One North Korean Defector's Path From Destitution to Religion
Hyun Ji-hee’s story of escape is similar those of many other North Koreans who fled during the famine of the mid-1990s: with the country reeling from severe floods and loss of aid from the Soviet Union, her salary stopped coming through, as did state rations of food.
As she watched neighbors and coworkers die of starvation, Hyun had to find another way of providing for herself and her two daughters. She decided to leave for China, a place she knew little about, but had heard she could make money in. One night in 2004, she walked out of her home in North Hamgyong Province, unaware that she would never return.
After spending ten days walking through mountains north to the border, she crossed the border into a world of living standards she had never imagined. She quickly found work off the books as a nurse, providing basic care to elderly people, and throughout the six years would spend in China, Hyun’s life became filled with much that was new to her: the sounds of a new and unfamiliar language, the smells of Chinese food, the neon lights and urban clatter of bustling commercial streets.
Along with this influx of new, Hyun also suffered from a great emotional void, as she lost the daily presence of her husband and children. Also, as a North Korean defector, she was in China illegally, and would have faced deportation if discovered by Chinese police. This fragile situation meant that Hyun fretted constantly about what would happen if she were arrested, and that she had few safe spaces, and that while she wasn’t working, she spent much of her time secluded in her place of residence.
Like with many other defectors in China, into this void came Christianity. Hyun began attending church regularly and studying a Bible in her spare time.
When North Koreans escape their country, they have generally to that point had little contact with ideas other than their country’s state ideology. Almost all the books and films they have access to, and the content of their lessons in school, revolve around glorifying the Kim family dynasty that has ruled the country throughout its existence.
Religion is effectively banned in North Korea, with open worship of anything except the country’s ruling elite harshly punished. The United States Commission on Religious Freedom wrote in 2003 that, the North Korean government had “formed several religious organizations that it controls for the purpose of severely restricting religious activities in the country.”
Hyun says that when she arrived in China, she had no knowledge of Christianity or any other religion, but had grown up worshipping North Korea’s founding leader Kim Il Sung as if he were a god. “All there was in North Korea was Kim Il Sung. Even after he died [in 1994], people still worshipped his dead body,” Hyun said in a recent interview in Seoul.
Once they cross the border, North Koreans, women in particular, are vulnerable to various threats from police, traffickers and criminals of all sorts. A large portion of people and organizations that offer respite from the danger tend to be religious in orientation, and often make converting the defectors to Christianity a core part of their mission.
In her recently released novel, “How I Became a North Korean” Korean American writer Krys Lee skillfully conveys the complicated nature of the relationships between defectors and the missionaries that offer them help at their most desperate moments.
The desperate defectors must accept help and protection, but in addition to feed and a warm place to sleep, they also want freedom and dignity; the missionaries sincerely want to help, but have also have to satisfy their funders.
In one discomfiting scene, a defector learns he and others in his group won’t be free to move on to South Korea until he learns the Bible by heart. Incensed, he asks, “You mean you’re holding them hostage until they memorize the whole book?”
The missionary character responds, “The Lord’s word can only change your life for the better.”
During my interview with Hyun, which took place on the sidelines of a religious gathering attended by around 100,000 people at Seoul’s Olympic Stadium, she declined to go into much detail about the specifics of how she became a Christian. At times nearing tears and all the while seeming uncomfortable discussing a trying time of her life, Hyun would only say that throughout six years in China, she was introduced to a church where she worshipped a few times a week. She had that before leaving North Korea, she had an inkling of God’s existence, and that leaving North Korea gave her the freedom to consider religion with an open mind, which led her to devout belief.
Hyun is now 53 and lives in Busan with her two daughters, who are aged 29 and 24. She says she regularly speaks to defectors about how Christian teachings can help them handle the psychological trauma they endured growing up in and fleeing North Korea. She says her ultimate goal is to bring religious freedom to North Korea, to realize a day when North Koreans will be able to discuss all the world’s faiths openly, instead of being stuck worshipping the dead body of their founding leader.
*Steven Borowiec covers Korea for the Los Angeles Times