In May of 2017, Kim Hak Song was on a train on his way back to Dandong, China, the border city where he’d entered North Korea some weeks before, when members of the North Korean security service approached him.
The government agents accused him of hostile acts toward North Korea and said they had evidence against him. It would be easiest if he simply confessed.
“I was thinking, I don’t know what I did wrong,” Kim said through a translator at his home church, the Oriental Mission Church in East Hollywood, after a service there on June 2, his first extended public comments since being released from a North Korean prison May 9. Kim preached and gave testimony about his detention.
When he asked his captors what hostile acts he reportedly committed against North Korea, he was told his crime was prayer.
Prayer, he thought, was normal. The North Korean government, he said, did not.
Overcome with joy
Kim Hak Song has denied that he broke North Korean laws against promoting religion. But his captors showed him an email he had sent to the elders of the Oriental Mission Church asking them to pray for the people of North Korea. They also had records showing he had led early morning prayer for a worship group.
According to the State Department’s most recent International Religious Freedom Report, North Korea is holding up to 120,000 political prisoners, more than 1,300 of whom are charged with religious violations.
Kim Hak Song and two other detainees, Kim Dong Chul and Tony Kim, were released after negotiations on their behalf by U.S. officials in preparation for a summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Peter Joo, a pastor at Oriental Mission Church, an Independent Holiness Church, said his church members were overcome with joy when they heard Kim Hak Song was safe and on his way back to the United States.
Kim Hak Song said he’s no longer allowed to return to China or North Korea, but he said he’s praying about what to do next.
‘Share God’s message’
He’s convinced that his time in North Korea wasn’t wasted. While detained, Kim Hak Song said, an official asked him to write about Christianity.
“I was grateful and thankful that at this time I was able to share God’s message to this person,” he said.
He also said he spent a lot of time during his detention in prayer — confessing his sins, big and small, being thankful and asking God to watch over his family.
The day he was released guards told him to gather his belongings and asked if there was anything else he needed.
The answer: his Bible.
It wasn’t until he was boarding a U.S. government plane, Bible in tow, that he knew he was being released to freedom.
Since landing, he’s satisfied a craving for hamburgers, taken measures to assure his family would be financially cared for if he were to die — a fear he had while imprisoned in North Korea — and has begun sharing his testimony.
“God’s miracles still happen,” Kim Hak Song said during his sermon. “And prayer is still very important.” (RNS)
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