Chosun Ilbo: North Korean guards beat Robert Park “to within an inch of his life.”
Our worst fears for Robert Park and his mission are being realized:
Sources say Robert Park, an ethnic Korean, told them he is an American citizen and came to call for human rights improvements and to urge leader Kim Jong-il “to repent.” In response, the guards beat him to within an inch of his life. Even remaining silent while another person denounces the leader or the system is a punishable offence in North Korea, so the guards were unlikely to react with equanimity in such an uncompromising climate.
The guards then checked Park’s passport and reported the event to the provincial office of the State Safety and Security Agency, who relayed it to headquarters. Officers from headquarters arrived within three days and took Park to Pyongyang.
They merely rebuked the guards for being over-zealous in their beating of Park. “I heard from soldiers that he was beaten so severely that he will need several months to recover,” said a Hoeryong resident who recently fled to China. [Chosun Ilbo]
The brutality of the guards is shocking, even somewhat surprising, even for North Korea. Ordinarily, one might expect North Korean military personnel to be disciplined and well trained on how to deal with foreigners. If this report is true, it is just a small example of how this system inculcates its subjects to brutalize each other, and with contempt for the civilized world. It is also a sad illustration of why non-violence will not change North Korea. Courage is not enough to resist and abolish this evil. The people cannot resist it with their bare hands.
There is also confirmation that Park won’t suffer alone for his choices. From the moment Robert Park crossed the Tumen River on Christmas, I knew that however good Park’s intentions, his mission was doomed to do more harm to others than good. Now, we have evidence that that is in fact so:
A North Korean defector with South Korean citizenship identified only as Kim has been arrested in China for helping an evangelical activist cross into North Korea in an eye-catching stunt to call for human rights there.
“We’ve confirmed through various channels that Kim, who was staying at a hideout in Yanji, Jilin Province, was arrested by Chinese police last Friday,” Kim Sung-min, the head of defector-run station Free North Korea Radio, said Sunday,
Kim was reportedly arrested in possession of video footage of Robert Park’s Christmas Eve crossing of the frozen Duman (or Tumen) River, which marks China’s border with the North. [Chosun Ilbo]
Kim Sung-min, head of the Seoul-based Radio Free North Korea, told Yonhap News Agency that a person identified only by his family name of Kim was arrested Friday by Chinese police at his hiding place in the city of Yanji. [Yonhap]
I doubt we’ve seen the last of the ill effects of what Robert Park has done. One wonders what names and places this defector will now reveal to his Chinese or North Korean interrogators, or what safe houses will have to be abandoned for fear that they’ve been compromised. How many refugees could this man who was arrested have led to safety? How much food could he have helped smuggle in? We have not yet touched on the question of ransom. Park was sincere when he said that he didn’t want his government to ransom him out and help legitimize or perpetuate the very evils he wanted to protest. But when a citizen of the United States is held in unjust captivity in a foreign country, his government is obligated to help him. Park doesn’t have the power to waive that duty.
Like many of you here, my friend Claudia Rosett differs, respectfully, with my views when she writes:
It is now almost three weeks since Park vanished into the shadows of North Korea. As he expected, he was seized by North Korean authorities. Among advocates of human rights for North Korea, his extraordinary act has sparked a debate over whether he was brave, foolish or crazy, and whether there can be any good reason for a man to walk deliberately into the blood-stained grip of Kim Jong-il’s regime.
But Park made his aims and requests quite clear. Before he crossed that frozen river, he gave an interview to Reuters, asking that it be held until he was in North Korea. In that interview, which Reuters released shortly after he had crossed over, Park spelled out “I do not want to be released. I don’t want President Obama to come and pay to get me out. What he wanted, he said, is for “the North Korean people to be free. Until the concentration camps are liberated, I do not want to come out. If I have to die with them, I will.
Those were not words of madness, but of passion for good over evil. Park knew what he was walking into. [Claudia Rosett, Forbes]
Rosett’s criticism rings particularly true when she strikes at the complete failure of international institutions to address any of the evils going on in North Korea:
Where in global officialdom has there been serious will and a true campaign to end these horrors? American soldiers are willing to fight and die for freedom, but not since the halt of the Korean War in 1953 have America and its allies actually done battle to try to rid the Korean peninsula of the North’s totalitarian regime. Neither has any international bureaucracy found the methods or backbone to force the Pyongyang regime to open its prisons or free its people. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, for instance, runs a comfortable, well guarded office in Beijing, where in keeping with the wishes of China’s government, the UNHCR politely refrains from offering haven to desperate and hunted North Korean refugees. The International Committee of the Red Cross pays court to Kim, in order to have access to some parts of his domain. But if any ICRC delegates have visited Kim’s gulag, they have not managed to leak the memo.
