The passengers deboard the late night Air China flight from Beijing onto the empty tarmac and walk languidly toward the terminal. Amidst the ant-like trail of humans, two westerners stand out: myself and a pale-skinned man in his mid-forties who towers above the Asians. With an odd familiarity, we briefly glance at each other. I wonder, as he must, if we are in Yanji for the same reason.
This city of about 600,000, small by Chinese standards, is the capital of the Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China, a place where bi-lingual signs have Korean above Chinese, a place known in the West as the setting for The Manchurian Candidate, a place that gave birth to the concept of brainwashing via a CIA propaganda article in the Miami News. Yanji is also known for the presence of the Russian mafia, as a hideout for illegal immigrants waiting to escape to the south, and a departure point for overland trips to the northern part of the DPRK, known to most of the world as North Korea.
We enter the small almost empty airport terminal and head toward the baggage claim. I collect my bags and wait off to the side. When the last bag is collected, the carousel stops. The tall westerner looks about and begins sub-vocalizing about his missing luggage.
“I last seen my bags in Atlanta,” he mutters.
A local attendant takes his baggage ticket and walks toward a dimly lit office.
I approach my compatriot and start a conversation. His speech is punctuated with ‘ya’lls’ and Southern verb usage. Crawford tells me he has a lot of experience flying domestically, but this is his first time outside the U.S.
“I thought they’d transfer the luggage all the way, automatically,” he says. “Now they tell me it was my responsibility to take it through customs.”
“What are your travel plans?” I ask
“Goin’ to North Korea,” he says. “You too?”
I nod, “Will you go anywhere else?” I ask, “Maybe Beijing?”
“Naw,” he says with a drawl.
“What about visiting Beijing?”
“Got to get back to work.”
My eyes widen. I ask a clarifying question. “This is your first trip outside the U.S. and your only destination is North Korea?”
He doesn’t seem to understand how odd this sounds to me. As I am wondering about what to say, another American approaches us. Joshua is in his mid-twenties, very enthusiastic, and very excited to see us. He is a representative from the tour company.
“You made it,” Joshua says with an enthusiastic smile. “Don’t worry about the luggage,” he says. “It’s in Chicago. It should be here tomorrow. If the bags don’t arrive in time, I’ll loan you some money and help you buy clothes.” Joshua talks in a very familiar and friendly manner as though we have been together a long time.
“You’re on the same trip,” he announces to us. “We leave in a couple of days.” Giddy with excitement, he begins rambling on about his experiences in China and North Korea. He demonstrates how he uses sign language to shop. His job is to greet travelers and help them get ready for their trip. Sometimes he leads trips. He has lived on a farm, on the inside, for several months. He has some kind of business visa that allows him to stay for extended periods of time. He can also drive by himself around the province of Rason. “Driving is so easy,” he says. “No traffic.”
He asks us, without the slightest hesitation, “Do you want to come on the bible drop at the Tumen?”
“Sure,” Crawford quickly replies.
I do a mental double-take. Now I understand how tourists end up as headlines. Politely, I decline.
——
At the orientation two days later, the other tour American operators are more cautious and vague in their language. They focus on what we can and cannot do: Don’t ask people about politics, religions, their leaders. You can bring your phone as a camera, but there is no cell service. Don’t take pictures of people without asking their permission, and no pictures of the military. No telephoto lenses. You can bring in bibles, just be sure to bring them out with all the pages intact.
The American tour company has organized a service trip to plant trees. During our two week trip, we will spend most of our time working with locals to help reforest hillsides. The North Koreans are a bit confused at why Americans would pay money to work like peasant farmers. We are told our actions will speak for themselves.
After the presentation, each person gives a brief introduction. A few recent high school graduates are participating in their first missionary work. Young college graduates have been working in other Asian countries and have taken a few weeks off for this special visit. They are excited about being around ‘untouched peoples.’ A couple of middle-aged mothers from the Midwest left their husbands and children behind to participate. A Mennonite father has brought his thirteen-year-old daughter; she wears a traditional long skirt and hat. One woman has been on the inside five times.
They look at me, waiting for my story, waiting for my testimony, waiting to learn if I am one of them or if I am an intruder.
