Posted on 06/25/2003 10:15:00 PM PDT by OahuBreeze
Somewhere in the remote mountains of Northeastern China, a small, brave group of dedicated missionaries is preserving the national honor of Korea by smuggling North Koreans away from lives of slavery, a few lives at a time. As they ferry people to the north, they ferry information and hope to the south. By doing so, they risk their lives and freedom every day while the Chinese authorities seek to hunt them down and jail them on fabricated charges. By spreading a message of resistance, strength, and dignity, they are lifting the fog of terror and oppression that a thousand years of "sunshine" could never penetrate. They are sowing the seeds of a revolution that is the only real hope for reunification. Forty miles north of decadent Seoul’s room salons, noraebangs and university-trained StarCraft addicts, the shrinking population of North Korea is slowly dying in what Time magazine calls the worst place on earth. One wonders what remarkable will drives North Koreans to fight so hard to live another day; after all, that next day is certain to bring more of the same?forced labor, stultifying propaganda, fear of arrest and scavenging for grass and tree bark. There are no KBS crews to film it, but that does not make it less true; it merely makes it easier for people blinded by greed, nationalist pride, or shocking self-deception to pretend that it isn’t.
How bad are things for the North Koreans? It’s hard to be certain. We do know that at least 100,000 of them prefer living like hunted animals in China to life at home. Satellite photographs support estimates that 200,000 of them live in North Korea’s horrific concentration camp systems. Up to 2 million of them are estimated to have starved to death since a famine, selectively focused on the least “politically reliable,” began in 1994. No government has been so oppressive of its own people since the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. No government has ever let its people suffer such a fate while spending so lavishly on the opulent lifestyles of its leaders, and on a bloated war machine that it holds against the throats of its neighbors.
Given that the greatest mass slaughter of Koreans in history is taking place 30 miles north of Seoul ? at this very hour and minute ? one would expect strong reactions in South Korea. One would expect to see mass candlelight vigils for the millions of North Koreans selectively culled for starvation since 1994. One would expect Koreans to rain their nationalist fury at China for propping up Kim Jong Il’s failed state in order to keep Korea divided. There should be battalions of riot police protecting the Chinese Embassy from angry students each time China hunts down more North Korean refugees and pitches whole families of them back into Kim Jong Il’s furnace. There should be outcries that Korea’s government tolerates this without a peep of protest. Politicians should face eternal demands not to “kowtow” to the leaders of China, and to demand apologies from them for the next century. One would not expect South Koreans to help perpetuate the oppression of their brothers by buying North Korean products or booking overpriced Mount Kumgang tour packages. One would expect them to be passionately interested in the courageous work of the brave souls who risk confinement in Chinese prisons to save the lives of North Korean refugees.
There were no massive vigils for the Reverends Choi Bong Il and Joseph Choi in front of the Chinese Embassy, though these men sat in Chinese jails for months on fabricated charges for trying to help North Korean refugees escape to freedom. Men like Rev. Chun Ki Won and Dr. Norbert Vollertsen aren’t followed by KBS crews as they hide out in Beijing and help desperate North Korean refugees plan their brave dash for an embassy gate. In fact, Dr. Vollertsen, who will some day be remembered as Korea’s Schindler for saving hundreds of North Korean refugees, can barely attract a camera in the middle of Myeongdong. While groups like Durihana take courageous risks to lead North Koreans to freedom across hundred of miles of hostile Chinese territory, KBS and MBC choose to follow the angry, zombie-eyed spoiled brats of Hanchongryon instead, in their arduous trek along the subway lines between Yongsan and Gwanghwamun (you actually have to transfer!). Meanwhile, a few blocks away and many stories above, Hyundai executives and “progressive” politicians prepare for the next election in air-conditioned comfort, earmarking the next trillion-won payoff for a photo op with the killers in Pyongyang. They, in turn, will use it to buy more Hennessy Cognac, sarin, and crates of razor wire.
South Korea’s grain of moral redemption will be Durihana, Open Doors, and others like them. These brave ministers and missionaries are giving the North Korean people hope that the Sunshine Policy will never give them. These men and women have the moral clarity to see Sunshine for what it is ? the bulk rental of North Korean slave labor by South Korean corporations. It is a policy that fattens the oppressors and keeps Korea divided in the name of “economic stability.” The liberalization of North Korea will never happen until the glorious day Kim Jong Il kicks away his vile little existence at the end of a hangman’s rope.
The salvation of North Korea will be the peasant leaders and missionaries who will stop waiting for South Korea to awake from its self-delusion; they will seize freedom with brave hearts and bare hands. When the next Righteous Army liberates a camp arsenal at Yodok, barricades the mountain roads near the Chongjin Reservoir, or seizes a food warehouse in Wonsan, the North Korean people will thaw their frozen souls on the sparks that will ignite freedom in North Korea like a lake of gasoline. Then, when the smoke clears and KBS crews arrive at the concentration camps, the South Koreans will begin many generations of explaining why they let all this slaughter go on without raising a whimper of protest. Thankfully, Durihana and a few others will be remembered for fighting oppression, apathy and appeasement. Ten years from now, how many South Koreans will earnestly wish they had been a part of Durihana and its genuine liberation struggle back in 2003? To all those with courage and conscience, stand up now.
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S. Korea's younger generation is so obsessed with provting that the older generation is bad that it is totally blind to the monumental evil across DMZ.
provting --> proving
I have found the article about Kim Young-Sam by using "search." It was a minor piece which was difficult to find at the internet sites unless you look at the right place at the right time. It is true that major dailies, Donga and JoongAng, carried it.
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