In the beginning

Kelly had never heard of Jesus prior to arriving at Elim House this fall. She is 58 years old and in all of her time in North Korea nor in China, where she lived for almost 20 years, she had never heard of Christianity. Upon arriving at Hanawon, South Korea’s reeducation facility for new refugees, North Korean defectors are required to include their religious beliefs in the documentation. Kelly has been a buddhist for a while but wasn’t sure what “religion” even meant as she filled out her forms.

Hanawon is a government organization and is not affiliated with any specific religion. Volunteers from various faiths are allowed to visit and hold services on weekends for North Korean refugees. Since becoming aware of this topic of religions, Kelly had been very curious about what all of the other options were aside from buddhism. No one had told her about Jesus or the gospel message even in the four years she has been a South Korean resident.

 About a month into her stay with us at Elim House, our missionaries brought a bible and hymn book to Kelly and led her in a time of worship. They read from Genesis 1:1 and talked about how God created the world. Never having been confronted with an alternative to the theory that man had evolved from  monkeys, Kelly was highly engaged as they read through the rest of the first chapter of Genesis.

Escaping North Korea

Kelly fled North Korea in 1998. Her family started feeling the impact of starvation in 1994 and within four years, it had become a widespread devastation. As all the members of her family foraged and scoured for food, Kelly had to walk over dead bodies on the road. The government was unable to clean up the dead bodies quickly because the famine caused so much death, she said. But starvation made the North Korean people numb to constant death. Kelly and her youngest sister eventually decided to cross the river into China to escape the famine.

Kelly was 36 years old and her sister was 24 when they entered China. It broke her heart to be sold and separated from her sister. Kelly’s face was covered in sadness when she told us that she was also raped by a broker several times.

“Like everyone else,” she said.

Suffering

During the time Kelly was married to a disabled Chinese man who bought her, she worked in the Harbin area where winter temperatures dropped to -25 F. She did hard manual labor cutting down and hauling big trees. She became pregnant but she didn’t want to have a child at that time because she had to focus all of her strength on work to support her family. She ended up having an abortion at a nearby rural hospital, which led to complications that required more surgeries. After some time, Kelly went to have her appendix removed at a bigger urban hospital and was told by the doctors that it was a miracle that she was still alive. The doctors at the rural hospital had caused a lot of damage to her internal organs.

As our missionaries spent more time and heard more of Kelly’s stories, they realized that not one part of her body is normal anymore due to the amount of suffering she endured.  When her daughter was in high school, she urged Kelly to leave China for South Korea so she could stop living a life filled with so much pain and agony. Her daughter had read online that her mom would be able to receive free medical care and surgeries if she made it to South Korea. Kelly’s daughter is the only reason why she was able to leave China and make it safely to South Korea.

Good News

After their first session of worshipping together, our missionaries asked Kelly about her thoughts on the hymns they sang. While sheepishly sharing about being tone deaf, Kelly said she was glad she was able to follow along and expressed that the words were good for her heart. Kelly appeared very receptive when she had a chance to hear the gospel message from the missionaries and seemed to wonder why no one had ever told her this before.

John wrote in 1 John 1:15 “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” It is fairly common to see a darkness in North Korean refugees. What a joy it is when we have the opportunity to proclaim the good news and see God’s light begin to penetrate the layers of darkness built up over years of hardship and suffering.

Restore More

“Restore More” is our focus for this Giving Tuesday. Through Elim House, our aim is to restore more North Korean women in 2022, physically, emotionally and spiritually. Jesus said in John 10:10 “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” He is the hope of restoration for all of the North Korean refugee women we encounter. Our goal is to raise $45,000 towards meeting the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of more North Korean women and their children living in South Korea who may never otherwise hear the good news of Jesus and his call to put their hope in Him.