Last week, two VIPs came to Lee Abbey, they are Shin and Ang from North Korea. At first, I thought there was nothing wrong with this, well, people are liberal to move or travel around, as Lee Abbey has people from all around the world, so there's nothing wrong if we have people from North Korea. But later, I found out from my roommate and Lan that North Korea is not open to the world. People in North Korea are not allow to travel to other countries, and North Korea also does not welcome foreigner to their country. This country remains its status as the world's most secretive country (even people from South Korea are not allow to go to North Korea, I never knew this until my roommate told me).
Shin and Ang are actually the refugees, they escaped from their country, today, they are here to reveal the situation in North Korea. I was shocked when I came to know that North Korea still maintain the concentration camp which is similar to Nazi’s concentration camp during World War II. People are there for no reason, people are there to be mistreated, overwork, tortured, raped, killed, public executed and etc. The way of punishment is beyond our imagination.
Shin was borned in the concentration camp in year 1982, he did not know why he was there, he never knew that there is a outside world accross the electrified barbed wire fence, until one day a 'newcomer' told him about the outside world, (this 'newcomer' died when he tried to escape), he thought that the concentration camp that he was living is the world.
His mother and brother were public executed, his father and he is one of the 'audience' to witness the execution. His mother was hanged and his brother was shot. His finger was cut because of a small mistake he made in the garment factory (there are factories in the camp!!!!), he was tortured by scorching. His cousin was raped until death. Children in the camp are forced to do hard labour work and many children died of accident while working.
Ang is the guard in the concentration camp, according to him, all the officer in the camp were brainwashed when they first started to work in the camp, they were taught that those prisoner in the camp are not human but animal, they can do whatever they want to them. I was really shock by knowing this, and there are still a number of concentration camp in North Korea, and about 200,000 prisoners are still in the camp, waiting to die!!
This two men are accompanied by 5 more people from South Korea, these people are working in a position to save North Koreans. There were tears in my eyes while listening to the truth (there was a session held here to reveal the truth in concentration camp'), I really felt sad.
Perhaps you may ask, why Shin and Ang can be friends and sitting side by side today, aren't they suppose to be enemies? (as Shin is the victim and Ang is the guard) well, this is the great work done by our Lord Jesus Christ, both of them are Christian now and through God, there are forgiveness and miracles.
Here's the article of interview in the newspaper: