As talks between Trump and North Korea remain in question, North Korean escapee asks for continued prayers

President Donald Trump pulled out of talks with North Korea on 24 May, although both sides have since made fresh efforts to hold the summit as planned. This comes after North Korea pulled out of talks with South Korea on 16 May. We spoke to John Choi, a North Korean Christian who was able to escape and now lives in the UK, to give us the North Korean perspective on recent events.

President Donald Trump pulled out of talks with North Korea on 24 May, although both sides have since made fresh efforts to hold the summit as planned. This comes after North Korea pulled out of talks with South Korea on 16 May.

We spoke to John Choi*, a North Korean Christian who was able to escape and now lives in the UK, to give us the North Korean perspective on recent events.

Firstly, we asked him why North Korea pulled out of talks with South Korea. He responded:

North Korea was extremely unhappy over the start of the US and South Korea’s joint military training, which finishes on 25 May. These Max Thunder manoeuvres involve some 100 warplanes, including an unspecified number of B-52 bombers and F-15K jets as well as stealth bombers. The North Korean regime claimed it was a direct threat. However, North Korea was briefed about this annual joint military training of South Korea and the US well in advance.

North Korea Central News said, on 16 May, “The military training in South Korea is directly aimed at us, and challenges the Panmunjom Declaration (the peace deal adopted by North Korea and South Korea in April this year). It’s deliberate military provocation against us and on the peace process of the Korean peninsula.

“Despite our peace-loving effort and goodwill, the South Korean authorities and the United States have responded by conducting large-scale joint military training, even before the ink of the historic 27 April Declaration has dried. This is a disappointment.”

Alongside this, the regime heavily criticised North Korean escapees campaigning for democracy and liberation for their brothers and sisters. A statement said: “North Korean escapee activists are human scum. These puppets are being used by the international community, and criticise the Panmunjom Declaration and our supreme dignity and system of North Korea.”

Both the military training of US-South Korea and North Korean escapee activists became North Korea’s reasons to cancel the meeting and change their attitude.

He suggested that North Korea may have cancelled the meeting with President Trump if the US had pushed certain issues.

Firstly, North Korea does not want the US to demand its unilateral denuclearisation. The recent remarks of the US National Security Advisor, John Bolton, preferring the ‘Libya model of verifiable denuclearisation’, reminded Kim Jong-un of the collapse of the Ghaddafi regime. Many analysts have pointed out that North Korea’s years of effort to build nuclear weapons came at great cost to its people, who have faced terrible economic conditions and food shortages.

Secondly, the North Korean regime was demanding that the US does not address human rights issues during the talks. For example, on 15 May, a North Korean Labour Newspaper warned the US, “You may throw the last chance away if you keep insisting on the human rights issues.”

The North Korean stance was that they did not wish to discuss human rights issues and a full denuclearisation during the summit with the US. North Korea was sending a clear message to the US along the lines of, ‘If you maintain this attitude we’re going to cancel the summit in Singapore on 12 June’.

In other words, raising the position on North Korea’s full denuclearisation, or the human rights abuses experienced by the North Korean people who are imprisoned, tortured, raped, starved and oppressed, is seen as a direct threat to the survival of the North Korean regime.

Why is North Korea so resistant to talking about human rights?

Human rights issues are seen by Kim Jong-un as another threat to the North Korean regime. This is why North Korea reacts severely when the international community refers to the human rights abuses in North Korea.

North Korea recently announced through official media channels that it’s supreme court has handed the maximum death penalty sentence to North Korean escapee activists who are campaigning for human rights and democracy outside North Korea.

It was reported that one North Korean escapee and human rights activist, working for a human rights organisation campaigning on human rights in North Korea, heard of his death penalty from his mother who still lives in North Korea. His death penalty was announced to her by the North Korean National Security Agency.

If the international community requests an unexpected inspection of the nuclear test sites and facilities alongside the human rights issues of the prison camp and gulags, the regime will react very aggressively, and perhaps even request to draw back from the promised peace conditions.

What kind of humans rights abuses do North Korean people face?

For many years, North Koreans have lived in one of the most restrictive nations in the world, forced to worship their leader as a god, with no freedom of belief or speech and no religious freedom. North Korean people are checked up on at every opportunity. Teachers even get children to inform on their parents.

North Korean escapees fully understand this because we’ve lived through it – we know what life inside the country is really like. This is the reason that, although we followed Panmunjom Declaration, we predicted there would be limited signs of religious freedom, freedom of expression and freedom of speech and opportunity.

The current situation demands us to make a rational and intellectual judgement, not to let ourselves be swept up by softened speech and pictures of a smiling Kim Jong-un, designed to make us forget the blood of many lives he has on his hands. If I close my eyes for a minute and think of Hitler's prison camps as the man pressed a gas button to kill the Jews, or Stalin and Mao's gulags that killed so many innocent civilians, I also think of North Korea today.

Underground North Korean Christians and people want true peace and improvement on the current status quo of starvation, persecution, torture, imprisonment, execution, forced labour, over 200,000 malnourished children on the street, and hundreds of thousands of prisoners in the gulags.

North Korean citizens are not wishing for much. They simply want a society where one can express one’s views and beliefs freely and openly, without fear, just as you can in South Korea, Holland, the US and Great Britain.

Let’s not be naïve when we talk about the true peace and freedom. When North Korean people can walk to church, read the Bible, sing a hymn, and pray freely, this will be true peace and freedom of belief.

How can we pray?

Let’s maintain our prayers for our brothers and sisters in North Korea. Pray for the Holy Spirit to lead every process and for the simultaneous preparing of God’s chosen people to declare God’s peace and freedom!

I believe this process on the Korean peninsula could take us further forward or indeed further backwards. Our prayers should remain the same, to trust in God’s plan, controls, and His work. We should call out to Christians in North Korea, as we pray for them, and let us unite in praying, with Christians throughout Korea and the world, particularly with the current situation.

Stand with your church family in North Korea

Open Doors estimates that there are between 50,000 and 70,000 Christians imprisoned in North Korea, simply for daring to believe that there is a higher power than Kim Jong-un – Jesus.

And yet, despite the risks they face, Open Doors estimates that there are between 200,000 and 400,000 courageous secret Christians in North Korea, who believe that following Jesus is worth the risk.

You can stand with them in prayer, knowing that there is nowhere too dark or too dangerous for the hand of God to reach. You can make sure others know what is happening to our church family in North Korea - bring your friends to Standing Strong, where they can hear Hannah* share her amazing testimony of surviving a North Korean labour camp.

And incredibly, you can put food, medicines and Bibles into the hands of a North Korean believer, through Open Doors secret workers. It should be impossible, but they are keeping 60,000 secret believers alive by smuggling food into the country.

PLEASE PRAY:

• For comfort for the thousands of imprisoned believers in North Korea, and that one day soon they will be free
• For protection, courage and discernment for secret believers in North Korea, and Open Doors workers who serve them
• For wisdom for world leaders are they consider how to move forward with North Korea.

*Names changed for security reasons