Hotel of Doom

 Enormous, failed projects are found in multiple countries, including North Korea.

How big is their tourist industry, do you think? The better question probably is: who would want to go there?! I'm guessing the answer is: very few.

Yet North Korea set out to create the biggest hotel in the world for the prestige. The 105-story concrete shell has been there for decades but was never finished. It's starting to crumble. There is a bright facade on which political messages are played.

But the Hotel of Doom has never had a single guest.

Free market 2

 Re-post from 2015

All through human history, the natural state of the vast majority of people has been bare subsistence or poverty. So our biggest concern, the most pressing question, should be: how did some cultures manage to raise their standard of living to comparative wealth?

A single feature correlates to cultures that rise out of poverty - it's economic freedom. This photo of the Korean peninsula shows visually the economic difference between the controlled north and the generally free south. That black area between South Korea and China is North Korea at night. In the south, they have the prosperity to light up their dark hours.

photo

South Korea has general economic freedom. But in North Korea, a "command" economy is controlled by a dictator. North Koreans as a people group are too poor to afford light at night.

Jay Richards' video in yesterday's post is so good - go back to yesterday and watch it if you haven't yet! He uses a beautiful story to demonstrate freedom in the marketplace - it results in more satisfaction, more happiness, more wealth,  for everyone. Including the lowest sectors.

Dangerous

Open Doors USA keeps track of persecution suffered by believers in Christ all over the world. 

They maintain a watch list of the ten most dangerous countries for Christians. This year, the previously most dangerous, North Korea, was replaced at the number one position by another.

NK escape 3

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

Here is Yeonmi as she speaks for herself before a TED audience.

NK escape 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

After the family got across a frozen river into China, the first thing Yeonmi saw was her mother being raped. She herself, at 13 years old, was also raped but redeemed her family by becoming the trafficker's mistress. Then they crossed the freezing Gobi desert to escape into South Korea. 

But America was their goal and, after all the terrible suffering, they made it. No longer slaves, they had food and they could even wear jeans if they liked. 

Yeonmi was also hungry for knowledge and for truth after getting so little of that in her childhood. She wound up going to Columbia University . . and got confused. She loved learning about her place in history. But the resentment, bitterness, accusations of oppression at Columbia disturbed her. 

It's not right, she says, to be punished for something you had no hand in. Blacks were shamed and punished for their race a hundred years ago, and now the message is that whites must be shamed and punished for their race today. That's racism and it is still just as wrong.

She's determined to both know and speak the truth on a number of topics. She's written a book: 

from her story at Epoch Times

NK escape 1

Yeonmi Park was a child in North Korea, where she learned early that to speak was fraught with danger. Any talk that crossed the government's narrative could result in prison camp or execution for you and generations of your family. Even someone who seems friendly with you would have to report it, so don't trust anyone.

There is no word for friend. They use the word "comrade," meaning someone you work with for the "glory of the party." There is no word for love, except in the sense that you must love the "Dear Leader." They were taught that they lived in a socialist paradise.

Vocabulary control is thought control. Another tool for controlling thought is plain old hunger. Weak and desperate citizens who worry about every meal have little thought to spare for political change. Starving North Koreans are taught that former leader Kim Jong Un died of exhaustion working for the good of the people.

In 2007 her family could no longer find food. Yeonmi had never seen a map of the world, but saw lights across the border to China. That looked better to her, and that's where the family went.

image

from Epoch Times

(cont'd tomorrow)

Thankful 1

At the age of 17, Seojun escaped North Korea by swimming a river. He had nothing but his clothes and a jacket. Exhausted and lonely, just a teenager, he looked for food and for jobs to keep himself alive.

Courage and grit kept him going til he found a safe house. Watch his story.

What if?

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

In this campaign to persuade the NK chairman to change . . only the essential, first step has been taken. He says they will move toward ending their nuclear weapon work. What if he does stop his nuclear threats and moves toward ethical leadership? That's the goal.

That video prepared to help persuade him to negotiate was professionally done. Scott Adams, creator of comic strip "Dilbert" and author of a book about persuasion, thinks the video is brilliant.

From the video:

"History is always evolving, and there comes a time when only a few are called upon to make a difference . . .But the question is — what difference will the few make? The past doesn’t have to be the future. Out of the darkness can come the light, and the light of hope can burn bright. What if?"

Adams says, "It might be the best thing anybody ever did in a negotiation. Period."

African Fred Swaniker had it right - a single leader has huge impact. Millions of lives hang in the balance. "What if?"

Persuade

Last week the American president flew to Singapore to sit down with the leader of North Korea . . for the first time in history.

North Korea is behind the rest of the world in almost every way. Its people live in fear, under coercion, often starving, some desperate and brave enough to try to escape. Meanwhile their leader races to develop nuclear weapons so he can threaten the world.

Americans hope things can change. The president's first, urgent goal is to persuade the dictator to give up his nuclear swagger. One element of the persuasion campaign is this video:



(cont'd tomorrow)

NK Christians 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

World Help has gotten 68,000 Bibles into the hands of North Koreans during the last ten years. "This is not some marketing campaign or program that World Help has dreamed up. This is not our strategy. This is what the leaders of the churches of North Korea are begging for . . ."

photo: stream.org

Vernon Brewer of World Help says that he met a former soldier in the North Korean military:

"He had worked on the other side of the razor wire fences at the DMZ. His job was to listen in for radio broadcasts at night. While he was tuning in to different frequencies, he found a Christian station broadcasting the gospel into North Korea. He listened night after night until he became a believer.

