Prayer for North Korean Refugees: A Testimony to the Power of Prayer

In the middle of the night the Chinese Police barged into a room where our missionaries were meeting with two North Korean refugees. There was a Bible open in front of them and it was clear what was going on. This was the first time anything like this had ever happened to Crossing Borders workers. Our missionary couple was taken aback. The wife was sitting with the North Korean refugee women. When the police came in the husband was off in a corner of the room, watching television. Immediately the wife whispered in English, “Don’t turn around.”

He stayed still while the TV blared on.

For a reason unknown to us, Chinese authorities punish male missionaries more harshly than female missionaries. The government punishes couples with even more cruelty.

When I think of this story I am reminded of Acts 12, when Peter was imprisoned and the church began to pray.

“So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.” – Acts 12:5

As the church prayed, Peter was met by an angel, was escorted out of prison and showed up at the prayer meeting. So unbelievable was this that when a woman announced that Peter - the subject of their prayers - had arrived at their doorstep, nobody in attendance believed her.

As the police questioned our female missionary and the two refugees, they looked around the room. They did not see her husband watching television, who sat in plain sight. They told the women to go home and left without a huff.

That month Crossing Borders was the prayer focus of one of our closest partner churches. We didn’t know it but this church was busy praying for us.

We believe, as an organization, that prayer is an integral component to our work. Prayers fuel the effectiveness of our ministry toward North Korean refugees and protect us as we do this dangerous work.

We ask that you, the Church, would continue to pray for us knowing that it is our sovereign God who moves the hearts of refugees and eyes of policemen.

Prayer for North Korean Refugees: Being Illegal

Today members of the US Senate proposed a bill that would eventually lead to provisions for many illegal immigrants to be granted citizenship. President Obama will supposedly follow suit with his own plan tomorrow. While immigration has been a hot topic on Capitol Hill for the last 10 years, North Korean refugees have lived in constant fear with no hope for any reform. Though China signed the UN Refugee Convention in 1951, they have not fully abided by it.

A cornerstone to this Convention is the concept of non-refoulement, which guarantees that the host country will not send a refugee back to their home country. China has been forcibly repatriating North Korean refugees since the late ‘90s.

This has lead to devastating consequences for North Korean refugees seeking food and freedom in China. We minister to children who have witnessed their mothers being hauled away by the police. We cry with the women who have been sold to abusive husbands and treated like livestock by their families. We hid in a closet with a half-North Korean, half-Chinese child because the police were actively searching for North Korean refugees in 2006. We held the hands of North Korean refugees as they traversed rough terrain on the Asian Underground Railroad in search for freedom.

The reason Crossing Borders exists is to help North Korean refugees who are in fear of forced repatriation. If China was abiding by the 1951 Convention, there would be little need for our help. But this is what the church is built for, to provide justice for those who cannot attain it for themselves.

Please pray this week for this dark situation and the people trapped in it. And please continue to pray for Crossing Borders and groups like us that we may continue to provide shelter for those in need.

Prayer for North Korean Orphans: Repeated Rejection

It’s a typical story. A North Korean refugee woman flees from China for South Korea. She works, saves and sends for her half-North Korean, half-Chinese child and her Chinese husband. The story should end happily but it often doesn’t. Many North Korean refugees who escape to South Korea and are changed by the fast and glamorous lifestyle. Women soon view their husbands in China as backwards and provincial and begin relationships with South Korean men who have a decided economic advantage over their Chinese counterparts.

“Sang” is an North Korean orphan in our Second Wave program. His mother fled China about four years ago. She, like so many North Korean refugees, sent for her son and husband who purchased her in the early 2000s. But it didn’t end up well for Sang. When Sang and her father arrived in South Korea, her mother was transformed into a busy Seoulite. She had a new life with more money and more opportunity. According to Sang’s father, they were both ignored in South Korea and eventually the father and son moved back to their simple life in China. Sang’s mother hasn’t called or sent money in years.

One of the contributing factors to this trend has been South Korea’s gender imbalance. In the 1980s, when ultrasound technology was more common, South Korea’s gender balance was one of the worst in Asia, according to a study by the World Bank. So egregious was this imbalance that the South Korean government banned doctors from revealing the gender of babies in 1987, according to this article by the New York Times.

Haneul, another one of our North Korean orphans, experienced a similar fate. Her mother, a North Korean refugee, went to Seoul and sent for her father. They planned to send for Haneul but, while her father was in South Korea, her mother was wooed by a South Korean man. Her father returned to China in shame and returned to work on his farm in Northeast China.

Chinese men who purchase North Korean refugee women are often the lowest on the economic spectrum. These men have little to offer Chinese women as far as looks and money. This is why many have to go to the human trafficking market to purchase a North Korean woman. So for these men to compete with rich South Korean men for the affections of their wives is challenging.

