A FEW WEEKS before I started writing this book, I began thinking about traveling overseas again. As a missionary, I have a long list of places where I would like to travel and work. However, before I can travel to any other country for an extended period of time, I must obtain a visa. Every visa application includes the question, “Have you ever been convicted of a crime?” The application does not ask if the conviction was justified or if the rest of the world condemned the imprisonment. All it asks is, “Have you ever been convicted of a crime?”
I have to answer truthfully. I must check the yes box.
A second question always follows the first: “If yes, what was your crime?”
I don’t know how to answer. If I tell the truth, I don’t think any country will grant me a visitor visa. According to my prison record, I am a terrorist charged with and convicted of plotting and working to overthrow the government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), also known as North Korea. After my arrest the prosecutor told me I was the most dangerous American criminal apprehended in the sixty years since the Korean War permanently divided the Korean Peninsula. If I had not been an American citizen, I may have received the death penalty or, at the very least, life in prison with no possibility of parole. Instead, I was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor.
What did I do that posed such a danger to North Korea? What were my terrorist activities?
I am a missionary.
To the DPRK government, being a missionary is the same as being a terrorist. The terms are interchangeable. As you will discover in the pages that follow, the government finds the gospel of Jesus Christ to be very dangerous. They understand that if they allow the message of Jesus to spread, their government will collapse, along with every aspect of their society. I was tried and convicted of plotting to overthrow the government, even though I never gave away a single Bible or held even one outreach service for the North Korean people. All I did was bring visitors into the country to pray for the North Korean people. That was enough to convict me.
The communist regime in the DPRK has always viewed Christianity as a threat. Ironically, before World War II, when there was only one Korea, more Christians lived in the north than the south. A huge revival broke out in Pyongyang in 1907, with thousands of people coming to Christ. The revival earned Pyongyang the name “Jerusalem of the Far East.”
Today, very few people remember that revival ever took place. All those who lived through it are long since dead. But God has not forgotten the work he once did there. My crime was to walk through that land and pray God would do again what he once did. That made me a terrorist and a dangerous criminal.
I guess I still am, because I am still praying for North Korea.
I love the North Korean people, and I hope to return there someday. As you read my story, you will get a glimpse of what life is like for average citizens in one of the most secretive nations on earth. The people have not chosen this life. They live in darkness, completely cut off from the rest of the world. All they know, all they believe, is the propaganda that comes at them all day, every day, through their radios and televisions and schools and newspapers and every other information outlet. They have forgotten life before the days of their Great Leader, life when the light once shone.
As you read the story that follows, I pray that you, too, will fall in love with the North Korean people. They have no voice, but together we can be that voice. God has not forgotten the North Korean people. I write this book so that you will not forget them either.