——
In the 19th century, Western powers belligerently forced the Joseon dynasty to open its borders. This new opportunity for trade coincided with a large religious revival in the United States known as the Third Great Awakening. With commerce came missionaries and a chance to fulfill the charge to ‘make disciples of all nations.’
The missionaries learned the language, translated the Bible, opened up theological schools, developed a network of regular meetings, and organized scriptural study groups. During group meetings, a missionary or pastor would pray for god’s blessing, preach about the wickedness of sin, and implore people to repent. When the context was right, the spirit of god would descend onto the crowd, inspiring people to pray on the bible, publicly confess their sins, ask for forgiveness, receive everlasting salvation, and set their lives and communities on a new trajectory.
Across the Korean peninsula, meetings increased in size and intensity until Pyongyang had its own Great Awakening. On Monday, January 14, 1907, 1,500 believers had gathered for a ten-day bible conference. After hours of preaching, missionaries confessed to their own sins, most notably to feelings of arrogance and superiority. Chaotic chanting melded into a unified, rhythmic voice. Many began to self-flagellate themselves. Some spoke in tongues. Hundreds came forward to confess their sins and be saved. News of this event quickly spread across the peninsula, inspiring smaller revivals.
For the next two decades, a new wave of missionaries and their families arrived in Korea, primarily from the U.S. Almost every town of any size began building or designating places of worship. By the 1940s, there were close to 3,000 churches in Korea and almost thirty percent of the population considered themselves Christians. Missionaries began to refer to Pyongyang as the ‘Jerusalem of the East.’
The rise of Christianity occurred at the same time as the colonization of the peninsula by the Japanese. After WWII, the sudden defeat of Imperial Japan left a political vacuum that brought a peculiar scrutiny to Christianity. A disproportionate number of converts were educated landowners and intellectuals, many of whom worked with, or at least not against, the Japanese. They became associated with both the exploitation and crimes of the Japanese and were accused of being spies who had helped plan the U.S. invasion. Missionaries were singled out for bringing the wicked teachings of imperialists. All churches were closed. Believers, potentially treasonous because they could never give their full allegiance to the government, were imprisoned. Those who renounced their beliefs were still discriminated against as were their children and grandchildren.
This backlash did not last. The policy was impossible to enforce since almost everyone in the ruling party was close to someone who was a fervent Christian. Even Kim Il Sung, the founding leader of North Korea, grew up in a Christian home with a pastor for a grandfather and a church elder for a father. A combination of internal interests and external pressure gradually forced the government to appease Christians. By the 1970s, many restrictions on the practice of Christianity were lifted. The Korean Christian Association was formed to answer and mollify the critics. In 1988, the first official Christian church was opened in Pyongyang. In 1992, Billy Graham visited North Korea and lectured at Kim Il Sung University. In 1994, Graham returned with his wife who had lived with her family in Pyongyang during the 1930s. When they met with Kim Jung Il, they celebrated the event as a homecoming. In 2010, the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology was founded and funded by Evangelicals, and populated with Evangelical teachers.
In the late 1990s, missionary Christians, mostly from South Korea and America, began using the model of ‘business as mission.’ Many of these missionaries were professionally trained through organizations like Youth with a Mission, which taught courses and offered degree programs in education, language, agriculture, science, counseling, and entrepreneurship. While their ultimate goal was to bring the gospel to nations of the world, their modus operandi was to improve everyday lives. Once people had good food, clean water, warm shelter, education, and employment, they would be ready to have the needs of their souls fulfilled.
——
Early one morning, I have the opportunity to be alone with Kim, one of our North Korea guides. We are standing on a large balcony attached to our hotel. No one else is around. The view overlooks the East Sea, known to most as the Sea of Japan. The air is extremely clear and fresh, one of the advantages of having a minimal industrial complex. The low, rolling hillsides are covered with a thick stands of green trees, which cover a landscape that was denuded during the famine of the 1990s.
Kim’s English is excellent. Like most North Korean tour guides, he has a four-year degree in tourism. He studied the language and culture for the particular group he would be guiding. If one is going to lead English speakers, and especially Americans, part of their education involves watching Hollywood movies. The movie Titanic seems to be very well-known.