For the North Korean orphans under Crossing Borders’ care, this is a second forced separation from their mothers and a second rejection. Many of them feel rejected and abandoned twice over.

Please pray this week for North Korean orphans, who often bare the brunt of the emotional wounds from this situation. Also pray for these families to somehow reunite and become whole again. Until they do, Crossing Borders will continue to fill the gap and nurture them.

Prayer for Work with North Korean Refugees: Words to Speak

In our line of work, Crossing Borders has had the opportunity to hear many stories from North Korean refugees face-to-face. Some of these stories shared around dinner tables and in circles of conversation are so heart-wrenching that, after the refugees are done, there is a deafening silence that follows. For some of us on the American staff, sometimes there is nothing to say. In times, we have let this silence remain until someone refills the water or until the check comes at the restaurant.

Fortunately, our missionaries have a gift in comforting and wise words, and have aided us in many a meeting with North Korean refugees in China.

There is a gift that some people have which can only be explained as spiritual. Some people’s words, given at the right moment with just the right tone, can be a salve for those who are hurting or a scalpel for those who need to change.

What do you say to a child who is living with the regret of accidentally turning her mother in to the police? What can be said to a woman who has lost her child to traffickers? Or a man who is dying from a sickness that cannot be healed in Northeast China?

There is no manual for this but there is the Holy Spirit, who can give us these words.

Please pray with us this week as we continue to minister to North Korean refugees who need help and healing. Please pray for God’s presence to be felt in every encounter we have with our refugees and orphans and that we would be given the right words to speak.

Prayer for North Korean Refugees: Faith in Fear

Crossing Borders' work was recently mentioned in FOX Files, as North Korean refugees in our care were interviewed on the news network. Today, we would like to share more about the life of this refugee. In Jesus' ministry, a man, whose daughter was close to death, approached Jesus with an urgent request for the Son of God to enter into his home and heal his ailing daughter. Jesus obliged and followed the man to his home. When they arrived it was too late. She was dead.

In a house full of mourning, Jesus entered with hope. He went to her room and raised her from the dead.

This account in Mark 5 is stunning on many levels. When someone said it was too late, Jesus responded, “Do not fear, only believe.”

We have seen the desperation and fear of so many North Korean refugees in Northeast China.

Crossing Borders staff once met with a family of four North Korean refugees who had only a few hours to flee from the North Korean police. In a rash decision, they decided it was best if the youngest, still in elementary school, was left behind in North Korea. They were afraid that she would slow the family down and that they would all be caught, sent to a prison camp and never emerge.

Our staff spoke with the family in a restaurant in Northeast China. It had been months since they had last seen their daughter and they couldn’t bring themselves to eat the enormous spread of food our staff had ordered for them.

Soon after, Crossing Borders decided to send for their daughter through a network of brokers and smugglers in North Korea. But her fate was uncertain. She could easily be caught by the police and sent to a prison camp where she would be held hostage. She could have been sold in China as a sex slave if caught by one of the many networks of smugglers who traffic North Korean refugees. She could get injured and die on her journey through the North Korean wilderness.

Through her journey, Crossing Borders held to the words of Jesus. “Do not fear, only believe.”

It took weeks of waiting but finally, the family was reunited. It was through moments of utter desperation that the family came to believe in the saving hope of Jesus. He was their only hope.

Once reunited, the family of four made another journey. This time, together, they trekked through China into Southeast Asia, where they were able to receive refugee status. From here, they travelled to South Korea and gained safe entrance. When the family arrived in Seoul they thought their journey of suffering had ended. But their youngest daughter, after the struggle and toil they had suffered to be together as a family, contracted H1N1 and died shortly after the completion of their journey.

Many say that North Korean refugees in China are rice Christians. Critics say they only act like Christians to receive aid. But at least for this family, this was not the case. In their utter devastation they turned to God and began rebuilding their lives.

Together, with Crossing Borders, they leaned on the words of Jesus.“Do not fear, only believe.”

As we go about our week, let us remember that God is near to the broken hearted. He meets those in desperate need. He has sustained Crossing Borders for 10 years with little trouble from the Chinese authorities, we believe, to minister to the North Korean refugees in fear. We hope that with your help, we can continue to work to share the words of Christ with them. "Do not fear, only believe."

Prayer for North Korean Refugees: A Quiet Migration

North Korean refugees have been making their way through China to South Korea for about 15 years. About 27,000 of them have made it through the Modern Day Underground Railroad through Southeast Asia to freedom in South Korea and the rest of the world. But there has been another migration from China to South Korea that has been impacting North Korean refugees in the area. Koreans in China have been migrating to South Korea in droves over the past few years. The Chosun Ilbo recently reported that more than 600,000 Korean Chinese have migrated from China to Korea in 2011. And Bloomberg News reported in 2009 the beginnings of a mass migration of South Korean citizens from China back to their homeland.