Robert Park, “American citizen,” looked into that heart of darkness, and walked toward it, calling for life and freedom for the 23 million people of North Korea ““ a message filled with the passions that are the soul of America itself.
Indeed, it is long past time to treat the institute led by Ban Ki Moon as irrelevant. Extraordinary means will be necessary to address this. But Park’s methods aren’t the ones that are going to effect change. There is much in what Ms. Rosett says that I agree with. There may be much that you disagree with, though I ask that if you express that, please be nice. I’m invited to her house this week.
None of this changes the fact that Robert Park is guilty of no crime and was unjustly beaten and imprisoned by a regime so brutal and intolerant that it would do so for no greater “crime” than the peaceful submission of a petition to its tyrant. The regime’s brutality toward Robert Park is just one more injustice added to many. I had hoped that the North Koreans would simply turn Park around at the border, but that didn’t happen, and it worries me what Robert Park, a man who meant the best for others, is now enduring. And as much as I worry about Park, I worry even more about those endangered by his actions.
This is war.
It’s one thing to capture soldiers off the coast of Korea. That in and of itself was grounds for war.
It’s another to take an innocent citizen of our country and beat him for no reason. Robert Park is no soldier, and not even affiliated in any way with our government. Yes, we knew what you would do to him, but that is no excuse.
We will find those guards and their chain of command all the way up to Kim Jong Il and punish them according to their crimes against our people. If that means eye for an eye, so be it.
President Obama, there were weaker excuses than this to start world wars. Let us end this, right here, right now, so that not one more child born in this world will end up born under Kim Jong Il.
Supporters of Bobby Park are grieved but not discouraged. He manfully endured this hateful beating, itself an act of idolatry toward the Kims, in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified for His ministry. May God spare Bobby’s life and allow him to live to see North Korea free.
This is the cost of confronting false religion in the world. Whether Al Qaeda, Emperor worship, Brahminism, or any other system that substitutes men for God, lies for truth, violence for peace, know that the Evil One is at work in distorting religion in order to damn souls. Robert Park’s martyrdom is a stunning rebuke to the idolatry of Jucheism, and may yet be its death blow. Park’s sacrifice is a denunciation of all appeasers from Ryo Myu hoon to Kim Dae jung to Ban Ki moon and any/all others who seek to ‘engage’ the cult in North Korea. The missionaries know there is only one way forward; Juche must be discredited as what it is: a demonically inspired, man-made system of cult worship that deifies Kim Il sung and punishes any hint of obedience to the true and living God who’s first commandment in the Decalogue forbids the adoration of any other god.
All the wrangling and speculation about secular/military/economic strategies for dealing with the DPRK are doomed without facing Juche head on. Juche = the DPRK. Juche is the nasty, stinking, onerous spirit that destroys men’s wills, their bodies, their hopes, and reduces them to slaves and prisoners. Jesus Christ said it this way: “if the light that is in you is darkness, how great then is that darkness!”
My sources tell me that more martyrs are on the way, whether they do it openly as Robert Park has or more clandestinely, but this is not the end. Blood of the martyrs is seed for the Church, and if the underground believers in North Korea begin to whisper about Robert Park’s compassion, devotion and courage on their behalf, the revolution may have already begun.
In Christian Tradition, we are taught to ‘pray down’ demonic strongholds. For readers of OFK who do pray, please pray for the complete rout of the demonic powers behind Jucheism, and for the Word of God to course through North Korea announcing the salvation and hope that can save it.
Your pragmatism looking at this subject is very admirable. I’m very jarred by this news, perhaps because I personally identify with his pacifism. I suppose it’s easy to romanticise it without considering the — unfortunately all too literally — painful consequences of turning the other cheek. God help the poor man.
You wrote:
“One wonders what names and places this defector will now reveal to his Chinese or North Korean interrogators.”
I wouldn’t assume that either Park or this other defector will give names. I think Park is willing to die before he gives over information- that was the point of all of this.
