North Korea: Choi Finds Freedom Print E-mail
Choi had a new book! A friend had given it to her as a gift. The friend was grateful because Choi’s husband helped him stay out of jail.
 
Choi’s husband was a government official. Sometimes he helped people stay out of trouble. Many people in North Korea need help, especially with the government. That’s because the government of North Korea has lots of strict rules that are hard to follow. Many people get arrested and punished for breaking those rules.
 
Choi’s husband helped her friend avoid punishment. So the friend gave Choi and her husband the book and said, “This is the story of someone from heaven who helps poor people. “
 
Secret Bible Reading
The book was a Bible. Choi had never heard of the Bible. But she knew the government might not approve of the book.
 
Each night, she covered the windows of their house so no one could see inside. Then she sat in a corner with a blanket over her head and read the Bible by candlelight. (Reading under a blanket with a lit candle can start a fire. It is safer to use a flashlight. North Korea is a very poor country. Choi probably did not own a flashlight or batteries.)
 
Choi read the part of the book called Genesis. Then she read the four books with “John” in their titles. Every night she emerged from her blanket-tent, her nose black with soot from the candle and her mind full of questions.
 
She discovered she had an uncle who was a Christian. He secretly shared his faith with her, and her own faith grew.
 
A Secret is Discovered
Secrets do not last long in North Korea. People are expected to report on their neighbors to the police. Someone found out about Choi’s Bible reading. She was arrested and charged with being a “religious spy.”
 
The police tried to force her to say she was a spy. Choi would not lie. She was not a spy.
 
Then the police tricked her husband. They told him Choi could come home if he would say she had done bad things. So he did. But the police did not let her come home. They kept her in prison and treated her even worse.
 
Choi prayed all the time in prison. She remembered the promise from the book of 1 John that said her faith could overcome the world (1 John 5:4,5).
 
Freedom
After a year of harsh prison conditions, Choi weighed only 62 pounds. Her husband visited her, and she begged him to get her out.
 
So he sold their house and collected money from all their friends and relatives. He brought the money and a TV to the prison and offered them to a prison guard. North Koreans do not have much money and few have TVs. The guard wanted the gifts, and he let Choi out of the prison.
 
Choi secretly escaped to another country. She works at a Christian radio station that broadcasts programs into North Korea.  Families can also listen to the programs and learn if relatives who escaped from North Korea have made it to freedom. Choi hopes her husband has listened and knows she is safe now.
 
Extra Information!
Like Choi and her husband, many families are separated because of North Korea’s strict rules. In August 2008, a woman from Germany visited her North Korean husband for the first time in 47 years. Renate, the German woman, married Hong Ok Geun in Germany in the 1960s.
 
Not long after they got married, they were separated because the North Korean government said all of its citizens had to go home. When Hong Ok Geun left Germany he had to leave behind his wife Renate. He also left Peter who was 10 months old and Uwe, who hadn’t even been born yet!
The government did not allow Renate and her sons to visit North Korea until she was 71 and Ok Geun was 74. Uwe and Peter were 47 and 48 years old at the time of the visit.
 
South Koreans were interested in Renate and Ok Geun’s story. Many people in South Korea are separated from loved ones in North Korea. They hope that the North Korean government will allow them to visit their relatives before they die.
 
To protect their identities, the names of some of the people on this site and some identifying details have been changed. Some of the quotes and stories have been edited and paraphrased from the original sources for clarity.