This secondary migration has made it even harder for North Korean refugees to hide in the region. There are fewer people who are sympathetic to their needs and fewer members of the underground church to aid them as they seek refuge from the world’s most repressive regime.

Recently, Crossing Borders took in a young girl named “Sunnah”. Sunnah's mother is a North Korean refugee who fled to South Korea through the Underground Railroad. Sunnah and her father were beckoned by her mother to South Korea, where they lived until 2010. In a new country with new possibilities, her mother began to ignore Sunnah and her father. Sunnah's parents began to fight and eventually Sunnah's father returned to a life of poverty in Northeast China, bringing his daughter with him.

To make things worse, Sunnah’s father has a degenerative bone disease. He can no longer walk. They stayed with Sunnah's uncle, who also lived in abject poverty.

Their local underground church was poorly equipped to help because many of their members had moved to South Korea in search of economic opportunities. Our missionaries report rapidly diminishing numbers in congregations of underground churches. Many are left with only the elderly in their congregation.

It was by God’s providence that we met Sunnah and her father through friends of friends. She is being put into a boarding school and is doing better.

Please pray for North Korean refugees in this rapidly changing landscape, many of whom are finding it harder and harder to find help.

Prayer for North Korean Refugees: Kyung Joo's Story

Join Crossing Border this week as we pray for Kyung Joo, one of the North Korean refugees in Crossing Borders' care, and her son. Kyung Joo’s arrival to China from North Korea was similar to the story of many North Korean refugee women. She was guaranteed a job in China by a “friend” in North Korea. When she crossed Kyung Joo was forced into the trunk of a car, sold as a commodity to the highest bidder and trafficked into the hands of a husband who didn’t love her.

What is different about her story is that, when the Chinese police caught her and turned her over to a North Korean prison camp, Kyung Joo was eight months pregnant.

North Korea does not take well to “tainted” blood of outsiders. So when the North Korean officials of Kyung Joo's prison camp discovered she had a half-Chinese baby in her belly, they beat her mercilessly. They beat the baby in her belly too.

Kyung Joo said she was “an inch away from death” when they released her. She somehow found her way back to China where she had her baby.

Our staff met with Kyung Joo and her son recently on a visit to the North Korean refugees in our care. Crossing Borders is helping her with food, shelter and her child’s education. Her son was severely impaired. He cannot walk. Our staff stated that his impairment was unlike any natural disability they had seen. It looked like someone had broken his legs permanently. He could not walk, talk or eat without assistance.

Kyung Joo is determining whether she should stay in China or flee through the Underground Railroad to South Korea. Her journey would be difficult given her son’s condition.

Please pray for her and her son. We will keep you posted.

Prayer for North Korean Refugees: The Poor, Hungry

North Korean refugees are escapees from a nation akin to the world's largest prison. This week, the New York Times reported that the poor are staying poor in North Korea, despite recent economic developments, and that it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to leave the country.

Think about this for a minute. Kim Jong Un is pampering his family friends while the rest of the country languishes in poverty. And to make things worse, he has closed the door to food and medical help that North Koreans sought as a last-ditch measure.

This means that there are less and less alternatives for most North Koreans to find food.

Many experts say that the economic and cultural shifts are only meant for the North Korean elite. They say that the increase in pop culture and luxury goods are gifts to the politically loyal to make them happy as the regime makes it’s third hereditary shift of power.

Economic reform in North Korea is only for the elite because the whole country is built for the elite.

This harkens back to the days of the Great Famine of the 1990s when Kim Jong Il would throw lavish parties catered by foreign chefs. He would fly in professional wrestlers to entertain him and his friends while about 2 million people died of starvation.

Many North Korean refugees we have helped witnessed this disparity first-hand. One family reported to us that a man in their village was so delirious from hunger that he pushed his child into a fire and ate her only to realize afterward what he had done. This happened around 2005, when the famine was supposedly over.

The New York Times article mentions that North Koreans are still being found dead along the roadside in the country. Starvation is still a present reality and commoners still have to forage to make ends meet.

As we pray this week for North Korean refugees and the for the North Korean people, let us not be discouraged. It can seem the regime is an immovable mountain, one that will oppress its people forever. But we have hope.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” - Matthew 5:3

Prayer for North Korean Orphans: Hardly a Chance

Please pray with us as we serve North Korean orphans while navigating through the difficulties and frustrations of Chinese government's bureaucracy. We have written in the past about how urgent the situation is with the half-North Korean, half-Chinese population - the North Korean orphans, stateless children - we serve in China. While China has made some concessions to accommodate this population, their system of bribes and corruption has made it almost impossible for most children to pull themselves out of poverty.

