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Authors: Melanie Kirkpatrick
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authenticated, and in this case he believed the man had been a security agent, as he claimed.
He agonized over the decision. If the state security agent âreally had something that would cause the international community to pay attention, to say, âOh, my God, itâs trueâweâve got documented proof from someone inside the system,â that would be a huge force
multiplier,â Peters explained. The news would make headlines around the world, and it could have an enormous impact on his work by calling international attention to the human rights abuses in North Korea. On the other hand, the state security agent was surely responsible for the deaths of many innocent people. In the end, Peters decided to help. He negotiated a deal, agreeing to bring out the man along with one of his children.
At the time Peters related this story, the operation to extract the state security agent and his child was still in progress and the duo had not yet reached South Korea. The South Korean intelligence agency would debrief the man upon his arrival and evaluate his information. Peters still wasnât sure he had made the right decision. âWe helped those two,â he said âbut what two didnât we help?â He may never know whether the manâs information will help save North Korean lives in the future. He does know that by his decision to help the North Korean security agent and his child, he was unable to provide passage out of China for two other North Koreans who did not have blood on their hands.
South Koreaâs Ministry of Unification keeps track of the number of North Koreans who arrive in the South each year. The numbers showcase the growing success of the underground railroad in helping North Koreans escape from China. In 1998, seventy-one North Koreans reached safely. In 1999, as the underground railroad was gearing up, that number more than doubled, to 148 arrivals. By 2002, only three years later, the number of arrivals exceeded the thousand mark, to 1,140. By late 2000s, close to three thousand North Koreans were reaching the South every year. 9
The new underground railroad has many conductors. It is impossible to know how many North Koreans who escape are assisted by Christians, how many are aided by other humanitarian workers, and how many pay brokers to help them get out. Sometimes conductors who do it for money work hand in hand with those who donât. Christians may hire brokers to help with part of the journey or aid
them in gathering information. Some church people or humanitarian workers wonât knowingly employ brokers, believing, as one Christian drily put it, that in a crisis, the broker wonât be thinking in terms of the North Koreansâ welfare. Others say brokers are essential and that they couldnât do their work without them.
The charitable groups that help North Koreans in China operate on a very small scale. They often are one-man operationsâtypically a sole missionary who is supported by his congregation back home in South Korea or the U.S. and who has lined up local Christians to work with him. During the years he lived in China before his arrest, Phillip Buck, a pastor from Seattle, guided more than one hundred North Koreans out of China. Tim Peters said in 2010 that he had helped rescue thirty-seven North Koreans in the previous year. Liberty in North Korea, a nonsectarian group based in California, set a goal in 2010 of rescuing one hundred North Koreans over the next couple of years. The numbers are small, but they add up.
For some workers in the Christian underground, the work has moved away from helping people escape to caring for them in place. Crossing Borders, an Illinois-based, Christian nonprofit, shifted its resources from the new underground railroad to providing long-term shelters in China. As Mike Kim, one of the organizationâs founders, put it in his book, Escaping North Korea , Crossing Borders is committed to
He agonized over the decision. If the state security agent âreally had something that would cause the international community to pay attention, to say, âOh, my God, itâs trueâweâve got documented proof from someone inside the system,â that would be a huge force
multiplier,â Peters explained. The news would make headlines around the world, and it could have an enormous impact on his work by calling international attention to the human rights abuses in North Korea. On the other hand, the state security agent was surely responsible for the deaths of many innocent people. In the end, Peters decided to help. He negotiated a deal, agreeing to bring out the man along with one of his children.
At the time Peters related this story, the operation to extract the state security agent and his child was still in progress and the duo had not yet reached South Korea. The South Korean intelligence agency would debrief the man upon his arrival and evaluate his information. Peters still wasnât sure he had made the right decision. âWe helped those two,â he said âbut what two didnât we help?â He may never know whether the manâs information will help save North Korean lives in the future. He does know that by his decision to help the North Korean security agent and his child, he was unable to provide passage out of China for two other North Koreans who did not have blood on their hands.
South Koreaâs Ministry of Unification keeps track of the number of North Koreans who arrive in the South each year. The numbers showcase the growing success of the underground railroad in helping North Koreans escape from China. In 1998, seventy-one North Koreans reached safely. In 1999, as the underground railroad was gearing up, that number more than doubled, to 148 arrivals. By 2002, only three years later, the number of arrivals exceeded the thousand mark, to 1,140. By late 2000s, close to three thousand North Koreans were reaching the South every year. 9
The new underground railroad has many conductors. It is impossible to know how many North Koreans who escape are assisted by Christians, how many are aided by other humanitarian workers, and how many pay brokers to help them get out. Sometimes conductors who do it for money work hand in hand with those who donât. Christians may hire brokers to help with part of the journey or aid
them in gathering information. Some church people or humanitarian workers wonât knowingly employ brokers, believing, as one Christian drily put it, that in a crisis, the broker wonât be thinking in terms of the North Koreansâ welfare. Others say brokers are essential and that they couldnât do their work without them.
The charitable groups that help North Koreans in China operate on a very small scale. They often are one-man operationsâtypically a sole missionary who is supported by his congregation back home in South Korea or the U.S. and who has lined up local Christians to work with him. During the years he lived in China before his arrest, Phillip Buck, a pastor from Seattle, guided more than one hundred North Koreans out of China. Tim Peters said in 2010 that he had helped rescue thirty-seven North Koreans in the previous year. Liberty in North Korea, a nonsectarian group based in California, set a goal in 2010 of rescuing one hundred North Koreans over the next couple of years. The numbers are small, but they add up.
For some workers in the Christian underground, the work has moved away from helping people escape to caring for them in place. Crossing Borders, an Illinois-based, Christian nonprofit, shifted its resources from the new underground railroad to providing long-term shelters in China. As Mike Kim, one of the organizationâs founders, put it in his book, Escaping North Korea , Crossing Borders is committed to
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