposely reached out to the Christian communities around the world to come, pray, worship, and love the people and claim the land of North Korea for God. By doing so, I believed that just as the walls of Jericho fell, the wall around the city of Rason would fall.

  I also attempted to set up a prayer center in Rason using the Rajin Hotel as a base. Although the purpose and the usage of the building were strictly for the foreigners, I confess that by setting up the prayer center in DPRK, it had a major impact and influence in the city of Rason.

  By having Christian tourists come and demonstrate the love of Jesus Christ through their actions, such as smiles and acts of good will, I tried to influence the people of the DPRK to turn toward God rather than the government or the leadership of the DPRK. I acknowledge and confess that these actions were taken to break the unity of the people of the DPRK by trying to influence them with Christianity. I acknowledge that my actions seriously violated the law of the DPRK.

  I confess that I set up the prayer centers and training bases in China to mobilize, train, pray with, and send missionaries to the DPRK. Over six years, I have conducted seminars, orientations, and prayer meetings for more than eight hundred people from dozens of nations to pray for North Korea.

  I also want to acknowledge and confess that I have seriously disrespected the leadership of the DPRK, and I want to apologize for my crimes of disrespecting and spreading false rumors regarding the leadership. Through my learning from the Western media, and from the anticommunist education that I received in South Korea, I spoke against the leadership to the North Korean nationals in China. I said things such as “What kind of leader would allow more than three million people to starve to death in the twenty-first century in prosperous East Asia?” and “Water flows from upstream to down. Water from upstream needs to be pure in order for the downstream water to be clean.” I realize that by saying these remarks to North Korean nationals, I tried to blame the DPRK leadership for the suffering of the people, thereby breaking the trust and the loyalty of the people to the leadership.

  I also confess that I trained North Korean nationals with Christian discipleship training, and I sent a North Korean back to start a private orphanage in North Korea. I attempted to influence the children of the DPRK to love God rather than the Supreme Leader. Through this action, I acknowledge that children will grow up knowing the love of God and drift away from the love of the Father, the Leader of the nation. I understand that if ten children come to believe in Christianity, they will eventually turn into larger numbers, and it will break the unity of the nation that is uni
ted together with the Leader. Setting up a private orphanage run by North Korean Christians could seriously jeopardize the security and unity of the people.

  I realize that my actions have seriously violated and disrespected the leadership and the government of the DPRK, and I want to apologize and ask for forgiveness for my wrongdoings.

  Signed,

  Kenneth Junho Bae

  Mr. Park smiled when he read my confession. “Yes, yes, this is exactly what we needed. Now we also need you to write out your apology.”

  This was not the first time I was told to write a formal apology. I had written multiple versions already as part of all the other things I had to write for Mr. Park. However, if he wanted a new apology letter, and if it would get me home, then I would apologize again.

  “Do you have specific things I need to apologize for?” I asked.

  “Why of course,” he said, as if we were old friends. After listening to him rattle off his list, I wrote something very close to the following:

  1. I apologize for disrespecting the leadership of the DPRK.

  2. I apologize for trying to bring Christians to North Korea to pray, worship, and love the people of North Korea through the love of Jesus Christ.

  3. I apologize for bringing a hard drive that contained anti-DPRK videos clips, although it was purely a mistake.

  4. I apologize for disguising as a tour guide when I am actually a missionary and a pastor.

  5. I apologize for trying to set up a prayer center in Rason, although it was strictly for the foreign tourists.

  6. I apologize for training North Korean nationals with spiritual Christian training.

  7. I apologize for the attempt to set up a private Christian orphanage in the DPRK and trying to influence the children with the love of God instead of the love of the Leader of the DPRK.

  8. I apologize for setting up the bases in China to conduct seminars, orientations, and trainings for North Korea.