September 11, 2005 - Houston, Texas
Remarks by Suzanne Scholte

Thank you for giving me the honor of speaking before you tonight.  There is no group that gives me greater joy to speak before than KCC because I know I am with my brothers and sisters and can just speak my heart.

Earlier this year Philip Song of KCC sent me a list of all the upcoming prayer vigils across the United States and asked me to choose the ones I could address.  One of the first ones I picked was this prayer vigil in Houston because I wanted to be a part of any event in which Rev. Changho Lim was involved.  Pastor Lim has been such a blessing to all of us who have been working on this issue.  You can truly see the Holy Spirit within him for his great kindness and humility and self-sacrifice and noble work on behalf of the suffering North Korean people.

I also know what wonderful people Texans are and was not surprised at all by the way in which this city and this state responded to their neighbors in opening their arms to help those left homeless by hurricane Katrina.
          
I want to share with you tonight how I believe God is working through you to confront one of the most evil regimes that exists in our world and why I believe what you are doing is so vital and critical to this struggle for the human rights and freedom of our brothers and sisters in North Korea..

Just by being here tonight, just by declaring North Korea Freedom, you are directly attacking the evil, the principalities that reign in that country.  We know from the Old Testament that idolatrous leaders bring about unimaginable suffering on their people.  North Korea is this classic example.  Having twisted the Holy Trinity into a perversion of worship for Kim Il-Sung as the father, Kim Jong-il as the son, and the juche ideology as the Holy Spirit, this regime is an affront to what God created. It is an affront to a God that creates, loves, forgives and redeems, because it is a regime that destroys, hates, starves and enslaves.

Just to put this in perspective:   The regimes of Kim il-Song and Kim Jong-il have led to the deaths of at least 3 million innocent people through their political prison camps and through their use of food as a weapon against their own people which has led to widespread starvation.  When the tsunami disasters occurred last December, the entire world was overcome by the tremendous loss of life, yet the Kim regimes have killed 22 times the number of people that died during these tsunamis in their man made disaster of North Korea.

Because tonight you declare North Korea Freedom, you are engaged in the greatest Spiritual battle you may ever face in your life.  Many political leaders, intellectuals, and even the current government of South Korea will tell you: ignore the suffering of the North Korean people, do not talk about human rights, as if anyone born North of the 38th parallel is not entitled to the same freedoms we enjoy.

The greatest comfort and greatest lesson I have learned in this struggle for the North Korean people is the power of prayer.  I was deeply humbled, but also greatly strengthened, when Philip Song told me over a year ago that many KCC members were praying for me and my work. 

My role in this issue began in 1996 with an effort to bring defectors from North Korea to the United States to speak out about the human rights situation.   Our Foundation has a history of hosting defectors from totalitarian regimes, and we have hosted defectors from the former Soviet Union, Cuba, and China, but I had always wanted to hear the views of someone who had actually been a part of the North Korean regime.  I believed that eyewitness testimony from the defectors was critical to understanding this regime and bringing about action.. 

Since that time, we have hosted over 26 defectors for over 40 visits from the highest ranking like Hwang Jang-yop to survivors of the gulag like Lee Soon-Ok and Kang Chul-Hwan to citizens like Ji Ha Nam and Oh Young Hui who suffered horribly as refugees in China.

The first North Korean defectors we brought to the United States were Colonel Choi Joo-Hwal and diplomat Ko Young-Hwan and they described the horrors of living in North Korea.  What was particularly disturbing about their testimony was not just how horrible things were in North Korea, but how this North Korean regime brainwashed its own citizens into hating us.  Colonel Choi described a elementary school book in North Korea in which young children were taught how to add with such equations as "If you threw a grenade and killed two American GIs, and your friend threw a grenade and killed three American GIs, how many American GIs would you and your friend have killed."

Because we live in free societies, we take for granted the very freedoms that we have.  We find it hard to believe that while we raise our children to love others, to appreciate other cultures, that regimes, like North Korea, teach their children to hate us, to hate everything that South Koreans and Americans believe in. 

Free people fail to understand, to fully grasp, what life is like in these totalitarian regimes. No one can educate us more than those who have survived these regimes, and defectors are a vital source of understanding.  

