When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city.
—JOSHUA 6:20
NIGHTS WERE HARD for me during the month I spent confined in Villa Three. Whenever I first closed my eyes, I always saw my wife, Lydia, and my children. I missed them so much. Surely everyone knows what has happened to me by now, I told myself.
I wished I could pick up a phone, call my children, and explain the situation myself. I knew they had to be very worried. If they could hear my voice, then maybe they could relax a little.
I was also worried about my wife’s safety. I hoped she had left Dandong and had moved as far from the North Korean border as possible.
“Are you safe, Lydia?” I whispered in the night. “Are you safe?” The worry was more than I could bear. But then I remembered God’s promise. No one will be harmed. He had not told me that I would not be harmed, but that no one would be harmed. The Lord will take care of her, I reminded myself. My worrying wasn’t going to help him do his job any better.
I decided I needed to focus on what I could control. Given my circumstances, that was very, very little. About the only things in my control were how I reacted to my captors and what I wrote for Mr. Park’s assignments. I had to release everything else to God’s hands.
Worrying about my family was a natural thing for me to do. However, if I had known how far the agents were in their translation of the English files on my hard drive, as well as the information they had learned from Songyi and the others they had interrogated, I would have been worried about what was going to happen to me next.
“What is Jericho?” Mr. Park asked as he barged into my room one morning.
I swallowed hard. He knows, I said to myself. I had dreaded this moment from the minute I realized the portable hard drive was in my briefcase, and now it was here.
“Jericho is a city in the Bible,” I replied.
That thin, sly smile returned. “You know, I almost believed you. I almost believed you when you said you just brought people in to pray. But now I know there is more. You still haven’t told me everything.” He paused. “I ask you again, what is Jericho?”
“In the Bible, Jericho is a very old city where many of the Bible stories take place,” I said. I knew what he was getting at, but I didn’t want to volunteer any more information than I had to.
Mr. Park leaned back in his chair. “You had a good game plan, you know. A good operation.” He paused to see my reaction. “So tell me, Bae Junho, what is Operation Jericho?”
I felt sick in the pit of my stomach. I had to choose my words very carefully. “Operation Jericho is what I call my plan to bring people into the country to pray. I told you about it when I confessed to being a missionary. The name comes from a Bible passage in the book of Joshua, where the Israelites marched around the city of Jericho and prayed.”
“Here is your Bible,” he said, handing it to me. It was the first time I had seen it since my arrest. “Write out this story exactly as it appears in your Bible. I want to read about this Jericho for myself.”
I opened my English NIV Bible to Joshua 6 and wrote out the first twenty verses, which describe how the priests and Israel’s army marched around the city every day for seven days, carrying the ark of the covenant with them. On the seventh day they marched around Jericho seven times; then they blew their trumpets, people shouted, and the walls came tumbling down. I stopped with verse 20. I did not think I needed to include verse 21, which says, “They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys” (emphasis added).
After I finished writing, Mr. Park grabbed the page and started reading. I had to wonder if this was the first time he had ever read anything from the Bible.
As he read, I could see his anger rise. By the time he got to the end, his whole body had started to shake. He dropped the paper and grabbed a large crystal ashtray that sat on the desk. Before I knew what was happening, he flung his arm as though he were going to throw the ashtray at my face.
I quickly threw up my arms to protect myself, but he did not let the ashtray fly.
“This was your plan all along!” he yelled. “You wanted to completely take over our city, didn’t you? You plan on conquering Rason, and then what? Do you plan to take over all of our great nation?”
“No, no, no,” I said, waving my hands. “You don’t understand! Even though the verses in the book of Joshua describe an ancient battle, I used the name only because of how the people pray. I don’t want to take over anything. Operation Jericho is not about literally taking over a city.”
“Do not lie to me!” Mr. Park said in a threatening tone. “We know about the prayer center you planned to put in the heart of Rason.” My jaw dropped. “Yes, that’s right. Your friend Sam talked. He told us all about it.”
Mr. Park misread my reaction. I was not shocked he had learned about my plan to rent a space in Rason where the teams I brought in could pray. No, I reacted out of fear for Sam. He was my friend who operated the coffee shop in the hotel where I had been arrested. Like Songyi, he had been discipled in YWAM, and he had just begun to serve at our center in Dandong. I knew they would try to interrogate him, but I had hoped he had been able to get out of the country before he was detained.
“But I never started anything,” I said. “The prayer center was not for North Koreans. It was a place for the people I bring into the country to pray. And I never actually started it. It was just an idea. That’s all.”
“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.