Newsweek Reports on Son Jong Nam, North Korea’s Only (Possibly) Living Dissident

A new Newsweek piece about North Korea’s underground movement reports on the plight of Son Jong Nam.  If Son still lives, he sits on death row in Pyongyang for spreading his faith.  You will recall that I previously wrote about him here, and told you how you can join in a campaign to save his life.  Newsweek estimates that there are between 20,000 and 100,000 underground Christians in North Korea. You can’t bring Christianity to such a place on a shiny bus. It takes resourcefulness, guile, courage, and determination to pull something like this off. This kind:

Missionaries say Christians often keep their Bibles buried in the backyard, wrapped in vinyl. Preachers based in China sometimes conduct services by mobile phone. In five to 10 minutes the pastor reads Bible passages and prays for the sick and needy. Services are kept short; the regime uses GPS trackers to locate the phones.  [Newsweek, Christian Caryl and B.J. Lee]

Son knew the risks he was facing going into this.  Although he is legally a citizen of South  Korea, don’t expect to hear a single word from the South Korean government to save Son Jong Nam’s life.  South Korea has other priorities. 

Note that there’s a significant inconsistency in the story:  according to the previous source I quoted, it was Son’s pregnant sister in law who miscarried after being kicked by police.  In Newsweek’s story, the woman was Son’s wife. 

New readers may not have seen this detailed chronology of what appears to be  growing  anti-government dissent and resistance.  The obvious cautions apply:  it’s almost impossible to verify most of the fragmentary reports we hear from the world’s most closed society.  On the other side of the ledger, there’s little question that the North Korean regime has extinguished some extraordinary courage in its death camps and dungeons without the word ever reaching the outside world.  In all probability, that’s going to be the fate of Song Jong Nam, too.  But no chance to save Son, or the next brave men and women who will follow him, should be missed.

Another interesting fact I would never have guessed: “Billy Graham’s late wife, Ruth, attended Christian boarding school in Pyongyang as a teen in the 1920s.” Heh? I’ll file that one right next to the ones about Mohammad Ali and Eldridge Cleaver.