Father in Heaven, We come in worshipful adoration thankful that You are our Father, that Jesus is our Savior and Healer, and that the Holy Spirit is our Comforter, Counselor, and Teacher. We come boldly to the throne of grace on behalf of Robert Park and ask that You would show Yourself great on his behalf. We ask that You surround him with Your ministering angels, that his mission to call attention to the plight of the Korean people would be successful and that he would be freed. In Jesus name, Amen.
Add your prayer on the discussion board
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
Robert Park News
Robert Park being released from North Korea
Pajamas Media: The Rosett Report North Korean Trespass and The Tale of Robert Park Posted By Claudia Rosett On February 4, 2010 @ 11:22 pm In Uncategorized | No Comments Here comes the sickening North Korean twist to the tale of Robert Park, the young Christian missionary who walked into North Korea on Christmas Day. An American, of Korean descent, Park crossed over from China, on the frozen Tumen River, reportedly calling out messages of God’s love as he entered North Korea. Park trespassed into North Korea to call attention to the monumental trespass of North Korea’s regime on human rights and decency. He carried a letter asking Kim Jong Il to open his brutal prison camps and free the North Korean people, and he left behind statements and an interview spelling out that he did not want to be ransomed or released until North Korea’s gulag had been opened up, and shut down. Park was seized by North Korean authorities, and in the six weeks since he offered himself up as a martyr [1]for the cause of freedom in North Korea, his fate has been a mystery. Now, one of the propaganda organs of Pyongyang, the Korean Central News Agency, is offering to enlighten us about Park. According to the KCNA, [2] the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has decided to “leniently forgive and release him,” a decision reached by “taking his admission and sincere repentance of his wrong doings into consideration.” This announcement is accompanied by another account from KCNA, claiming that Park has now confessed he was “taken in by the false rumors spread by the West.” According to North Korean authorities, Park has now decided that the horrific reports so richly documented in the West of atrocities, brutality, slave labor and repression in North Korea are all just “false propaganda.” KCNA treats us to an “interview” with Park, in which he is described as saying he’s “very thankful for their love,” and has been convinced that “religious freedom is fully ensured in the DPRK,” that people there can read and believe anything they want, “wherever they want, whenever they want,” and he has “seriously repented.” This account goes on ad nauseum to proclaim that Park, in a complete flip, has come to see that North Korea “respects the rights of all the people and guarantees their freedom and they enjoy a happy and stable life.” Quite likely the news will now focus [3]on where, how and in what condition Robert Park is released from North Korea — if, indeed, that comes to pass. But that was never the point. We don’t know what Park has been through while he was held incommunicado by the expert torturers and mind-twisters of the world’s most brutal totalitarian state. But he did not go in there asking that the outcome be his own release. Park walked into North Korea asking that the prison camps be opened, and that the 23 million or so people of North Korean people be genuinely freed. The test of that is not whether North Korean authorities are able within six weeks to produce their own revision of the man named Robert Park. The real test is whether Kim Jong Il opens his gulag and lets the political prisoners out and the world’s TV cameras in. The real test is whether North Koreans are free to communicate with the world, to write what they want, say what they want, read what they want — and whether the world may now communicate freely with them. The real test is whether North Koreans may freely come and go from their own country without penalty; especially without risking time in brutal labor camps or even the periodic bouts of public execution. The real test is whether North Koreans are free to pull down the statues and throw out the portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, and stock their homes, if they so choose, with bibles, or Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations,” or Czeslaw Milosz’s excellent work on totalitarian double-think, “The Captive Mind,” or George Orwell’s “1984″ – or, for that matter, South Korean newspapers and stacks of books, reports and testimony available throughout the free world on the corruption, decadence and atrocities of Kim Jong Il’s regime. The real test is whether private news outlets can be safely established by North Koreans, in North Korea, and freely allowed to compete with the state’s Korean Central News Agency, to offer more usefully informed accounts of what, precisely, was done with Robert Park between his entry into the country on Christmas Day, and Pyongyang’s announcement that he is now deemed ready for release. While we wait for these developments, here’s a link to the excellent site of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, [4] where you can browse some of the reports on the prison camps, the horrors faced by North Koreans trying to escape, the hunger, the stunted children, and the waste, agony and deprivation inflicted by the policies of the state which has now so “leniently” decided to share with the world the product of its “interview” with Robert Park.
Article printed from The Rosett Report: http://pajamasmedia.com/claudiarosett URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/claudiarosett/north-korean-trespass-and-the-tale-of-robert-park/ URLs in this post: [1] offered himself up as a martyr : http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/13/robert-park-terrorism-bombs-sacrifice-opinions-columnists-claudia-rosett.html [2] KCNA,: http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm [3] now focus : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8499645.stm [4] Human Rights in North Korea,: http://www.hrnk.org/
지옥(북한)에서 나오면 당분간 푹 쉬면서 심신의 건강을 회복하기 바랍니다.
You will have to get yourself together since you have been to the living hell on earth. 남신우 (Nam Shin-woo)
오늘 아침 인터넷에서 북한의 개들이 로버트를 곧 석방할 예정이란 소식을 읽었습니다. 그동안 고생이 많았습니다. 북한 지옥에서 로버트가 보낸 한 달 반의 생존은 로버트의 28년 삶보다 훨씬 더 긴 세월이었을 겁니다. 지옥에서 나오면 당분간 푹 쉬면서 심신의 건강을 회복하기 바랍니다. I read this morning that the Kim Jong-il’s dogs will let you out soon. I think I know what you went through. One month and a half in the living hell on earth could have been much longer than your entire life of 28 years. You will have to rest a while and get yourself together.
로버트가 북한 선전매체에 반성 자백했다는 모든 인터뷰 내용은 사실이 아니란 것을 잘 압니다. 설사 로버트가 그런 반성 자백을 진짜 했더라도 아무 상관 없습니다. 설사 로버트가 북한 개들에게 고문을 당하지 않으면서도 그런 말을 자진해서 했다 하더라도 아무 상관 없습니다. 내가 기억하는 것은 로버트가 국경을 넘기 전에 로이터 통신과의 인터뷰에서 했던 말들이고, 국경을 넘으면서 북한의 김정일 개에게 외친 소리들입니다. “정치범 수용소를 해체하라! 북한은 국경을 열어서 주민들에게 들여보내는 식량과 구호품들을 제대로 지급하게 하라! 김정일 정권은 당장 권좌에서 물러나라! 세상 사람들은 북한인권을 돌아보라!” I read in the North Korean propaganda news what you allegedly said or confessed. All lies and distortion for sure. Even if you said all those things, it does not matter. Even if you said what you said without physical torture, it really does not matter. What I remember is what you said at the interview with Reuter News and what you shouted when you crossed the border. “Dismantle the concentration camps! Open the border and let us verify that the food to the people given to the people! Kim Jong-il, step down from the power! People of the world, look at the human rights condition in North Korea!.”
로버트가 북한 지옥으로 걸어들어 간 것은 죽기를 각오한 것이었는데, 이제 그 지옥에서 살아나오면, 죽기보다 더 힘든 긴 고통의 시작입니다. 나는 10년 전 북한에서 굶어죽는 어린 아이들 사진을 보고, 이 기나긴 고통이 시작되었습니다. 갈비뼈만 앙상하게 남아서 죽어가는 어린 아이들 사진을 보고, 하나님은 어디 계신가! 혼자서 울기도 많이 울었습니다. 수용소에서 살아나온 탈북자들을 만나, 그 분들의 증언과 수기를 번역하면서, 혼자서 울기도 많이 울었습니다. 몽골 사막에서 아들 철민이를 잃은 아버지 유상준 씨의 증언을 통역하면서, 울기도 많이 울었습니다. 자다가도 저 지옥 속에서 오늘도 굶어죽고 맞아죽고 얼어죽을 나의 분신들을 생각하면 눈물을 그칠 수 없었습니다. You walked into the living hell of North Korea to die with North Korean people. If you come out of the hell alive, it is only the beginning. I began to suffer ten years ago when I saw the pictures of dying children in North Korea. Where are you, God? I cried every time I watched those pictures of children. I cried with the concentration camp survivors when I listened to them. I cried when I translated their testimony. I cried with Yu Sang Joon when I translated his testimony that he lost his only son in the Mongolian desert. I cry in the middle of the night when I think about those children dying of starvation. They are all part of me. They are me.
로버트, 이제 우리 함께 울자. 내 막내 딸보다 더 어린 로버트가 이번에 큰 결심으로 큰 일을 해냈습니다. 한국 미국 세상 정치인들이 외면하고, 5천만 대한민국 국민들이 외면하는 북한인권운동은, 우리가 우는 수밖에 없습니다. 북한의 굶어죽는 어린 아이들을 생각하며 울고, 요덕수용소의 강련화, 리명수, 리태식, 마츠코, 벙어리 국군포로, 리요덕을 생각하며 울고, 철민이를 몽골 사막에서 잃고 아직도 눈물로 사는 유상준 씨를 위하여 울고, 북한주민들을 외면한 남한사람들이 앞으로 받을 업보를 생각하여 우리는 울어야 합니다. Robert, let us cry together from now on. You are younger than my youngest daughter, but you did a great thing. Politicians here and in Korea do not care about the NK human rights. 50 million people in South Korea do not care about the NK human rights. We have no choice but to cry. I cry with all those living characters in Yoduk Story. I cry with Yu Sang Joon who cries every day for his son who died in the desert. I cry for the people in South Korea who will get what they deserve.
우리가 울다보면 요덕은 해체됩니다. 우리가 울다보면 김정일은 우리의 눈물 속에 익사합니다. 우리가 울다보면 언젠가는 남한국민들이 정신 차릴 것입니다. 북한주민들이 다 굶어 죽으면, 그 다음에는 우리 차례구나! 정신들을 차릴 것입니다. 그 때가 올 때까지 우리는 계속 울어야 합니다. Yoduk will be dismantled with our tears. Kim Jong-il will drown in our tears. South Korean people will wake up someday if we continue to cry. It will be our turn when the North Korean brothers and sisters all die of starvation. They will realize what they had done. We have to cry until that day comes.
LET US HAVE FAITH THAT TEARS MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.
링컨이 말했습니다: 눈물은 막강하다는 진실을 믿읍시다. 그리고 그 진실 안에서 우리는 우리가 해야할 일들을 끝까지 해내야 할 것입니다. (링컨은 正義가 막강하다고 말했지만, 정의가 안 통하는 세상에서는 눈물이 더 막강합니다.) Lincoln said this. He said that the Right Makes Might, but the Tears Make Might where the Right does not exist.
2010년 2월 5일
김정일의 대학살 전시회/남신우 씀 (North Korea Genocide by Kim Jeong-il/ Nam Shin-woo) http://nkgenocide.ent http://nk-projects.blogspot.com
Robert Park speaks out to support North Korean refugees during North Korea Freedom Week 2008 in Washington, DC. Pictured is Suzanne Scholte, chairperson of North Korea Freedom Coalition and Robert Park.
Please pray for our brother Robert Park who is currently detained in North Korea. Many of you have likely already heard that Robert crossed into North Korea on Christmas Day, via the China border. We urgently ask our chapters and partners to gather in prayer for Robert and the work of the Holy Spirit. Since that day, there has been much chatter and speculation. Some have expressed confusion, dismay, even anger. Many are wondering how to digest the situation. We know that Robert's faith is genuine, passionate and wholehearted. He loves the Lord, and that God has stirred his heart deeply for North Korea. He was never one to be shackled by conventions, norms or others' schedules. Robert made the dangerous journey because of his passion and obedience in faith to what he understood his calling to be. As friends and co-laborers of Robert we may, of course, find ourselves shocked and pray urgently for his safe return. But we must try also to avoid being distracted by Robert's unusual act and see past the confusion, debate and sensationalism. If Robert was going into North Korea out of curiosity, or for celebrity, we might indeed see his actions as reckless. Instead, it was Robert's searing heart for North Korea (people, leadership, as a nation) and his vision to share the Gospel with his last breath that moved him across that frozen river knowing full well the consequences of his actions. Instead of engaging in debate, we need to intercede in prayer -- for Robert, for God's hand to move through his action, for God's divine purpose to be realized. Robert is willing to make a sacrifice and be a part of the change that he hopes to take place -- even if that means giving up an opportunity to see it through. Many folks working in North Korea-related ministry or human rights movements not only want to help make a difference but would really like to witness a successful outcome -- this is natural. Everyone has a different calling and the degree of 'safety' in ones work does not necessarily make one's actions more noble and another's ignoble. So, as we pray for Robert, we should focus on the reason why Robert made this journey, and the hope we share in for the people of North Korea. Perhaps we will never fully know, nor may we ever comprehend the full impact of his act of obedience -- however, we do know that His ways are not our ways; and each of us have a calling to follow faithfully, though the paths may be vastly different.
