by Kenneth Bae
Then Mr. Lee came in and said, “Get ready. Someone is coming to see you.” I had no idea who that might be.
A few minutes later a camera crew came into my room, followed by a couple of North Korean officials. Then a few more officials joined them. Everyone seemed really worked up.
All of a sudden, the door opened, and two tall, distinguished-looking American men came into my room. After having seen almost exclusively Korean people for nearly a year, I thought the Americans looked huge.
One of the men crossed the room and hugged me. “I work for the White House,” he said. “I’m with the National Security Council. The president sent me here to check on you and find out how you are really doing. That’s also why I brought the doctor with me.” He gestured to the other American.
I nearly burst into tears I was so glad to see these two men. Finally, for the first time in a year, I am seeing fellow Americans, and they’re here to take me home.
“Thank you so much for coming,” I said. We spoke English, of course. I saw the North Korean translators making notes and whispering to the other men in the room. Mr. Lee stood off to one side. He spoke some English, but I wasn’t sure how much of this conversation he might understand.
“How are you really doing, Kenneth?” the man from the White House asked. “Physically and mentally.”
“Well, I’m okay, considering,” I said. “I’ve been in the hospital for nearly a month now, so I’m a lot better now than I was when they first brought me here. They’ve fed me better here than in the labor camp, and they are also giving me supplements through my IV. So I’m a lot stronger.” “How’s your back? I know you’ve had a lot of trouble with that,” the doctor said.
“Not working out in the field has made it feel better. I even get some physical therapy.” That therapy consisted of one of the female therapists walking on my back for ten minutes. It felt pretty awful, and I thought it probably made my back worse, not better. But I did not mention that fact, since everything I said was being closely monitored.
“How is the food?” the representative from the White House inquired.
“The food is okay. I have been treated fairly.”
“What are your symptoms?” the doctor asked. I went down the entire list for him. The doctor took notes. “And what are they doing for you?” he asked. I gave him a rundown of my treatment, which didn’t take long.
“Kenneth,” the other American said, “I want to assure you that getting you home is a high priority for us. We’re doing everything we can. But your situation is very complex. We’re trying to get you home, but it is really difficult to get you out of here. The fact that your health is not horrible is a good thing in light of the delays.”
My heart sank. I wasn’t going anywhere today. It sounded as though if I had been dying, they could have cut a deal right away. But because my health had improved, I was stuck here.
Before I could say anything, the North Korean minder cut off the conversation. “No more. It’s finished. You must go.”
The two Americans stood. “It was an honor to meet you, and bless you,” the doctor said. He gave me a hug.
The other man did as well. “Don’t worry, Kenneth. We’re going to get you out of here and get you home. Please be patient. However, keep this visit to yourself for now.”
“I will,” I said. The fact that a White House representative had come all this way for a five-minute top-secret visit told me that I was a priority for my country. But it also crushed my hopes of a quick release.
The two men left. I sat down on my bed, dejected. I thought their arrival was my ticket out of here. Instead, the only certain release date I had was May 1, 2028, when my fifteen years were up. The thought depressed me.
Only a few minutes after they left, the two men suddenly returned. Yes! I thought. I am leaving! Instead the White House representative said, “The North Korean government gave us permission to take a photo of you. I think your family will be excited to get this, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes, definitely,” I said.
“Smile,” he said. So I did.
I later learned my family never saw this photograph. I can only assume it was actually meant for the White House, to assure them that I was okay.
As soon as they were out the door, Mr. Lee returned. “Tell me, what did they ask and what did you say?” Apparently his English was not as good as he let on.
“They just wanted to know about my health,” I said.
“And that’s all?”
“Yes, that’s all.”
Mr. Lee seemed satisfied, but I was not. Just be patient, I told myself. It won’t be long now.
SEVENTEEN
I AM A MISSIONARY
“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last.”
—JOHN 15:16
A FEW DAYS after the secret visit, I received a letter from my mother. She included copies of two statements from the US State Department. The first said the DPRK had granted permission to special ambassador Robert King to come to North Korea to negotiate my release. I liked the sound of that. According to the letter, he was supposed to arrive in Pyongyang on August 30, 2013. I received this letter in mid-September and had not yet seen nor heard from the ambassador.
The second statement explained why. The day before Ambassador King was to travel from Japan to North Korea, the DPRK rescinded his invitation. Apparently, the fact that he considered flying in on a military plane upset them. I guess they viewed the plane as a threat and an insult. In addition, on August 28, the US military had sent B-52 bombers into South Korea from Guam as part of a joint military exercise with South Korea. North Korea perceived this as a great threat. Whatever the reason, the bottom line was that the ambassador was not coming.
No one was coming.
I was no closer to going home than I was back in November, when I was first arrested.