In China a child does not have access to education, health care or any government service unless he has legal identification. China now allows stateless, North Korean orphans to legally register and receive an ID, but, as we will explain, laws are not straightforward in China.

For a stateless child to receive legal identification, he must pass through three official Chinese offices:

First, the child must get an official document to prove their father is indeed a Chinese citizen. This can be obtained in most hospitals and in rare cases at an office of record keeping.

Second, the North Korean orphan must go to the police bureau and obtain proof that his mother was taken by the Chinese police and sent back to North Korea. The child can also make the argument that his mother has escaped to South Korea but in our experience it is much easier to pass through the police requirement if the mother was actually sent back to North Korea.

Let’s be clear about what this means. In order for a stateless child to obtain legal status, he must prove that his mother was sent back to North Korea where she will be put in a gulag and potentially executed. Earlier this year Yonhap News, a South Korean wire service, reported that four such people were publicly executed.

The last and most difficult hurdle comes at the end, after the child has gone through the first two steps. A stateless child must take his case to the Family Registration Department where, if the child can show proof of paternal citizenship and maternal arrest, he should be granted a legal ID. But this is not how things work in China. A bribe of 3,000 to 5,000 RMB ($475 to $793 at today’s exchange rate) is necessary to complete this step. There is no receipt for this fee and there is no official record of it.

For there to be any substantial improvements in the lives of North Korean orphans, change must come at a systemic level. And with China’s one-party, pseudo-totalitarian government, we are not holding our breath. This is why we firmly believe that outside intervention is necessary for these children to have a shot.

Please pray for us as we continue to navigate the confusing, ever-changing bureaucratic muddle of China on behalf of our North Korean orphans.

Prayer for North Korean Refugees: Suicide

Mia came to China from North Korea at the height of the North Korean famine in 1998. Like many, many North Korean refugee women, she was captured by traffickers right after she crossed the border. What was unusual about her case, however, was that she was put in a burlap sack and thrown into the back of a truck. “I felt like I was less than a pig,” said Mia.

She was sold for 5,000 Chinese RMB (about $600, according historical exchange rate data) to an abusive Chinese farmer, with whom she had a son.

Mia’s husband beat her so mercilessly that she saw suicide as the only escape to her situation. She tried sleeping pills, which didn’t work. She tried rat poison, which hospitalized her.

When Mia came to in the hospital, she was placed in a bed next to a Korean-Chinese prostitute, who told Mia to be strong and that there was a way out of her situation. Mia didn’t want to believe her. When Mia was ready to go back home, there were policemen outside her room patrolling the hospital. As a North Korean refugee, she would be arrested, imprisoned, sent back to North Korea. Mia's roommate told her to step outside. What happened next was both horrific and extraordinary.

Mia’s roommate exchanged her body for Mia’s freedom. After the police emerged from the hospital room, they allowed Mia to move to another village with her son. There, she was sold to another man, who was disabled but did not beat her.

She now attends church and has a job in the kitchen in a small boarding school in the countryside. She said that she realizes now that suicide was not her hope, her hope was God.

We believe there are many more like North Korean refugees who are living hopelessly in forced marriages and are waiting to be set free.

As we pray today, let us ask God to mobilize the church so that North Korean refugee women like Mia can be saved from their utter despair.

Staff Notes: Crossing Borders Work, Contentedness

The following post was written by Crossing Borders staff: My wife and I have recently been looking at houses to buy. It’s a good time to buy, they say. Especially because we just gave birth to a newborn boy, our second child.

He’s a month old and his things are piling up around our small, two-bedroom apartment. Diapers, clothes, a crib, creams, bags.

As I searched online for a home, I said to myself, “If only I was making $__ more, then we could afford the home we need.”

And then last week a rare moment of clarity came over me. "Need? What does one really need?"

When a North Korean refugee comes to Crossing Borders and expresses thankfulness to us about all that we have done for him, I remember what I truly need.

Crossing Borders furnishes our refugees with what we consider basic necessities. Food, a small apartment, a television. And with these things, some come to us gushing with thanksgiving. Many refugees who have been in our care say that they want to go back into North Korea with the blessings they have received through Crossing Borders in China and share the Christ's compassion with others.

I remember a boy in one of our orphanages who used to look through every garbage can he could find. With just a little food, a meager place to live and a good education, we have seen his life transform. He now wants to become a pastor to train and teach in the gospel.

In order to help others, we at Crossing Borders must first realize how blessed we are. Looking through those real estate sites on my Macbook Pro with my speedy internet connection, somehow I forgot what it meant to be content.

