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North Korea - Soon Ok Lee
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| Map from Library of University of Texas www.lib.utexas.edu. | | Photo from SoonOkLee.org. |
I am Soon Ok Lee from North Korea. My father was a commanding officer for the Soviet Union. I believe my mother was a believer, as she used to sing hymns to me as lullabies when I was a child. She told me to worship the one true God, not a man. After graduating from the Specialized Economics University, I worked at the Central Bank, and then then joined the Kim Il Jong Labor Party. I became the Material Distributions Manager, which put me in charge of distributing goods and supplies to the entire population of North Korea. For the next 17 years, Kim Il Jong trusted me.
When I was 39, the country started starving because of food shortages. Kim Il Jong told the people it was my fault because I had bungled the distribution. I was given a seven-year sentence to Kaechon Prison camp in 1988. My husband and son also were sent to a different prison camp, where my husband eventually died.
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| Photo courtesy of the International Campaign to Block the Repatriation of North Korean Refugees. |
The Kaechon camp held 6000 prisoners—including 2000 women. Some were there because they had been caught going somewhere without a permit to look for food. Mothers were there because they had complained that their children were starving to death. If a woman was pregnant, the guards killed it when it was born by stepping on it in front of the mother. Christians in the camp who were caught singing hymns were killed by stomping them to death. We were told we were just animals—without tails.
After four years I was released in a surprise amnesty, and escaped to South Korea.
[Projectionist will show picture of escapees in China]
Some people are so desperate they try to escape across the border into China. There they are welcomed by ethnic Koreans living in China. But if Chinese soldiers find them, they will be handcuffed like criminals and sent back to their country as criminals. There they will most likely be shot as traitors. In the picture on the screen, you will see Chinese soldiers catching a family as they tried to flee for refuge into the Japanese embassy. They were later released, due to public pressure from Christians in the West.
Pray for the people of North Korea, and especially for the Christians. They are suffering terribly.