I pray and hope this other defector will keep silent as well.
I wish I shared your confidence. Whatever the truth may ultimately be, what possible gain justified taking that kind of risk?
Drawing attention to the crisis in North Korea. Getting people to talk about it. Raising awareness. When “crazy people” and “nut jobs” are willing to die for the cause. Publicity.
Okay, off to read the Jihad post. I was wondering why you hadn’t tackled that topic earlier. Even Joshua gets the flu…
BTW- freakin LOVE THIS BLOG. I don’t always comment, but I almost always read it.
It seems a lot of people are incredibly hasty to jump to conclusions from one article. I doubt the alleged beating was carried out in front of thousands of people. Are we therefore to assume that the guards who did it just gave Chosun Ilbo a call after the event to tell them what happened? Are they the “sources” claimed in this article? Now I’m not here to defend the North Korean regime but why would Laura Ling and Euna Lee be held in what was apparently not even a prison while another American citizen supposedly gets beaten to within an inch of his life? Ok he’s a man but after the political rewards the regime got last time, I expect Kim Jong Il would definitely have put the word out that illegally residing foreigners, especially Americans, are to be treated well so as to bring maximum reward upon release.
The guy sounds very naive in my opinion. I mean did he ever think he actually stood a chance of success? “Hi, I’m an American citizen who has just entered the country illegally. Please can I speak with Kim Jong Il regarding his soul and human rights?” North Koreans know their own human rights situation and they are unable to change it. Kim Jong Il knows it too. As to the religious side of his mission, who the hell is he to tell people what to believe? The man literally seems to have a holier than thou attitude. Apparently one supposedly “enlightened” Westerner can bring about change for 23 million Koreans, all of whom are evidently incapable of doing it themselves. Apparently Park considers himself a cut above these 23 million people.
“Drawing attention to the crisis in North Korea. Getting people to talk about it. Raising awareness. When “crazy people†and “nut jobs†are willing to die for the cause. Publicity.”
I sort of recall a couple of American women – I think they were reporters or something – who got arrested for crossing the border to raise awareness. The people paying attention to Robert Park’s plight are already aware and talking. Nothing can be gained by outsiders continuing to slip over the border. Leave that dangerous mission to defectors whose potential ability to disseminate and collection information justifies the risk.
The women had a travel guide who steered them wrong. They weren’t trying to sneak over the border. They didn’t mean to cross over into N. Korea, and when caught they swallowed their evidence of interviews.
Ling had previously done a great documentary with National Geographic. She had a travel guide then too.
As far as Park-
Each time someone crosses into N. Korea, more people learn about N. Korea. And the more people that learn, are the more people that become outraged.
Well, I guess this explains why we haven’t heard anything yet about Mr Park as he has apparantly been beaten to a pulp. Perhaps he should have shown his US passport first before showing his bible.
I really fail to see what he was trying to achieve here apart from a one way ticket to PinYang. There is something wholly narcisistic about his action.
The women had a travel guide who steered them wrong. They weren’t trying to sneak over the border.
Whether or not Ling and Lee knew they were crossing the border is a matter of credibility and not an established fact. Nevertheless, their intent is irrelevant to my point that once they were back home, North Korea vanished from the radar screens of most Americans.
Each time someone crosses into N. Korea, more people learn about N. Korea. And the more people that learn, are the more people that become outraged.
Can you provide any evidence of this? At work tomorrow, I’ll poll my colleagues and see if anyone can tell me who Robert Park is. I’ll be surprised if even one teacher or teaching assistant can identify him.
not true, ling and lee crossed deliberately, tried to rush back and got caught.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-oe-lingleeweb2-2009sep02,0,6204216.story
also, not to be heartless, but i don’t trust chosun ilbo at all, much less korean media in general. it’s doubtful they would have done this given who he was. any foreigner that shows up randomly in north korea is going to have someone outside knowing he went in, and didn’t come out. if they did beat him, it’s a tremendously idiotic move on nk’s part, given that they acknowledged publicly that they had him in custody. it would only prove him correct about the regime. it’s more likely that remains largely unharmed.
Oh yes, submitting oneself to torture and death at the hands of cruel tyrants is the epitome of narcissism.
????
KJC, Mr Park thought that he and he alone could bring salvation to NK by spreading the word. Mr Park is deluded and heavy on the self importance by thinking that when he would enter NK all would come good. Mr Park’s narcisism is merely a precursor of his action.