I recently listened to a sermon by Tim Keller. He was talking about his wife, who was unsure of whether to move her family from Virginia to New York City in the difficult transition of building a church there. She was looking at a communion table and heard the voice of God saying:

“If I’ve done this for you, then it should be okay for me to ask you to spend the rest of your life living in a cardboard box in the streets of Calcutta.”

After that she agreed to move to New York City and God blessed the world through her and her husband’s ministry.

I am not saying that poverty is equal to godliness. Nor am I saying that being rich is bad. All I am saying is that the desire for more could hinder us from seeing what we have and from helping those in need.

As we pray this week I ask that we would all ask God to give Crossing Borders and those who share our vision the desire to “seek first his kingdom” and not “all these things.”

Prayer for North Korean Orphans: (Almost) Lost Generation

What happens when a generation of North Korean orphans – half Chinese, half North Korean – enter into a world of poverty, without love from a stable home, without proper identification and without a chance? Crossing Borders has had over 10 years to survey the human rights crisis impacting North Korean orphans and refugees in Northeast China. We have concluded that this population at a crossroads. One road is a path to poverty, instability and suffering. Another is the path to education and the gospel. It is a chance for this generation to become a bridge to North Korea.

The generation of North Korean orphans we support were born in the wake of the Great Famine of the 1990s and range in age from eight to 13. Their mothers fled from North Korea to search for food, medical assistance, or a better life. However, following their escape, many were captured and sold to poor Chinese men looking for wives. The orphans who we care for, born out of these forced marriages, have mothers who have left them behind. In some situations, these mothers were running for their lives from abusive husbands or Chinese authorities.

The North Korean orphans left behind have no access to education, medical care or, in the future, legal jobs. They were never granted legal identification.

There are tens of thousands of these children in the region. Estimations add up to over 40,000. Absolute statistics are impossible because they are not counted in any census. But evident to us, nonetheless, is that there seems to be an endless number of them. In each city we visit, we always find large pockets of them.

Upon entry into support from Crossing Borders in our Second Wave program, these children are given an education, raised in discipline and, most importantly, introduced to our faith. In our work, we have had the opportunity to take care of about 150 North Korean orphans. In their lives, we have witnessed stunning transformations. Children who were too scared to speak have become rambunctious and outgoing. Children who were living in filth have been given clean, quiet, orderly homes to live in with guardians who can provide and care for them.

We think it’s time for people around the world to rise up and take responsibility for a group of children, who, if left alone, might be on a road to destruction.

Please pray for these children that they would not be lost in the world cruelty, callousness, or suffering. Please pray that they might be found in Christ.

Prayer for North Korean Refugees: Discernment

For the past few months, Crossing Borders has been continuing its search for missionaries to serve North Korean refugees in China. As we continue to interview and speak to individuals, there is one quality in a missionary that we have realized is hard to identify, but is absolutely essential to our work: Discernment. Crossing Borders has a policy to be cautious in approaching anyone about our work when working China. We realize that in some aspects, we are a foreign organization with some resources, but mostly a passion to do good. In an ideal world this would be all you need. But this world is not an ideal one, and the fact is that China possesses is a radically different from what we are familiar with.

One of our American staff members once noted, "Whenever I go to China I feel like I’m stepping into the Cantina in Star Wars, Episode IV. There is a different rhythm, a different culture."

Perhaps China quite as foreign to us as Tatooine, but reality is that one can get lost in the confusing backdrop of China, if not careful.

These are some basic questions we have to ask our missionaries on the field, and one which we hope any new field workers in our organization will be able to answer when meeting new North Korean refugees:

1. How do we know the North Korean refugees who have approached us for help are really North Korean refugees?
2. How do we know if the North Korean orphans we help are really in need?

These are questions that we analyze constantly and, to be honest, it’s an inexact science.

But what Crossing Borders will continue to do is ask questions relentlessly. Where do our North Korean refugees come from? Who do our refugees and our workers know? What was their experience crossing the border? How did North Korean refugees come to hear about us? Can we trust those who refer them to us? Do their stories hold up?

Please help us to continually approach our work with much caution and God's provision of wisdom. Constantly being on guard can be a necessary but exhausting process for our workers and staff.  A lack of discernment can severely affect the safety we have built in our network.

Please pray for those on the front line who, through God's aid in discernment, make our mission to reach North Korean refugees possible.

North Korean Refugees: Suggestions for Kim Jong Un

As an organization at work in aiding North Korean refugees who escape out of the Hermit Kingdom, Crossing Borders is careful to keep up-to-date on the news coming out of the country. Some of the information coming out of North Korea this year has been heartening. A shorter hemline signals a country that is beginning to change with the times. A first lady is making the regime seem more people-friendly. All of these things are great. Recently North Korean media released text of a speech Kim Jong Un made to the Workers’ Party on July 26, which called for reforms to the country’s economic system. In the speech, Kim stated that the party would focus on “developing the economy and improving livelihoods, so that the Korean people lead happy and civilized lives.” Even better.

