The Horrors of North Korea

I came across this story in World magazine. It's hard to read things like this, but we must in order to see the face of evil. We can't pretend that meetings, peace accords, treaties, or speeches at the U.N. will cause such evil to disappear. It's there, it's real, and we need to be vigilant.



Soon Ok Lee has recently published her memoir entitled Eyes of the Tailless Animals. It chronicles six years she spent in a North Korean labor camp. If there was any doubt about the horrors of a godless society, this book will dispel it quickly.

She was born into a life of privilege in North Korea. Only one god was allowed there, and it was Kim Il Sung, father of today's dictator. She was arrested for refusing to give a bureaucrat more clothing than he was allotted.

Life in prison was a horror story. She was greeted with the words, "you are not a human being anymore." This is where the title comes in -- she was a "tailless animal." Although not a Christian believer at the time, she met an increasing number of women sentenced for their Christian belief, or as the supervisors called them, "superstition believers." Every month these women were placed in the yard in front of all the prisoners and asked to deny their belief. When they refused, they were given the hardest work possible. One Christian slipped and fell into a large feces tank. The guard told everyone to let her die, but four others ignored the command and jumped in to save her. No official even tried to get the women out, so all five died. The author later found out that the four who jumped in to save the woman were also Christians.

Eventually she escaped with her son to China, thanks to people of faith. They ended up in South Korea, where an inspector debriefing them handed them the Bible and started singing "Amazing Grace." She remembered the song because her mother and some of her friends used to close the front door to her house and sing that same song.

It's hard for us living today in America to imagine such hellish circumstances. I would hope that you might consider joining groups such as Open Doors or Voice of the Martyrs because they will tell you similar stories from around the world and what you can do about these precious people who stand up to tyranny.