-Written by Michelle Kim of PSALT
Freedom's Edge The True Meaning Of Martyrdom Claudia Rosett, 01.14.10, 12:01 AM ET What cause would you be willing to die for? For many of us, that question may seem academic. But in the great wars of values and ideas, there are inflection points at which the course of many lives can turn on the actions of those willing to sacrifice their own. America is about to celebrate Martin Luther King Day, honoring a man who put himself on the line for freedom, looked over the mountaintop--and died for it. This past Christmas Day brought us the stories of two young men, both willing to martyr themselves for their beliefs, but in ways and for visions so utterly different that their tales might serve as a parable for the defining struggles of our time. One, as you surely know, was the underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a wealthy young Muslim from a prominent Nigerian family. Following his embrace of radical Islam, he tried to sacrifice himself--allegedly--in a botched attempt to sow terror and death by blowing up an American airliner packed with 289 other people, en route to Detroit. Having entered American air space decked out as a suicide bomber, he is now availing himself of U.S. constitutional rights, granted to him by the Obama Administration, to plead not guilty to criminal charges. The other martyr, in stark contrast, was a 28-year-old Christian missionary, Robert Park. An American of Korean descent, Park offered himself up peacefully, on Christmas Day, for the cause of life and liberty for others. He went to northeast China, and from there walked across the frozen Tumen River into North Korea. Witnesses told reporters that as he went, he called out, in Korean, messages of God’s love, as well as “I am an American citizen.” He took with him a letter to North Korean tyrant Kim Jong-il, asking Kim to open his country and shut down his prison camps. It is now almost three weeks since Park vanished into the shadows of North Korea. As he expected, he was seized by North Korean authorities. Among advocates of human rights for North Korea, his extraordinary act has sparked a debate over whether he was brave, foolish or crazy, and whether there can be any good reason for a man to walk deliberately into the blood-stained grip of Kim Jong-il’s regime.
But Park made his aims and requests quite clear. Before he crossed that frozen river, he gave an interview to Reuters, asking that it be held until he was in North Korea. In that interview, which Reuters released shortly after he had crossed over, Park spelled out “I do not want to be released. I don’t want President Obama to come and pay to get me out.” What he wanted, he said, is for “the North Korean people to be free. Until the concentration camps are liberated, I do not want to come out. If I have to die with them, I will.” Those were not words of madness, but of passion for good over evil. Park knew what he was walking into. North Korea is home to some of the most brutal repression on earth, with slave-labor prison camps that hark back to Stalin’s gulag. Park in his farewell interview accused the North Korean regime of “genocide,” and he was right. It is no accident of nature that just across the demilitarized zone from South Korea’s economic powerhouse, North Korea suffered a famine in the late 1990s that killed an estimated 1 million or more people. That was a direct result of Kim Jong Il’s state policy, which continues to this day to systematically starve and isolate North Koreans, while building nuclear weapons and running global rackets to sustain the power and pleasures of Kim and his ruling circle. Where in global officialdom has there been serious will and a true campaign to end these horrors? American soldiers are willing to fight and die for freedom, but not since the halt of the Korean War in 1953 have America and its allies actually done battle to try to rid the Korean peninsula of the North’s totalitarian regime. Neither has any international bureaucracy found the methods or backbone to force the Pyongyang regime to open its prisons or free its people. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, for instance, runs a comfortable, well guarded office in Beijing, where in keeping with the wishes of China’s government, the UNHCR politely refrains from offering haven to desperate and hunted North Korean refugees. The International Committee of the Red Cross pays court to Kim, in order to have access to some parts of his domain. But if any ICRC delegates have visited Kim’s gulag, they have not managed to leak the memo. Robert Park, “American citizen,” looked into that heart of darkness, and walked toward it, calling for life and freedom for the 23 million people of North Korea – a message filled with the passions that are the soul of America itself. But since that freighted Christmas Day, Americans have heard far less about the self-sacrifice of Robert Park than about the exploits of alleged suicide bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. That’s no surprise, given that Abdulmutallab, since his smoldering arrival in Detroit, has been provided with doctors, lawyers and a public stage in a U.S. courtroom, where he has already seized his chance to enter a not-guilty plea. Park, by contrast, has vanished into the murk of a North Korean system utterly lacking in justice and notorious for torturing and starving its prisoners. American authorities, as of this writing, have said they’ve made inquiries, but do not know exactly what has happened to him. Between these two young men, both willing to die for a cause, who is more worthy of capturing America’s imagination? Faced with death-exalting jihadis, terror-masters and opportunistic tyrannies, will the free world reply with an unyielding passion of its own? We can debate tactics; I would not urge anyone to follow Robert Park into the detention cells of Kim Jong Il. But Park, with his deliberate act of self-sacrifice, chose to embody a message that should be bracing for Americans to honor and remember: That it is not the place of free men to accommodate evil, but to call it what it is, and challenge it – not on its own terms, but on ours. Claudia Rosett, a journalist in residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies , writes a weekly column on foreign affairs for Forbes.