But if nation would really like to show its strength, it must welcome North Korean refugees back into the country without the risk of punishment.

In spending time with North Korean refugees along the border and in South Korea, it is obvious to many of our field workers and staff that they miss their families back home. Because North Korea maintains a stranglehold on all forms of communication, it is very difficult for families to communicate and virtually impossible for them to see each other.

This is the agonizing decision that all North Korean refugees who fled their country have made. One family in this position comes to mind.

Our staff met the "Lee" family in a restaurant in Northeast China a few years ago. They were upstanding members of the Workers’ Party and, according to them, they had never starved because of their class standing and they had never committed a crime. This was until they couldn’t find food around 2007. The patriarch of this family of four had to make the tough choice to go into the illegal money transfer business.

Within months he was caught and had a few hours to decide what to do. He fled with his wife and his teenage daughter to China. His son, who was in elementary school, was left with relatives. They feared he would slow the family’s escape. When the family met with our staff for dinner, they could hardly focus on the meal as they told their story. All they could talk about was their son who was trapped in North Korea.

As a response, Crossing Borders helped send money into North Korea to get their son out of the country.

What do Kim Jong Un and the Democratic People's Republic leaders fear most about allowing North Korean refugees back into their country? Information. With an inflow of people who have seen the prosperity of the outside world, North Korea is afraid that their people might grumble for change and the ruling elite might lose power.

But change is already afoot. DVDs from the outside world are secret, but commonplace. People get news regularly from foreign news outlets beaming short wave radio signals into the country. Illegal cell phones connected to the Chinese networks are available to some through the black market.

What is North Korea trying to shield its people from? The cat is out of the bag.

For people to live in happiness they must be given the opportunity to see their families. New economic reforms will undoubtedly open the country up even more. There is no risk in slowly allowing North Korean refugees back to help rebuild the country that they love. This will help North Koreans live, as Kim Jong Un states, "happy and civilized lives."

Prayer for North Korean Refugees: Effects of Hiding

A member of our American staff recalls his experience not too many years ago, standing over the Tumen River on a broken bridge. Not far from where he stood, across the river, was North Korea. Our staff member remembers seeing a few guard houses, mountains stripped of their vegetation. The river had frozen solid in the Siberian cold, and in the snow were the footprints of North Korean refugees who had fled across the ice. Once a North Korean refugee flees into China, their lives depend on how quickly they are able to blend in. Steps must be taken to avoid being noticed. Clothes must quickly be changed in the dark. They must clean themselves of any marks of travel or fatigue. Two things have a potential tip their hand: their height and their language. They must always be mindful of who is watching. Fear and suspicion begin to settle into their every waking moment as their lives depend on how cautious they are in everything they do.

Our staff was able to visit a small village in the Chinese countryside where the police had raided and captured much of the North Korean refugee population. One boy, now an orphan, had witnessed his mother being tackled by the police and dragged away.

One of the few remaining refugees approached our missionaries, dropped to her knees and begged. She pleaded, “Can you please help me get out of here?”

She couldn’t muster up any other words. She was shaking and visibly terrified.

North Korean refugees are aware that they have been watched for almost their whole lives in their homeland. Relatives and even their own children may be asked to inform on them as a test of their loyalty. They have heard of spies who will report any "unpatriotic activities". But in China, where refugees cannot grow close to anyone, cannot distinguish generous help from malevolent deception, cannot begin to even consider trust as a valid option, North Korean refugees are trapped in a state of unending instability and paranoia.

Some North Korean refugees in China have lived with this looming shadow of fear for more than a decade. For them, the anxiety and dread has seeped deep into their lives and have taken their toll.

One North Korean refugee who made it to South Korea after more than five years in China told us that, the day she got her legal ID, she slept with it in her palm and cried herself to sleep.

Please pray for those who are hiding this week. It is no way to live. Please help us as we minister to them, comfort them, and pray for their healing in the security and protection of Christ.

"Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who have an anxious heart, 'Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.'"

- Isaiah 35:3-4

Staff Notes: North Korean Refugees, Memories, Home

The following post was written by Crossing Borders volunteer staff: Years before I started volunteering with Crossing Borders to serve North Korean refugees and orphans, I remember going on a brief visit to Northeast China with my grandfather. We stopped at a North Korean restaurant staffed by beautiful young North Korean waitresses. The North Korean government owns several restaurants throughout Asia, which are fully staffed and managed by approved North Korean patriots under the employ of their government. My grandfather, a North Korean refugee, who was born in North Korea and still had siblings living there, asked the women about their lives and their families. I knew he took pity on their situations. Although they were living in relative freedom in China they were, essentially, still enslaved to the North Korean government, working long hours for little pay. Yet with frozen smiles and identical expressions, each professed their undying devotion to their homeland and their “Eternal Father” Kim Il Sung. They each wore a small red Kim Il Sung pin on their uniforms and spoke no ill of their leader.