Anyway, he is in prison now and will probably have plenty of time to sort himself out.
I tend to agree with Sonagi’s point that Mr. Park’s action was likely “in vain” (because it likely did not raise measurably heighten public awareness of the North Korea issue in the West) and Ernst’s point that “vanity” (if not mental illness) may have prompted his action.
I love how people form opinions about people and things they know nothing about. I know Robert personally. People attacking him and saying untrues is relly getting on my last nerve. This is very spiritual and if you don’t know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, this is foolish to you.Where would we be if Hitler was left to continue to do his own thing? There is no denying that NK has the worst human right conditions. The world has seen and heard of the evil that is running rampant in NK. Are we going to pretend we didn’t see or hear?
Ms. Smith,
1. I try to be careful with words in my old(er) age. So I took meticulous care to qualify my statements with words or phrases such as “tend to,” “was likely” and “may have.” Being neither omniscient nor sure of being guided by an omniscient being in all my thoughts, I prefer not to pronounce empathic judgments on an issue I do not know thoroughly.
2. Very few knowledgeable people deny that the human rights condition in North Korea is intolerabl and that men are suffering horribly there. But good-meaning and reasonable people can also disagree about how to alleviate that particular manifestation of human suffering. And I tend to agree with Mr. Stanton, et al. that the way that Mr. Park went about doing was not prudent–that is, it will not likely produce his goal and likely even prove counter-productive, esp. if the Communists elicit valuable information from Mr. Park and/or cracks down humanitarian assistance from the West.
Also, not every individual who recognizes Jesus as his Lord and Savior would agree that all human suffering can be ended in the temporal dimensions. In the least, there are time where you cannot do much–at least right now. As one great Christian thinker of the last century wrote:
God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Sonia, I only form an opinion about Mr Parks actions, no more.
Whether he is a good Christian or an evil satan worshipper is all indifferent to me.
I have only taken note of his actions which includes an interview in which he comes across as vain, as well as the ultimate action of walking into north korean which is irresponsible and we all know it doesn’t achieve anything. Or at least not much.
On the other hand, it has already resulted in one arrest and on that basis I think Mr. Park hasn’t thought things through.
I am sure he is a nice chap and all that, but it’s besides the point.
Let’s be clear: No one is condemning Robert Park’s good intentions, and we all convey our deepest sympathies to his family and friends, but the consequences of his actions speak for themselves.
Not counting Hitler himself, the person who stopped Hitler wasn’t Sophie Scholl, it was actually the godless tyrant Josef Stalin, so this statement doesn’t give much support to your point. Prayer can do many great things — including making better human beings, saving people from self-destruction, give people a sense of purpose to do good, and galvanizing them into effective action (and yes, in cases on which we tend to dwell excessively, it can inspire evil, too).
But it is error to believe that prayer alone can stop genocide. That belief was no more true of the Ghost Dance than it is of Robert Park. Prayer can’t stop genocide. Guns stop genocide. This is not to deny that prayer can inspire people to organize and take effective action to stop genocide. But the faithful still need RPG’s and Tokarevs, or at least some better plan than Robert Park’s.
On a related issue, religious freedom in the DPRK apparently not a pressing issue at the Obama WH…
One Year Later, Obama Administration’s Top Religious Freedom Post Still Vacant
(CNSNews.com) – One year after President Obama took office, the administration’s top international religious freedom post remains empty, at a time when religious freedom campaigners have noted a surge in incidents of violence against Christians in particular over the past two months. One Christian advocacy organization launched a petition drive on Wednesday, urging Obama to appoint an ambassador immediately.
Robert Parks did not expect that “everything would come good” when he entered Nth Korea. He fully expected to be arrested, and knew he may die. Was prepared to die if necessary. Robert Parks is a man of prayer. He was prepared to suffer. He only asked God that He would use his action to change that nation in a way that only God could.
Whatever others may flippantly say about what he has done, it was an act that required tremendous courage, and tremendous faith, in that by laying his life on the line, he sought to be the catalyst of a turn around of the kind that only God can orchestrate. Since God is on this man’s team, I’d wait and see what happens before making rash judgements.
And when I say “what happens”, I mean what happens in connection with setting the mistreated people of North Korea free. Robert Parks knew that might not happen in his lifetime – whether that be short or long – but he knew that nothing is impossible with God. However long it took, he was prepared to go the distance, if he lived, and believe for what he prayed for.
