Must-Read: On the Underground Railroad

The Times of London spent months trying to interview one of the conductors of the underground railroad.  This remarkable report tells us what North Koreans suffer to escape from hell on earth:

He muffles his face and hides in the back of a car. Every Chinese checkpoint is a challenge. North Korean agents are out to kill him. Chinese-Korean gangsters hate him for rescuing women doomed to sexual slavery.

Nam made his own escape after his wife and younger son perished in a famine in 1998, only to lose his beloved first son, not yet in his teens, who died on the journey.

A simple man, he found that the Christian faith consoled him in his sorrow. It fired him with zeal to help others in memory of his own boy, who tried to reach freedom but never made it. “Helping other people makes it easier to deal with my grief for my son,” he explained. “I try to get the orphans out first. You will understand why.

The reporters also look at China’s treatment of the refugees.

To verify the stories of deportation, we drove to the border city of Tumen, where the Chinese army has built a prison on a hill to house their North Korean captives. At the frontier bridge over the river, three shopkeepers said they often witnessed vanloads of prisoners being taken back. One saw more than 20 people, mostly women, escorted across on Friday, November 24.

They are unloaded outside two grey office buildings visible on the far side. A giant colour portrait of Kim Il-sung, Stalin’s ally, who founded North Korea, greets the victims on their return.

Often, North Korean guards skewer the prisoners with wire through their hands or under their collarbones to be yoked like cattle, according to Chinese soldiers who have seen the practice. “We’ve got Koreans hiding in our village,” confided a gruff farmer in his sixties, who stood looking at the view. “Of course we don’t report them!

“They are just poor people,” he went on. “If we report them they are sent back to serious punishment. How could we do that? It would betray our own consciences. Private Chinese consciences apart, the prison vans are still rolling.

There are parts of this story, such as that describing a mother forced to murder her newborn baby, that I simply cannot describe here.  There are hopeful notes, too, such as the interview with recently released Pastor Phillip Buck.  Read every last word.