PRESS RELEASE For Immediate Release
North Korea Freedom Coalition Appeals for Humanitarian Consideration for American Robert Park
Washington, DC (December 30, 2009) The North Korea Freedom Coalition has sent urgent appeals today for humanitarian consideration for American Robert Park, a devout Christian, who crossed into North Korea on Christmas Day in his words "to proclaim Christ's love and forgiveness" and to call upon North Korea to open its borders so food and medicine can be delivered and to close down its political prison camps. NKFC sent appeals to Dr. Jakob Kellenberger, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross; Sweden's Ambassador to North Korea Mats Foyer (the protecting power for United States in the DPRK); and Ambassador Sin Son Ho, North Korea's Permanent Representative to the United Nations.
Citing Robert Park's motivation for entering North Korea as an expression of his great love and compassion for the North Korean people, NKFC specifically requested Dr. Kellenberger and Ambassador Foyer's help to ensure that Park is treated humanely. In their letters to Kellenberger and Foyer, they noted that international attention to the detainment of American activists Euna Lee and Laura Ling was critical and led to their eventual return home, while permanent American resident Reverend Kim Dong Shik starved to death while detained in North Korea.
In their letter to North Korean Ambassador Sin appealing for Park to be given humanitarian consideration, the non-denominational NKFC, which has Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, and Muslim members, wrote, "We know that Robert Park entered North Korea illegally, but we know him to be a man of great love and compassion for humanity and especially for the people of North Korea...We appeal to the authorities in North Korea to consider that this man's actions were totally motivated by his love for them and that his behavior is modeled on the teachings of Jesus Christ, who Christians believe laid down his life for mankind. Certainly, this was what motivated Robert to cross the border on the day that Jesus' birth is celebrated around the world."
Park has been spearheading efforts in South Korea including prayer vigils and mass demonstrations to call attention to the suffering of the North Korean people and has led the worldwide campaign Freedom and Life for all North Koreans. He has not been heard from since he crossed the border on Christmas Day, but North Korean authorities have confirmed that he is in their custody.
"He knew fully the risks of going to North Korea," said NKFC Chairman Suzanne Scholte, "but was willing to lay down his life for the North Korean people who are the most persecuted people in the world today. We need to honor his commitment by redoubling our efforts to promote freedom and human rights for North Koreans. "
The NKFC released a report this month entitled "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and North Korea" that examines the thirty articles of this document to conclude that North Koreans are denied every single one of these universally accepted human rights standards. The document is available at nkfreedom.org.
For further information, visit nkfreedom.org or call 703-534-4313.
A copy of the letter that Robert Park took into North Korea is below:
To Mr. Kim Jong Il and North Korea's Leaders:
I proclaim Christ’s love and forgiveness towards you today. God promises mercy and clemency for those who repent. He promises forgiveness for every sin and re-birth through the Holy Spirit for those who believe Christ died for the atonement of all their sins, as a sacrifice from God, given in love. He is the true and living God. He loves you and wants to save you and all of North Korea today. Please open your borders so that we may bring food, provisions, medicine, necessities, and assistance to those who are struggling to survive. Please close down all concentration camps and release all political prisoners today, and allow care teams to enter to minister healing to those who have been tortured and traumatized.