After reading the two statements from the State Department, I read my mother’s letter. “You need to have faith, like Daniel’s friends when they faced the fiery furnace,” she wrote. “Remember, when the king threatened to throw them into the fire they said to him, ‘The God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up’ (Daniel 3:17–18). You must have the same faith now, my son. God is able to deliver you. But if he does not bring you home, you must continue to stand for him in your chains.”
As I read my mother’s letter, it hit me: God might not want me to go home. It might be his will for me to stay in North Korean custody. For nearly a year I had prayed, God, rescue me. What if his answer was no?
I’d been counting the days. I had made so many thirty-day calendars and had marked off each passing day as if I knew God planned on taking me home before I got to the end. Every time they cut my nails and my hair, I had made myself believe that it would be the last time before going home. I had pleaded with my government to do something for me. My family had written letters to President Obama and to Secretary of State Kerry, even to Kim Jong Un himself. It wasn’t like their letters hadn’t worked. Secretary of State Kerry had sent Ambassador King to bring me home, but the North Koreans had refused to let him enter the country. President Obama had sent one of his National Security Council members on a secret mission to bring me home, but it had failed as well.
Two failed rescue attempts in a week, I thought. Two in a week! But I am no closer to going home. Oh, God, is this really what you want? How can you possibly want to leave me here, so far from home, separated from everyone I love, in a place that refuses to acknowledge you even exist?
I went to bed that night really depressed and woke up the next mornin
g the same way. How, God? I prayed, How could you leave me here? You promised to rescue me and bring me home.
From the time of my arrest I had meditated on all the promises of rescue in the Bible, especially in the psalms. Does it mean God doesn’t love me if he doesn’t rescue me? I wondered.
I reread the letters I’d received from home, letters from my wife, my mother, my sister, and my children. The letters made them seem close and yet so much farther away. Is this the only way they are going to be able to know me for the next fifteen years? Is this the only contact I am going to get to have with everyone I love?
I went back over the lines in my mother’s last letter. “You are going to have to have the faith of Daniel’s friends,” she had said.
Am I that strong? Can I do what they did? Can I keep trusting in God, even if the worst-case scenario comes true?
For an entire week I wrestled with these questions. I prayed and prayed and asked God for wisdom and strength. My mood jumped between depressed and not quite as depressed. I sang sad songs, like the old Elvis tune “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” and Eric Carmen’s “All by Myself.” To be honest, I really started feeling sorry for myself.
Finally, on September 24, 2013, I got down on my knees on my bed and I prayed, Lord, you know my heart. You know what I want, but not my will but yours be done. You know I want to go home, but if you want me to stay, I will stay. I give up my right to go home. I surrender it to you. Please, take care of my wife and my children and my parents. Please take care of them while you keep me here. If this is where you want me to be, okay. I embrace that as your will.
Peace came over me as a weight lifted off my shoulders. God’s Spirit filled the room and reminded me of my calling.
“I am a missionary,” I said. “Lord, I am a missionary, and this is the mission field you have given me. Use me.”
The moment I stopped praying, God, save me, and instead prayed, God, use me, I felt free. I was still in a North Korean hospital as a prisoner. I still faced fifteen years of hard labor once I was released from the hospital, but I was suddenly fine with all that. God wanted me in North Korea. God had called me here. He had a purpose for my being a prisoner.
I didn’t know it then, but I still had more than a year of imprisonment in front of me. That didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was I was where God wanted me to be at the very moment he needed me to be here, and I love him. If I truly loved him, I would obey him. In light of all of this, there was truly only one thing I could pray: God, use me.
Coming to peace with the possibility that God wanted me to stay imprisoned in North Korea for the foreseeable future did not mean I never again struggled with being there. The truth is, I had good days and I had bad days. Some days I welcomed this assignment; others I was so homesick that the thought of spending even another day in the Pyongyang hospital or, God forbid, back in the labor camp made me sick to my stomach. Those were the days I had to rely on the promise found in 2 Corinthians 12:9: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” I felt very weak, but God’s strength was enough.
I had two books with me that really helped me through these tough times. My wife, Lydia, sent me a copy of Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life. God used the entire book to speak to me during my imprisonment, but he especially used a couple of chapters to encourage me while I wrestled with embracing my role as a missionary in chains.
One day I felt very homesick. I wanted to see my wife. I wanted to see my kids. I wanted to see my mom and my sister and my dad. I just wanted to be home. Then I read day 36 of The Purpose Driven Life, a chapter called “Made for a Mission.” It said:
To fulfill your mission will require that you abandon your agenda and accept God’s agenda for your life. You can’t just “tack it on” to all the other things you’d like to do with your life. You must say, like Jesus, “Father, . . . I want your will, not mine.” You yield your rights, expectations, dreams, plans, and ambitions to him. . . . You hand God a blank sheet with your name signed at the bottom and tell him to fill in the details.1
That’s what I had to do. I prayed again, I yield my right to go home. I yield my right to be released. I accept your agenda as your will for my life.