Americans were shocked by the events of what happened on this day four years ago, 9-11.  We found it hard to believe that people could hate us so much.  We found it hard to believe that there were people out there who devoted all their time and energy to figuring out how to kill as many of us as possible.  But this is precisely how these regimes operate: they hate freedom, democracy, and the free expression of ideas.  And the current war on terrorism is precisely a war over those very ideals.

You are already familiar with the horrible abuses against the Korean people by the Kim Jong-il regime and the terrors being faced by refugees in China, but I want to explain why what you are doing is so important by telling you some truly miraculous stories that show how God is connecting us all together to fight the greatest spiritual battle many of us will ever face in our lives.

Two years ago we hosted Hwang Jang-yop, North Korea’s highest ranking defector, for his first visit to the United States. It was one of the most difficult undertakings of my life having taken six years of effort to accomplish. The spiritual warfare around this visit was tremendous and I felt under terrible attack. All kinds of rumors and controversies abounded about this visit.  Pro-Kim Jong-il groups in South Korea had vowed to lie down on the tarmac of the airport to prevent Hwang’s plane from taking off.  Hwang had even received death threats for accepting our invitation.

Despite all this turmoil, the visit was a great success, and Hwang had many meetings with high-ranking U.S. officials as well as media interviews and a widely attended forum on Capitol Hill.  Before Hwang was to leave and return to South Korea, I was dictating a letter to him to a young South Korean woman who had traveled from Korea to help translate for the visit. Because Hwang had created the Juche ideology, I wanted to share with him the source of my ideology. So, the letter was to be presented to Hwang along with a Korean Bible I had purchased for him. During his visit, Hwang had repeatedly expressed great thanks to me, but in the letter, I told Hwang that it had not been me that was responsible for making it possible for him to travel to the United States but the God that I serve. I told him that my ideology was based on this book, the Bible, and that God had worked through me and helped me because I never would have been able to do this without God.

I told Hwang that Isaiah 43: 1b-3a had been my source of strength.  I read that verse every morning as I was preparing for this historic visit.

“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; You Are Mine.  When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you, When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned, the flames will not set you ablaze, For I am the Lord your God the Holy One of Israel, Your Savior.”

That had been the verse that had carried me through. Suddenly, the young woman, who was translating for me, threw her head back and said, “I am a Christian, too, and before I came on this trip to help with the Hwang visit, my Christian friends prayed over me and that is the exact verse that they prayed for me.”

Considering the thousands and thousands of wonderful verses in the Bible, what do you think the chances are that two woman on opposite ends of the world would be praying the exact same verse over the exact same person over the exact same visit?

Early last year, when I was organizing a rally on Capitol Hill for the first North Korea Freedom Day, I had been told by a Korean American that I would never be able to get more than 200 people to come to the rally.  Koreans were too busy working hard at their businesses, ensuring that their children got into good schools, and being productive American citizens.  He told me no one would take the day off to come to Washington, D.C.  My measurement of success became whether I could get the hard working woman at my dry cleaners to take half a day off to come to Capitol Hill.  I was so worried my plan would backfire: instead of proving to the Congress that people cared about North Korea human rights, it would instead show that they did not care if only a small number of people came.  I worried that I had set my goals way too high, that I was going to fail, and even worse, hurt the cause to which I had devoted myself.

But in early April, I got a very special phone call.  A Christian writer, who I had never met, named Hope Flinchbaugh called me and said boldly: “God told me to call you and make you my personal prayer project for the next three weeks until North Korea Freedom Day.”  Now, Hope must have worried that I would think she was a nut and I might possibly hang up on her. But after, she said this to me, I responded: “Can we start praying right now?”

Every day she lifted me up in prayer and she would periodically call me and say, “I have got your back, Suzanne, you are covered in prayer. Go forward.”
 
The days and weeks before the rally emails came pouring in: two college students in California were going to cash in their frequent flyer miles and come to Washington for the rally even though they had no idea where they were going to stay; a Christian youth group leader from Ohio was going to get some of her students to take a bus and travel all night long to attend the rally and then travel all night by bus that night to get home.