A few years later, I found myself watching a documentary entitled State of Mind, which followed the lives of two young North Korean gymnasts as they prepared with single-minded devotion for "The Mass Games”, a performance held in honor of North Korea's leader. The gymnasts placed all their efforts and hopes into the chance that they might perform for Kim Jong Il. Their months of labor and practice resulted in a flawless performance. But on the day of the Games, the Supreme Commander failed to show. , The disappointment and pain in their eyes was evident.

Many of the North Korean refugees assisted by Crossing Borders long to return to their homes in North Korea. Though they have been informed that their leaders Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un are not gods, that North Korea is not paradise on earth, their home still beckons them from a distance. Memories and shared histories are still too powerful to forget. This is perhaps why my own grandfather remains drawn to any news about his former home, why he continues to travel along the border between China and North Korea, hoping to catch glimpses of any North Koreans on the other side.

On one of our visits, while riding a tourist ferry along the Tumen River, we happened to see some North Korean children playing in the water. They were close enough that we could hear their laughter. My grandfather reached out his arms and wistfully remarked that he wished there was something he could give them. Only half-joking, he thought of throwing them small bags of rice or money. But soon our small tour boat turned around and we were headed back, moving further and further away from the shores of North Korea.

Prayer for North Korean Refugees: Freedom

How do you think North Korean refugees envision freedom? Take a look at your schedule today, only two days from the 4th of July - a holiday when we celebrate our freedom as citizens of the United States.

What is it filled with? Work to complete? Errands to run? We are all so busy these days. If our jobs aren’t taking more than 40 hours a week, our social lives or families are. None of us are trapped or persecuted by authorities. But many may feel oppressed and stuck in the hectic cycle of our day-to-day lives.

On Saturday, the New York Times printed a fascinating column about this. Author Tom Kreider spells out the pitfalls of modern American busyness.

“Almost everyone I know is busy,” he said. “They feel anxious and guilty when they aren’t either working or doing something to promote their work. They schedule in time with friends the way students with 4.0 G.P.A.’s make sure to sign up for community service because it looks good on their college applications.”

And what it all adds up to, according to Kreider, is a pile of work to cover up the fact that our lives are often empty.

What does it mean, then, if even our scheduled leisure time, our rigorously organized holidays and days set aside for exciting activities add up to empty lives? If freedom is not found in barbecue or fireworks or all the leisure in the world, where do we stand as a people who are "free"?

The Word tells us quite simply in 2 Corinthians, "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom."

As followers of God, our calling is not to only to celebrate freedom in rights or in leisure. Our calling is to celebrate having freedom in salvation. Because of the work of Christ, we live in the Spirit's satisfaction. We are made whole and overflowing. We live free of fear, of condemnation, of death.

However, we acknowledge still that North Korean refugees, and many around the world, struggle in fear. They are not only politically imprisoned, made slaves of hunger, poverty, and fear. They are not free to hear the gospel. They are not free to access the freedom God extends to them through the Spirit. It is for these reason that Crossing Borders works to reach them, beyond the borders of oppression, starvation, and pain.

So this 4th of July, please help us to thank God for the freedoms we enjoy, not only for our privileged lives and civil liberties, but for the Spirit. Most importantly, please help us to pray for and serve those who need this same freedom. Help us to provide for their material needs and most importantly, for their spiritual hunger.

Bernard Malamud, author of “The Natural” once wrote, “The purpose of freedom is to create it for others.”

The apostle Paul writes in Galatians 5, "For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another."

Today, as we pray, let us ask God that this freedom that we celebrate would not be wasted. Let's pray that the freedom of the Spirit would be delivered in the healing and empowerment to North Korean refugees in China and the oppressed around the world.

Prayer for North Korean Refugees: Harvest Workers

Crossing Borders has been fortunate to have a string of missionaries in China who have driven our work to new heights. Our current missionaries aiding the North Korean refugees and orphans in our care are fantastic people. Two years ago our staff member made a visit to our work in China and was able to spend quite a bit of time with our current missionaries. They noted on the trip, "They're twice my age but they were running circles around me as we moved from task to task. At one point I asked if we could slow down. They didn’t."

Our missionaries brought our staff to a remote farming village in Northeast China where there are many North Korean refugees in hiding. Refugee after refugee lined up to tell our missionaries their stories and their troubles. In response, each one was treated with kindness and compassion. With each North Korean refugee, our missionaries listened and ministered avidly, passionately. Tears flowed and prayers were shared.