This wasn’t an easy prayer to pray. I had my share of “Why me?” moments. God used another part of The Purpose Driven Life to help me through those. Day 25 is titled “Transformed by Trouble.” Right in the middle of this chapter, I read:
God could have kept Joseph out of jail, kept Daniel out of the lion’s den, kept Jeremiah from being tossed into a slimy pit, kept Paul from being shipwrecked three times, and kept the three Hebrew young men from being thrown into a blazing furnace—but he didn’t. He let those problems happen, and every one of those persons was drawn closer to God as a result.2
I added my name to the list. God could have kept me from getting arrested. He could have blinded the eyes of the border patrol agents who seized the external hard drive. Or he could have reminded me to look in my suitcase before I left the hotel in Yanji. God could have easily moved the agents in Rason to immediately deport me, or he could move Kim Jong Un to simply let me go now. Proverbs 21:1 says, “In the LORD’s hand the king’s heart is a stream of water that he channels toward all who please him.” That includes Kim Jong Un’s heart.
Yes, God could have done all of these things, but he chose not to. Instead, he chose to leave me there for the foreseeable future.
Another book I read helped me understand the reason. Lydia also sent me Kyle Idleman’s book Not a Fan: Becoming a Completely Committed Follower of Jesus. He told the story of a group of missionaries who wanted to reach the inhabitants of an island just off of Suriname, in South America. Most of the people on the island were slaves. The plantation owners did not allow their slaves to talk with anyone except other slaves. The missionaries tried to come up with a way to reach the slaves, but nothing worked. Finally they sold themselves into slavery so they could reach the slaves.3
When I read this story, my imprisonment made sense. I had entertained the idea of spending a couple of years in Pyongyang to try to reach average North Koreans, but that plan would never have worked. My contact with them would have been limited and every conversation monitored. What better way, then, to reach average North Koreans than to actually live with them as they went about their work and their day-to-day lives? But to do that I had to be a prisoner. That was the only way to reach the guards and prosecutors and the doctors and nurses at the hospital.
I was a missionary on assignment from God. Every morning I looked myself in the eye in the mirror and repeated, “I am a missionary. That’s why I am here.”
However, something else occurred to me as I made this transition. When I had prayed constantly for God to save me, the only person I had thought about was me. I wanted to show Jesus to my captors, but I wasn’t nearly as concerned about them as I was about myself. Once I saw my imprisonment as God’s will for my life, I started to see the people around me the way God saw them. Before, I felt depressed because I was trapped and had no hope. But that’s exactly what the average North Korean faces every day! They are trapped, and they have no hope.
My self-pity gave way to compassion. These are my people, I realized. I’m Korean. They’re Korean. If not for my grandfather’s escape, I would have been born here and would have lived my entire life under juche. My attitude toward the people around me completely changed, and that opened doors to build real relationships with them.
The next day I went for one of my walks through the halls of the hospital. As always, a guard had to come along with me. Instead of feeling sorry for myself, I prayed for the guard.
Lord, give me wisdom in the words I use, I prayed. Show me how to reveal your truth to him.
We turned a corner and came to the windows of the courtyard. As always, the dog jumped up on the window,
his tail wagging. He acted as if he’d been waiting all day for me to come by.
“Hello, boy,” I said. “How is my friend today?”
The dog answered by running along beside us, jumping on the window, and wagging his tail so hard the entire back end of his body shook. The guard gave me a dismissive look.
“Dogs are very popular in America,” I said.
“For protection from all the violence?” the guard said.
“No. As pets. Dogs are treated really well in America.”
The guard didn’t reply. He didn’t seem very interested in talking about dogs, so I changed the subject.
“Do you have a family?” I asked.
The guard scowled at me. “Do not ask such things, 103. It is none of your business.”
Okay, God, I need some ideas here. We walked along for a little while, not saying anything. I took a loop around through the halls, eventually ending up back by the courtyard, where the dog was waiting for me. Looking over at his friendly face, I decided this dog was my only friend here. Like me, he was a prisoner, or so it seemed. He didn’t get to leave the courtyard, and he was pretty much separated from everyone.
I thought about being separated from my family for a moment. I said, “My family is originally from Yongbyon, about sixty miles from here.”
The guard seemed surprised. “Really? I thought you were American.”
“I am. My family moved to South Korea during the war. I grew up in Seoul. When I was sixteen, we moved to America.”
His curiosity was piqued. “How could you just move like that? The government let you?”