At least one thousand people showed up for the North Korea Freedom Day rally from all over the United States and people even traveled from Japan and South Korea including 18 North Korean defectors.  The first person I saw at the conclusion of the rally was the woman who worked at my dry cleaners – she had taken the day off and brought her son in law.  Members of Congress credited the North Korea Freedom Day rally with galvanizing support for the North Korea Human Rights Act.  But the next day the newspapers provided a gentle reminder of who brought that success about: a photo from the North Korea Freedom Day prayer vigil that Pastor Dong Soo Shin organized appeared in the Korea Times.  If you look at the photo you will see me standing in the pew, and very distinctly three rows behind my back is Hope Flinchbaugh praying.

Last month, we gathered with KCC leaders at the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. to protest China’s violent treatment of North Korean refugees and to stand up for fellow believers like Steve Kim of New York and Choi Yong-Hun of South Korea who are in jail right now for helping these refugees.  When we were encouraging churches in the Washington, D.C. area, to announce this protest and the KCC prayer vigil in their bulletins, one responded: Our church “tends to stand silent on political matters.”  When I got that response, I thought of a Catholic priest saying those same words as a Jewish family was being hauled away by Nazis.  I thought of a Baptist minister saying that as a black man was being turned over to slave holders.  Believers must respond to what God asks of us.  Not what the politics of the world would tell us.

Sadly, this is not an unusual response.  When Sin U Nam in America and Moon Gook Han in South Korea were trying to find places to host the North Korea Genocide Exhibit, they heard that same excuse again and again: “We don’t get involved in political matters.”

Fortunately, this church has spiritual leaders like Pastor Lim who made it possible for the North Korean Genocide Exhibit to travel to Houston, and we had leaders like Pastors Kwang Ho Yang and Hee Moon Lee and Dong Soo Shin who made it possible for the exhibit to first open in Washington DC.   At every stop, the same reaction: “We didn’t know these horrible things were going on.”  When people learn, they are overcome with the genocide occurring right now in North Korea and the cruelty of China toward the refugees.

Three years ago we started a list of refugees seized by the Chinese police and humanitarian workers in China’s jails like Kim Hee-Tae of South Korea.  Kim Hee-Tae, a fellow Christian, had been caught helping North Korean Refugees and was in jail being beaten for this so called crime.  This list that included his name along with hundreds of others has been read aloud at protest rallies in front of Chinese embassies all over the world. We have attempted to deliver the list to the Chinese requesting they account for the refugees and release the humanitarian workers, but the Chinese always refuse to receive it. One time we pushed the list under the door of the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. and as we turned away from the door, we heard a SWOOSH and a THUMP , the Chinese had thrust the list out the door refusing to accept it.

I sometimes wondered whether our protests were effective. A month after a protest in Warsaw, Poland, organized with the Citizens Alliance, I got this email message from human rights activist Kim Sang-Hun:

“I have very encouraging news for you, Suzanne! Kim Hee-tae was found "not guilty" by the Chinese court and he is now with me in Seoul. One of the first things he told me was that...he managed to keep a radio at night in the prison...and, one night, heard your voice calling his name in front of the Chinese Embassy in Poland through Radio Free Asia. Isn't it amazing! He was so encouraged and filled with new strength to fight at that time.”

It is a miracle that Kim Hee Tae was secretly listening to a radio in China at the exact moment that Radio Free Asia was broadcasting a story that recorded his name being called at a protest in Poland.

In December, 2003, we got involved trying to help a North Korean refugee family, the Zheng family of 4, a father and mother with a 17 year old daughter and 10 year old son. This family was from Pyongyang and were part of the elites.  The father had been in the military and had soldiers under his command.  In his own words, Zheng said: “I first came over to China in 1996 because the soldiers under me were starving to death because of the famine...I did not have any food to feed them, so I took some military vehicles across the border into China and brought food for my soldiers to eat.  I also got food for my family and other people I knew were starving.  When the military command above me found out what I had done, I was arrested for this act of treason and put in prison for 5 months.  My time in prison turned me against the  regime in North Korea.”