All we are asking is for all North Koreans to be free, safe and have life.
With Love, Respect and Goodwill Towards All People, Robert Park 12/25/2009
1) Vision Concerning Korea
On July 27th, 2009, "The Global Day of Repentance and Prayer for an Unified Korea", God gave a vision and instruction concerning the necessity for mass, united demonstrations to arise for North Korean Liberation and Human Rights He revealed in the days which followed that through a constant, united, mass demonstrative movement;
1) There would be Liberation and Redemption for the North Korean People (Including An International Movement of Compensation and Re-imbursement for Immeasurable Loss and Suffering)
2) Korea would be Unified (With Worldwide Support)
3) The Unified Korea will become truly Emancipated (freed from the influence/control of other nations)
4) There will be Profound Reconciliation between North and South Koreans (as a result of South Koreans demonstrating sacrificially and unitedly for their North Korean brothers and sisters)
2) Freedom and Life for All North Koreans: 2009
An estimated 7,000,000 people are starving to death right now in North Korea...
Virtually nothing is being done for these people...
An unknown number (at least 250,000) are dying in concentration camps of the most horrifying brutality and torture in North Korea right now having committed no crime...
Virtually nothing is being done to save their lives...
By murder rate (an estimated 1,000 persons everyday), the North Korean human rights crisis and genocide is the worst in the world today and demands immediate intervention...
Yet somehow there has been no action from the United Nations and International Criminal Court to indict Kim Jong Il’s regime of genocide and crimes against humanity...
The silence of the international community and responsible governments (America, China, Russia, South Korea and Japan) is heartbreaking and appalling...
In September of 1989 protests and demonstrations began which led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the unification of Germany...
On the 20th anniversary of these demonstrations, people from all over the world will begin unceasing demonstrations and protests which will lead to Korea’s unification.
Please join the global movement to demand freedom and life for all North Koreans.
--- Contact television, print and radio media in your area and country, imploring them to raise awareness about the North Korean human rights crisis.
--- Volunteer to be a coordinator or worker in your area to raise awareness and organize demonstrations for the liberation of North Koreans.
--- Let us know if we can help you connect with others committed to human rights for all North Koreans in your area, to work together.
--- Be a part of the greatest demonstration in Korea’s history, forcing the liberation of all North Koreans and facilitating Korea’s unification... NOW.
3) LETTER OF DEMANDS TO THE WORLD COMMUNITY:
To the Leaders of Korea, America, China, Russia, Japan, the United Nations and the International Community,
We Refuse to Allow the North Korean Holocaust to Continue Any Longer. Over 4,000,000 Innocent North Koreans have been Murdered by Kim Jong-Il’s regime since 1995, and an estimated 1,000,000 North Koreans have been Murdered as a result of Slave Labor, Rape, Torture, Starvation and Execution in North Korea’s Political Concentration Camps. The Very Existence of these Concentration Camps makes the North Korean State Illegal, Illegitimate, and Criminal, and Demands The Immediate Intervention of the International Community.
Our Demands, based upon the foundation of International Law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are as follows:
1) The Immediate and Total Liberation of All North Korean Political Concentration Camps
2) Compensation and Re-imbursement to All North Korean Victims of Slavery, Starvation, Torture, All Concentration Camp Survivors and North Korean People for Immeasurable Loss and Suffering
3) The Immediate Stepping Down from Power of Kim Jong-Il and North Korea’s Leaders
4) The Immediate Stepping Down from Power of All Government Leaders in South Korea Who Have Been Accomplice to, Allied With, or Supporting Kim Jong-Il’s Genocidal State
5) Through the Guidance and Oversight of a Coalition of North Korean Refugee Leaders, in Partnership with President Lee Myung Bak and the International Community, WE DEMAND THE LIBERATION AND REBUILDING OF NORTH KOREA BASED UPON THE FOUNDATION OF ENSURING AND GUARANTEEING WITHOUT FAIL THE HUMAN RIGHTS AND SAFETY OF EVERY NORTH KOREAN INDIVIDUAL ACCORDING TO THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL LAW, WHICH WAS COMPOSED TO PREVENT THE ATROCITIES OF NAZI GERMANY FROM EVER OCCURING AGAIN. WE, THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY, HAVE ALL FAILED TO KEEP OUR PROMISE AND UPHOLD INTERNATIONAL LAW, AND MOST MISERABLY IN THE CASE OF NORTH KOREA.