"He and his family fled towards China. They were shot at by the North Korean military. When they barely made it across the river, there happened to be a group of believers there. These Chinese Christians were having a prayer meeting on the riverbank. They took them in, hid them and discipled them. Later, they made it possible for them to get to South Korea.

Even in the midst of great persecution, vibrant testimonies of transformation are happening."

NK Christians 1

If a North Korean has a Bible,  she or he is in serious danger.  

"Of the 300,000 North Korean Christians that the government recognizes, 70,000 of them are in forced labor camps . . . Most of them never come out. They could get a 50-year prison sentence for owning a Bible or simply being caught in a prayer meeting or worship service.

"The average life expectancy for a Christian in these camps is only three years. Many of them are beaten, tortured and prodded with electric stun batons. They even have experimental surgeries done on them, sending them into a coma or vegetative state."

Vernon Brewer of World Help has been finding ways to help Christian believers there for ten years. When someone asks how to pray for those people, he tells them "If your son or daughter were in one of those forced labor camps, how would you pray?’" 

(cont'd tomorrow)

NK worst

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Open Doors publishes an annual list of the 50 worst countries for persecution of Christians. As in the past, North Korea is at the top of that list, the very worst place in the world to live as a Christian.

photo: worldhelp.net

"Worship of the ruling Kim family is mandated for all citizens, and those who don’t comply (including Christians) are arrested, imprisoned, tortured or killed. Entire Christian families are imprisoned in hard labor camps, where unknown numbers die each year from torture, beatings, overexertion and starvation."

(cont'd next week)

Surviving

Joseph Kim says that you have to choose to have hope, that hope kept him alive. He escaped North Korea after losing his parents and living as an orphan, homeless on the streets.

But life didn't get easy after escaping across the border either. In the video below, he tells how a chicken wing changed him.

Inspiring

Be inspired by this young man's courage and endurance in suffering - and what he does now that he is free. What North Korea does to its own people is evil.

Defector danger

". . North Koreans know little to nothing about the world we live in. Most are unaware that there is an alternative to repressive tyranny. We are helping to change that," says Human Rights Foundation president Thor Halversson.  The HRF partnered with defector Park Sang Hak's balloon effort (yesterday's post).

As he lives his life in Seoul, South Korea, Park has security guards.  He needs them because "he receives regular death threats . ."

A trap was set for him three years ago:  "a fellow defector called, offering to broker a meeting with a supporter who could provide funding for launches. The South Korean National Intelligence Service told him it was a trap and ended up capturing four men at the rendezvous point, a subway station in Seoul. One of them, a defector known only as Ahn, had served in the North Korean special forces and was carrying an arsenal of assassination gadgets, including a miniature flashlight that fired bullets, a pen that shot steel darts, and another containing a needle that delivered a lethal toxin.

"Ahn later admitted to having been paid $12,000 by the North Koreans to murder Park. They had threatened to harm his family if he didn’t go through with it."

Defector passion

To be on North Korea's hit list would be pretty intimidating.  Park Sang Hak, defector since 1999, is number one on that list.

He uses a no-tech  method to undermine the government.   Balloons, of all things, are launched from across the border in South Korea. They're loaded with leaflets "light as tissue paper but waterproof" which inform people of North Korea about the freer life that exists outside of their country.

photo:  humanrightsfoundation.org

Park says, "North Korea is surrounded by an iron curtain, so information can't get in . . But this way, using the sky, it can't be stopped."  

Those balloons are "double-walled greenhouse plastic", "very cheap and very sturdy," says Park, "I should get a patent."  Their messages include leaflets insulting "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il, whom he hopes will some day be overthrown by the people.

In 2008, the death threats started.  

Escaping the DPRK

More from that report by the U.N. inquiry into human rights in North Korea:

“What we have seen and heard so far – the specificity, detail and shocking character of the personal testimony – appears without doubt to demand follow-up action by the world community, and accountability on the part of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” Michael Kirby, chair of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the DPRK . . 

“We heard from ordinary people who faced torture and imprisonment for doing nothing more than watching foreign soap operas or holding a religious belief,” said Kirby, a retired Australian judge with broad international experience."

There have been escapes from the nightmare.  An estimated 50,000 are thought to be hiding in China, often aided by Christian pastors.  

Back in 2009, National Geographic had a story on the lives of escapees:

"For Red, whose family lived within sight of the border, China appeared a seductive paradise. "I could see so many lights from apartment blocks and a power plant. China looked so rich." She had been raised on a collective farm in the province of North Hamgyong, the poorest part of North Korea and the source of most border crossers. "I grew up seeing people getting sick and dying from eating grass," she said."

That U.N. report will come out this month.  But it will certainly not be news to the world.

UN on North Korea

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights reports the stories of hundreds of people who have been witness to terrible things in North Korea.

Eric Metaxas urges that the U.S. pass a bill that sanctions North Korea to put pressure on that government for the sake of the people whose lives are being ruined.