Cautiously, we engage in polite banter, staying on safe topics like the weather, favorite foods, our itinerary. As we get more comfortable, I cross into more interesting territory. I ask about the demographics of his clients. He tells me that about half are westerners and half are Chinese. The Chinese, he says, are only interested in one thing. Almost every day, they come across the border by the busload to gamble at a seaside hotel built by a Hong Kong developer. The large attached building is a brothel with women from all over Asia.
“Really?” I say with surprise and curiosity.
“We don’t bring westerners there.”
“Why not?”
“Do you want to visit?” he asks, not realizing the rhetorical nature of my question. “I can arrange it. But you cannot gamble or use the brothel.”
“Sure,” I say, my curiosity about to overflow. Indeed, a few days later our group visits the lobby of the casino. Kim proudly notes the opulence of the hotel, a five-star equivalent in his estimation. At one time, the casino was so popular, they regularly ran out of rooms on weekends and had to set up makeshift structures outdoors. However, interest sharply declined after it was discovered many of the clients were Chinese officials gambling with state funds.
North Korea is very interested in pursuing foreign investors, even if that includes gambling and prostitution. At the same time, they court American companies, run by Christians, to set up a wide variety of businesses from pharmaceutical manufacturing to bus transportation. Kim is very clear that he trusts Americans more than Chinese or Russians, at least the Americans he meets. He refers to us as good Americans.
From reading headlines, one might believe bible-carrying Christians would be imprisoned at the border. For well over a decade, North Korea has been ranked the global leader in religious persecution and yet they are highly tolerant of Christian visitors and expats. When Kenneth Bae, the Christian Evangelist and American tour operator, was arrested he had a long history of surreptitiously bringing religious material across the border and disseminating it. This tolerance by the North Koreans is worth considering. I imagine visitors to the U.S. in the 1920s walking about with anarchist literature, or the 1950s with the Communist Manifesto, or in the modern day with pamphlets on terrorism. The last thing such perpetrators would be encouraged to do is set up businesses and hire people.
“What do you think about the Christians?” I ask.
He shrugs nonchalantly. “Like people everywhere in the world, they believe in their god. We don’t believe in their god. They can do whatever they want. We just don’t want them trying to convince our children.”
I understand what he means. A few days earlier, our group visited an English language class at a middle school. The children were very excited to see us. We took pictures with them, played a game of soccer, had small group discussions in their English class. A woman from our group took out some pictures of herself and began talking to the students. One picture was of her being baptized. Kim walked over to her shaking his head. He confiscated the picture. “They are only children,” he implored. “What are you doing?”
We look out a distant ship cutting across the wide open horizon.
“Why do you think so many Christians come here?” I ask.
Kim takes a deep breath and slowly exhales. “I’m not sure. I think they come to enjoy our beautiful countryside and clean beaches. China is so polluted.”
Therein lays the great divide. When I asked one of the Midwestern mothers why she left her husband and children to participate in this trip, she told me she ‘was called by a higher power to pray in a godforsaken country.’
——
Some member of our group begin to wonder about my intentions and motivations. Who am I, really? I seem to have a lot of experience traveling. I know a lot about the history of the region. I ask provocative questions. I have strange electronic devices. I ride my bike up hills easier than people three decades younger. While I attend their group religious activities, I do not fully participate.
The woman with the baptismal pictures is particularly concerned. One day she visits my hotel room. She wants to chat. She also wants to explore what else I have in my luggage. She is fascinated by my small water purifier that uses ultraviolet light. In a flirtatious way, she wonders how one obtains such a device. She wants to know if she could have a copy of all my pictures. She smiles and tells me it’s for her archives. She marvels at my physical condition and asks about my training routine. Is it somehow … specialized? Eventually, I figure out the purpose for my interrogation. The group has decided I am either a gonzo journalist or most likely an agent of the CIA.
On our bus trip out of the country, one of the young evangelicals needs to leave through Russia since the Chinese have banned him for reasons he doesn’t disclose. He is big and friendly, very industrious, has a seemingly unflappable positive attitude, interacts quiet well with the local children, and is a leader amongst the younger members of the group. He moves along the aisle of the bus bidding farewell. When he reaches me, in a deferential tone, he asks if I have any advice. I think for a moment and then tell him to ‘question most what you believe most.’
***
J.C. is a writer who splits his time between Colorado and Asia. This piece is an excerpt from a larger work on North Korea.