Freedom and Life For All North Koreans: 2009, A Worldwide Coalition of North Korean Human Rights Groups, Ministries and Activists
Why Did He Do It?
Author of North Korean Novel Speaks Out
By Author C. Hope Flinchbaugh
When US citizen Robert Park crossed the river into North Korea on Christmas Day 2009 carrying letters that call on the nation’s dictator to shut down the country's political prison camps and step down from power, he didn’t sneak around in the dark biting his nails. He crossed the frozen Tumen River boldly shouting to its citizens something about love.
So when I am asked, “He knew the dangers--why did he do it?” I answer, “Love.”
Love is not political, partisan, or proper. Sometimes it’s not even popular. But love is people and, if you ask Park, love is God. Love has emboldened people to do things that others wouldn’t consider. I think of it this way--is there someone in my life that I love so much that I’d courageously cross an icy river into the most evil regime on earth to rescue him or her? Robert Park has made me ask that question because he loves his human family enough to take the risk—and live with the consequences, whatever they may be.
This isn’t the first time that Park walked into unknown territory to show love to people. Park brought food and love to the poor in Mexico and even to those suffering in his native country, the United States. A friend of Park, Nancy Purcell from the Philadelphia area, told me that she spent hours with Park one day at a prayer gathering at The Mall in Washington, DC. They saw a homeless woman and Park spoke to her of the love of God for her and for her children. After speaking about the love, Park took action—he opened his wallet and gave the homeless woman his money.
Why North Korea? Life inside North Korea is hard to depict.
Imagine you walk outside tomorrow morning and see your neighbor on her hands and knees in her yard. She’s pulling up wads of grass with her hands and throwing the clumps into a basket. She tells you she’s hungry. What do you say to her? Maybe you’d call 911. Maybe you’d share your lunch or buy her groceries.
In reality, North Korean mothers and grandmothers are pulling grass clumps out of their yards so they can make grass soup for their families simply because there’s nothing else to eat. Yes, it’s hard to believe. And there is no 911, government fund, or neighbor with a lunchbox to help them.
Look at this picture given to me by the friend of a North Korean boy we’ll call Gilsu. Gilsu courageously crossed the Tumen River out of North Korea and into China when he was fourteen years old. He was asked to draw pictures of what life was like inside North Korea.
Gilsu writes, “We all became grass eaters.”
The truth? In time, people become poisoned by grass consumption and even turn a little green. Since 1995, more than 4,000,000 people have died from starvation, many from grass poisoning. Look up grass poisoning on a search engine and you’ll find that it’s a disease that animals (not humans) get from eating too much grass.
So, if you’d happen to look over your picket fence tomorrow morning and see your neighbor furiously picking grass, would you obey the sign tacked up by the mayor that says, “Let Her Starve,” or would you leap over the fence and open your lunchbox?
Robert Park is not only ready to share his lunch; he’s ready to give his life.
"He was not afraid to die," said Robert Park’s father, Pyong Park. "What he wanted was the whole world to know of North Korea's situation.”
Before he went to North Korea’s northern river border, Park did an interview with Reuters and asked them not to release the interview until he was inside. Reuters asked Park why he thought going inside would change things. Park responded, “I have to share their suffering. That is why I am asking every person who cares about North Korea, let us arise and let us demonstrate. Let us see mass demonstrations. This is not a personal agenda. I think I may not live much longer. My personal desire is to be married and to have a future. I am laying that all down because of Jesus Christ and because God loves these people--he does not want them to die.
(see interview)
So now we know why Park crossed the river. They say that most people fail in life because their wishbone is where their backbone should be. I think all of Park’s bones are in the right place.
“At the time I was arrested I had no idea it would turn into this. It was just a day like any other day. The only thing that made it significant was that the masses of the people joined in.” -- Rosa Parks