After several years on the field, our missionaries continue to show remarkable care toward the individuals they have met time and time again, with each and every new North Korean refugee who enters our Refugee Rescue program. Missionaries in our line of work tend to get hardened and burnt out. These two got better with time.

But now their commitment is up and they are looking to move on. Though we fully support this decision, we are at a loss as to how we are going to find people to fill their shoes.

We remain hopeful and see this as an opportunity, not a setback. We pray in eager expectation to see what God has in store for us. We pray that this will make our organization grow, not shutter.

For this we ask you to join with us in prayer. This is a specific need that we need met and before we get into specifics about what we are looking for, we really want to spend time in prayer about it.

Please join with us as we pray asking God to send workers to His harvest field of North Korean refugees in China.

“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

- Matthew 9:36-38

Prayer for North Korean Refugees: More Prayer

How many people have had prayers answered in the past month? Year? Prayer works. Prayer is a powerful weapon in the Christian walk. Every word is heard in the ears of our all-powerful God, and He will change lives. It is for this reason that prayer North Korean refugees is such a critical need in Crossing Borders' work. The power of prayer is not only for personal concerns. God can move nations, leaders, rulers on different paths. Sometimes generations pass before these prayers come to fruition. Sometimes generations receive an answer to their prayers with immediate and unprecedented transformation and revival.

Recall the voices of the Israelites under slavery and suffering:

"During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew."

Exodus 2:23-25

When we call out to God, He will remember His covenant with us, signed in the body and blood of our Messiah - Jesus Christ. It is with this promise that we can pray for lost and broken North Korean refugees and their families trapped in the Hermit Kingdom.

The truth is that many people know the power of prayer. Yet, because of the busyness of life, lack of faith, or discouragement that plagues us in thoughts of the many in pain, Christians often give up on the dark nation of North Korea.

Therefore, we ask of you, our faithful supporters: please pray for prayer.

Today, as we drive to work, sit at our computers and go about our days, let us remember that God laughs at concrete and barbed wire. The Demilitarized Zone is nothing before the Almighty. We have hope.

"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go."

Joshua 1:9

Staff Notes: A North Korean Refugee Mother's Heart

The following post was written by Crossing Borders volunteer staff: Ever since the birth of our first biological child Lila, my “mother’s heart” has been unusually sensitive to the difficult situations faced by mothers who have had to give up their children. Our second child Chloe was adopted from South Korea at the age of 14 months. She is now almost four years old and we cannot imagine our family without her. But at the same time I know that somewhere in Korea there is a mother who is wondering where her daughter is, how she looks, what she’s thinking and whether she’s safe and happy in her new life.  When I look at Lila, I can’t imagine how it must feel to give up the child you have carried in your womb for nine months and given birth to, and not know what is going to happen to her. And yet I know because of their life circumstances, whether it is poverty, abuse, or lack of family support, many mothers know that they are making a choice for their children to have a better life than they believed they could provide.

Thinking about the North Korean refugee mothers we assist through Crossing Borders, I often wonder if they have contemplated the same thoughts and worries. Though their lives may be vastly different than those of unwed teenagers or single mothers in South Korea, their stories are also the stories of heartbreak, of loss, and of families torn apart by factors beyond their control. What could possibly have gone through refugee mothers' minds as they made the perilous decision to cross the Tumen River, often leaving behind their youngest children in the hope of finding work or food in China, and hoping that they would soon be able to return? How must their hearts have sunk as they saw those hopes unravel when they were captured by sex traffickers and sold like property to men whose language they did not understand, trading one life of starvation and oppression in North Korea for one of fear and despair in China? And how did they feel when they bore new children and began cobbling together another life, only to be forced to run away for their safety and their children’s safety when they could no longer endure the abuse of their new “husbands”?

Though as varied and complicated as each individual experience may be, as a mother my guess is that one thing remains in common for them. These North Korean refugee mothers haven’t forgotten. They haven’t forgotten the daughter or the son they left behind. Although consciously they may no longer think of them daily, in their mother’s heart I am sure there is an emptiness that remains. And even if they are so numb that they cannot remember, I know that God remembers each orphan and abandoned child left in North Korea or China, and He loves them and cares for them as His own.

As some of the North Korean orphans in our Second Wave shelters recently studied during their devotions, the Word of God says,

“Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me” (Psalm 27:10).

Below, in their own words, are some of the responses expressed by the children after studying this Scripture:

My parents gave me a life. But God who created me is my true parent. My parents have forsaken me.  But Jehovah God receives me eternally. I will truly pray to Him and praise Him. I want to be His joy.

My parents forsake me but God did not forsake me.  He sent me to Pastor to raise a faithful person. I give thanks to God. I will praise Him and go to heaven.

Please help us as we continue to pray over not only our orphans, but the North Korean refugee mothers who are not with them.