It is too horrific to describe what Zheng went through in prison but it is a miracle he survived.  When he was released, he took his wife and daughter and son and escaped to China.  Fortunately, the family found the underground Christian church which sheltered them for years and they became Christians.  I got involved with the family when a trusted friend in China contacted me to try to get medical treatment for Zheng whose jaw had been broken by a trafficker.  We were trying to figure the safest way to help the family – find a safe house in China or help them escape to South Korea. The mother was suffering terrible mental anguish because the family was constantly being hunted down by North Korean agents and Chinese police. They were high profile escapees: because she was the daughter of a North Korean colonel and her husband had served in the military and survived a political prison camp.

While we were raising money to pay for the doctor who had agreed to operate on the father’s jaw, the family heard that North Korea agents had discovered where they were hiding, so they went to Qingdao and tried to enter the Republic of Korea consulate office on December 23 to defect to South Korea, but they were seized by Chinese police.  Now you can imagine December 23 in Washington DC – everyone was gone for Christmas. But, once again, God’s provision.  I had the home phone numbers and cell phone numbers of South Korean diplomats because we had just hosted Hwang Jang yop’s visit that fall.

We began working immediately to get the family released through some wonderful folks on Capitol Hill, in the South Korean embassy in DC, and in the US embassy in Beijing, and they were freed in March and able to go to South Korea. I confess to you that I was full of anguish for this family because I feared they did not know about our diligent efforts for them and that they must have feared every day they would be sent back to North Korea and killed. I despaired over the Christmas holidays and all through the first months of that year about the toll imprisonment in a Chinese prison would have on the family. For four months, I looked at their picture on the wall of my office and worried about the Mother's frail mental state, the Father's broken jaw, and the vulnerability of the young daughter and son.

But when my friend visited the Zheng family in Seoul a few months after they were released to South Korean authorities, they told him a remarkable story: “An angel appeared to a nonbeliever while they were in prison in China. This nonbeliever was in the same cell as the Zheng family. The angel told the nonbeliever to tell the family to prepare themselves, because their God was sending them to South Korea. A few days later they were released.”

I share these stories with you because its my own way of reminding myself to have faith in prayer. This struggle for human rights in North Korea is one of the greatest challenges of our time. 

People often ask me, “Why are you involved? You are not even a Korean.” And I confess I asked God that same question. Why have you made North Korea such a central focus of my life with so much pain and suffering? And God gently reminded me that many years ago I prayed to Him to break my heart for the things that broke His heart. What is happening in North Korea is breaking God’s heart and after all these years of death and despair, life and hope are coming because of the power of your prayers.

I have to remind myself not to despair, not to become discouraged, because I confess, I despair and I do become discouraged.  In the past, I was naive to think that if only we brought North Korean defectors here to speak, things would change; if only we got political prison camp survivors to testify in Congress, things would change; if only we passed the North Korea Human Rights Act, things would change, if we kept protesting at the Chinese embassy, things would change.  But, I know that we must not despair, but pray, believe and work.  God’s timing is perfect and He is at work.  We must continue to answer the call of Proverbs 24:11: “Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering towards slaughter.”

South Korean intellectual Kim Dong-Gil has pointed out that during the Japanese occupation many loyal Koreans gave in because they did not know their day of liberation was coming.  They lost hope that there would be such a day as August 15, 1945.

Because of the strength of your prayers, the day of liberation is coming for North Korea.  And history will judge us in the Free World on whether we were silent on “political matters.”

When North Korea is free, I believe that we will find even greater horrors that are beyond our imagination that Kim Jong-il has committed against human beings. But, I also believe that we will be greatly inspired by the underground church leaders in North Korea.  Many pastors talk about evangelizing North Korea. But who will be the new evangelists?  I believe it will be the North Korean church.  While we have churches and hymnals and prayer books and Bible guides and Bibles written in every possible format and the social benefits of the church, and most importantly, the freedom to worship, they will have had none of this but will have clung to one thing: the cross of Jesus.  They will have embodied Mark 8: 35 – “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.”   –  for all of the North Korean believers give up their lives for Him each day.  I cannot wait to meet them and learn from them.  The purity of their Faith is overwhelming.
 
Thank you for your prayers.  Please do not let up.  Galatians 6: 9: “Let us not become weary in doing good for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”  I look forward to rejoicing with you when our brothers and sisters in North Korea are free. God bless you.

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Suzanne Scholte is the President Defense Forum Foundation, Chairman of the North Korea Freedom Coalition, and Vice Chairman of the US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.