Passionate men led by the Spirit of God are few and far between, but history tells many a story of the wonders God was able to accomplish through them. They were willing to put themselves in danger, and that meant that many of their followers would also be endangered, but those followers, inspired by their leader, were willing for that. Martin Luther King was such a man, and his followers were that kind of follower.
Why belittle what this man has cared enough to do, or the man who helped him and has now been arrested. Why belittle their resolve, and rubbish their ability to live up to it. These men should be respected in that they laid their lives on the line for others. Would that more of us cared enough for others act so selflessly.
Sad news about a man who was born to live out his mission of sacrificial love. Whether he lives or not, is immaterial, though I hope he does. In the spiritual realm, however, his life, whether over now or not, has been enormously sucessful. If the purpose of life is to love, and the perfect act of it is to lay down ones life for ones friends, then that is what he has done. The success of it does not depend on whether any change comes to north korea because of it or not. But I am sure that it will, because acts of great sacrifice like this are often necessary to bring about change in seemingly impossible situations. Any student of Christian history can think of many examples. The first Jesuit missions to the Iriquois come to mind, along with a more recent example of the pentacostal missionaries to the Amazon (they made a movie of that one). Brother Yun of China tells many similar stories of China in his book Living Water.
Kumar, I read your link, but I don’t think the cross was deliberate. Certainly not pre-meditated. I know the article reads like they knew where they were at the moment they crossed, but I think they realized later that they were, indeed, in North Korea. In another news article, they said they think their tour guide tried to trick them.
Anyway- It doesn’t matter- I believe what Park did had been planned for months- not an impulse decision at the border.
I don’t expect most people to understand the point to what Park has done. Sometimes, it takes months..years…to see the fruit in all of this. God’s timing is perfect. But I understand the cynicism.
I thought Mr. Parks mission displayed a lot of courage. He knew the consequences and crossed anyway. They say drastic situations call for drastic actions.
BTW I’m sure Mr. Kim was aware that Mr. Park would be beaten and tortured. Yet Mr. Kim risked helping anyway. It seems he felt Mr. Park’s mission was more important than smuggling operations as well.
People who have disregard for Mr. Park, do so because they have disregard for the citizens of N. Korea.
“But I am sure that it will, because acts of great sacrifice like this are often necessary to bring about change in seemingly impossible situations. Any student of
Christianhistory can think of many examples.”Fixed it for you.
Instead of picking on the poor guy for what he did, why don’t you all pray for the poor people in North Korea, the North Korean refugees in China and elsewhere, and all the helpers out there working hard to aid them?
Why not use your time to get informed about the terrible human rights violations there and maybe even do something – contact an organization that helps North Korean refugees, spread the word, donate money, write to politicians, start a petition, etc???
That’s what we do here every day, Katja. This blog is a petition.
Don’t be too hard on the drive-by commenter, Joshua.
Katja’s heart might be in the right place, but she ought to be embarrassed for posting her comment in such utter ignorance of Joshua’s blog . . . but drive-by commenters rarely drive back by to look into what their potshot has struck.
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
I find it unbelievable that people are weighing in on the outcomes of Robert Park’s actions–I find it almost inhumane and as callous as the North Koreans themselves. Robert Park, a HUMAN BEING, was brutally tortured and there are millions of others that are suffering. Spread awareness… You, Mr. Joshua Stanton, worry about those endangered by his actions?
Sarah, Mr Park was not some teenagers snatched off a beach in South Korea or in Japan. He wasn’t an escapee of the North forcibly taken back after Chinese authorities captured him hiding out in, say, Shenyang.
He is a person who knowingly, willingly, and foolishly walked into North Korea, not long after it was clear that his own country had to expend capital of some kind to free two of his countrymen.
I find it unbelievable that people find his reckless acts so commendable. Yeah, he’s a human being and no one deserves the treatment some papers are now saying he got, but it should not be forgotten that he had a choice to go get this treatment. Others — others whom he put at risk — do not.
From what I can see, it would be a bit unfair to compare Park to the likes of Norman Kember. Yes there were going to be ramifications of his actions, but he must have been surely aware that he was placing himself in very real danger… unlike the likes of Kember who saw it as a jolly wheeze.
Park is a holy fool.