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For the Love of Christ, People, Please Stop Walking Into North Korea!

Yes, it has happened again. Link in Korean only so far. The man is said to be a South Korean national in his 30’s or 40’s. Ten North Korean guards were there to welcome him, and one gobsmacked Chinese taxi driver was there to see him off.

I should note that it’s not confirmed yet why this guy crossed or what his plan was, so I’m speculating.

Well, I’ll admit it: if enough people do this, it certainly will get plenty of attention. I’d still rather see people set up networks to smuggling in food, clothing, medicine, and cell phones than do stuff like this. And frankly, with Kim Jong Il still not using his inside voice with Lee Myung Bak, I have a much greater fear for the treatment of a South Korean national.

15 Responses

  2. Poor dude’s screwed because he got the lesson of Lee and Ling all wrong.

    He doesn’t even come close.

    1. He’s not a journalist, so journalists won’t make his case a cause célèbre. (And his sister isn’t close to Oprah like Ling’s) He’s just an activist who actually knows a whole lot about the issue.

    2. He doesn’t work for Gore and thus does not have a pipeline to the White House, State, and Bill, HRC, etc.

    3. He’s not an Asian-American hottie in distress. ie, not going to get a rise out of anyone.

  3. What I dork am I.

    I’m in a noisy lobby and hastily assumed this was about Robert Park, but the gist of the comment still stands in ref to the both of them.

  4. Your comments only have resonance among those who discount the role of God in these incursions. Some of us believe God is working through these bold prophetic signs. Perhaps a Spartacus moment is developing…

  6. Simply wearing or proclaiming a cross does not a prophetic sign make. The Christian ideal of martyrdom or self-sacrifice is not about doing so for it’s own sake, but when such actions clearly can help others or save lives. These actions, so far, do not meet that standard.

  8. I have another idea. Maybe all decent people around the world should protest in any way they can against the North Korean government and the Chinese government’s support for that brutal regime.

  9. Christian, don’t you know that would be a sectarian, fundamentalist, subjectivist tack? Let’s put our trust in the UN and diplomats who get replaced every few months based on political circumstances, OK? I mean, what’s God got to do with it?

  10. I have another idea. Let’s help the North Korean people set up an underground to provide the essential government services that the regime won’t: food, medicine, information, and yes, religious ministries for those who want them. Look, I’m a deist myself, but you can’t deny the cohesive power of religion or its appeal to North Koreans who’ve rejected the regime. And I don’t have to be a Christian myself to realize that only people who believe in something greater than themselves and an afterlife are going to risk their lives to change the system.

    I’ve become convinced that North Koreans aren’t going to change the regime unless they organize, and most probably, fight. Armed resistance, however, is premature before non-violent options are exhausted, and it’s certain to fail unless it has the support of a much larger political underground (the people are the sea in which the guerrillas swim, right?). I think the level of discontent and the degradation of the old system make North Korea ripe for a resistance movement. But right now, North Korea consists of a lot of weak, hungry, isolated people, most of whom harbor their discontent privately and dare not express it even to their best friends, spouses, and children. What that means is that the regime is able to hold onto power by dealing with dissidents a few at a time.

    This organization would have to spread clandestinely, using the same tactics that clandestine organizations have used for centuries. Some people will get caught, of course, but cell-based organizations with good communications will mitigate the damage to the greater organization. The greatest obstacle to empowering this organization is moving goods into North Korea, but the answer really struck me like an epiphany the other day, while reading Demick’s “Nothing to Envy” and thinking back to my Google Earth views of the North Korean coast. Each of those coastlines is long and indented. Each has hundreds of fishing villages. Each village has dozens of little boats. Most also have some naval patrol boats, most of which look rusty and in a bad state of repair.

    A reasonably well-financed organization with a few fast Q-ships could move a lot of cargo to a point close to those coasts during the night. The small boats could pick up those cargoes off the coast and do the hard work of running the blockade. With GPS, it could all be done at night. The regime couldn’t possibly stop it all any more than our own Coast Guard can stop all the blow coming in from Colombia. For the owners of those little boats, the profit motive to sell those cargoes to the underground’s wholesalers would be incentive enough to be worth the risk. Call it the Yi Sun Shin Trail. The underground could then distribute the food, medicine, and other goods to its supporters — most likely, those cut out of the state’s ration system — in exchange for loyalty, support, and intelligence. It could also try to feed “kotjaebi” and other North Koreans in desperate need.

    In a similar manner, the underground could gradually coopt much of the regime’s service-providing structures. Doctors, for example, have been moonlighting for years to survive. They set up clinics in their apartments. The main constraint is the lack of medicine. Doctors could be lured out of under-equipped government clinics and hospitals into guerrilla clinics, using resistance-supplied medicine and equipment. Similarly, the resistance could supply spare parts to mechanics and drivers in exchange for delivering clandestine cargoes from city to city. The ultimate objective would be to recruit supporters within the security forces, to weaken their ties to the regime, and even to supply the underground protection and, if necessary, weapons. And with a few cell phones — piggybacking on Orascom’s signal network — there would finally be nationwide political coordination by the resistance allowing it to launch leafleting and graffiti campaigns, and — once the morale of the security forces eroded sufficiently — to coordinate nationwide protests.

  11. KCJ, I assumed you were referring to Park’s crossing as a prophetic sign. Forgive me if I’m mistaken.

  13. Robert Park’s crossing and message are prophetic signs. Your sarcastic remarks reduce it to the wearing of religious jewelry. Park is intrepid, sincere, completely unselfish and undeserving of your scorn. And who appointed you arbiter over what constitutes a legitimate prophetic sign?

    Let us who claim the name of Christian pray for Robert Park and the victimized people he calls attention to.

  14. KCJ,
    Then I was correct in my initial interpretation of your remarks. I respectfully disagree, as a Christian, that his crossing or his message are prophetic. And there wasn’t a hint of sarcasm in my comment.

    I did not call him anything, I simply said this wasn’t a sign from God simply because it was a Christian who did it, therefore my reference to wearing or claiming the cross. There’s no question that Robert’s action was all of the things you said it was. I didn’t say we ought not to pray either.

    I don’t want to hijack this thread and turn it into an off-topic discussion, so if my initial characterization offended you I apologize. But I stand by what I said.

    Best.

  15. Well brother kumar, I guess we are operating under different definitions of prophetic. Walking into the blazing cauldron where hundreds of thousands of Christians have perished for their faith and proclaiming that Kim Jong Il should repent and open his ‘jail’ to the missionaries fits my definition to a ‘T.’ John the Baptist, Moses and Jeremiah come to mind.

    Best,
    KCJ