JESUS IN NORTH KOREA

This year, BTJ is coming out with a new book called JESUS IN NORTH KOREA.

The following is a sneak peek that shares a secret you may not have heard before:  the founder Kim Il Sung was a worship leader, his father was a preacher and his mother was a deaconess.  Their faith was so strongly founded in Christ that when the Japanese invaded Korea and demanded that everyone bow and worship the Emperor, they refused and joined the underground house church in China.

This crazy story will completely change how you look at North Korea forever.

JESUS IN NORTH KOREA will be out later this year in 2025.

The following is a sample from the book:

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“Bow or die?” That was the choice going through Esther Chang’s head.  Esther was a missionary to China and was traveling in a car with the local Party Secretary in North Korea.  He took notice of the work she had been doing and how she brought business to North Korea.  He was impressed and invited her to an official dinner at the Chinese Consulate where many well-known officials from North Korea and China would be in attendance.

An official car was sent to pick her up and bring her to the dinner.

“Esther, you have done many great things for the motherland,” the Party Secretary said, heaping praises on her.  The driver continued to look back at her whenever he could. It was clear that the driver was proud to be driving such an honorable person.

“Lord, please give me wisdom,” she prayed silently. “I can’t do anything apart from You.”  She said, once she learned that the official was driving her to pay respects at the Kim Il Sung statue.

After driving for some time, they finally arrived in front of a large, opulent a bronze statue of Kim Il Sung.

The driver stopped and everyone got out of the car.

Esther prayed more intentionally, knowing that this short moment could be the most dangerous. If she refused to bow to the great leader in worship, she might be forced to leave North Korea or even be put in jail.  Locals could even be executed for refusing to bow before the Great Leader’s statue.

As they walked together toward the statute, Esther was still at a loss as to how to deal with the situation. Everyone lined up shoulder to shoulder beside each other and prepared to begin the ceremony.

“Dear Lord, what do You want me to do?” Esther prayed silently. Then suddenly a surge of boldness filled her heart and she began to pray differently.

“Kim Il Sung, you are not the King of kings. You are not the Lord of lords. You were a horrible, evil leader and I command you in the name above all names to fall down and disappear!”

Everyone bowed in unison except Esther. She stood upright and stared directly at the bronze statue. “Fall down in acknowledgement of the one and only King of kings.”

The statue did not fall physically, but it no longer held any power over her. No one really noticed that she had not bowed because they had all closed their eyes as they did so. After bowing several times, there were a few who finally noticed Esther still standing upright.

“Teacher?” one of the party members asked. (They often called her “teacher,” as a sign of respect.)

“Why don’t you bow when we come together and pray before our Great Leader?”

“Please understand,” Esther started out slowly, “I don’t know how to greet others by bowing down. After all, isn’t it only a bronze statue? It isn’t the Great Leader himself. He didn’t make it; someone made it to remind them of him. The statue can’t do anything to acknowledge that I have been here paying my respects. If I wanted to truly honor the Great Leader, wouldn’t it be better to do something for him or his people directly? Which would be better for you, to follow the teachings of your leader and help those around you, or to come and bow to a statue that can’t do anything for you, the people, or the Leader?”

The people around her pondered her words for a moment, and did not respond.  They had never seen anyone stand so strongly against the idea of bowing to Kim Il Sung, but she knew secrets that they didn’t know.

She knew the former leader was not a god, but was very much a human that had a past that was hidden from the people.

Before Kim Il Sung became the darling leader of the Communist Party, he was the son of a devoted Christian family.

Kim Il Sung was born on April 15, 1912 on the outskirts of Pyongyang at the height of Christian revival.  Both of his parents were extremely active in the Presbyterian church.  His maternal grandfather was a minister in the house church movement that was sweeping through Korea and China.

According to Kim Il Sung’s autobiography, his great-great grandfather was a part of the attack on The General Sherman that played a significant role in the killing of Robert Jermaine Thomas and would have no doubt known Chu Won Park, who killed him and later became a believer.  When the General Sherman sailed up the River Taedong and anchored at Turu Islet, his great-grandfather, together with some other villagers, collected ropes from all the houses and stretched them across the river between Konyu Islet and Mangyong Hill.  He then loaded a lot of small boats with firewood, tied them together, set them on fire and floated them down towards the ship, setting it on fire, leading to Robert Jermaine Thomas jumping from the vessel and being martyred.

This story became a central testimony for Christians during the revivals in Pyongyang when Kim was born.

Kim’s father, Kim Hyong-jik, went to an American Presbyterian missionary school called Sungshil School.  His father was also a respected elder in the Presbyterian church as was his mother.  Kim Il Sung is known to have played the organ during worship service.

But the massive event that impacted him during his childhood was the Japanese occupation of Korea.  What happened during that time has been largely a secret.

Kim wrote in his autobiography, With The Century, that his parents were anti-imperialist heroes and fought the Japanese, but that story is a bit of a Communist cover up for the real reason his family resisted the Japanese.

After a careful evaluation of the events during that time, the most likely reason for his parents’ resistance towards the Japanese had less to do with imperialism and more to do with their closely held Christian faith.

When Japan invaded Korea, they sought to end the Christian practices of the Korean people by demanding everyone bow at the shrine of the Emperor and the sun goddess and in 1937, the Japanese ordered all Christian schools in Pyongyang to participate in this worship of the sun goddess.

This directly impacted Kim’s father, who was a principal at a school called Sunhwa at that time.  Rather than submit to the Japanese order, the Presbyterian church, of which Kim’s father was an elder, ordered their schools to close their doors.

However, when the Japanese did not budge and children were not going to school, other denominations came together and rationalized that bowing to the Emperor and the sun god of Japan was not worship, but being “culturally sensitive.”

When the Christians finally submitted and allowed their children to bow before the Emperor and sun god, the Japanese decided to take it one step further and one year later demanded that all church members bow before the shrine to the Emperor and the sun god before attending church services.

Japan also demanded that a shrine be built in front of every church to accommodate this demand.

There was resistance at first, but soon many Christians continued to rationalize that since the sun goddess was a false god, the practice had no real meaning.

Presbyterians like Kim’s father, were considered to be the last holdouts and refused to bow.

Many foreign missionaries were part of the problem during this time of uncertainty.  Many of the same missionaries who taught the Koreans to throw out their old gods and idols, were now telling them to compromise with the Japanese.

Kim’s father took his family out of Korea and moved to China and Manchuria where Kim grew up.  His father preached in various homes, taking on the role of a foreign missionary!

His father worked with fellow missionary Pang Sa Hyon who accompanied Kim’s family when they moved to a place called Badaogou in Changbai County.  Badaogou was a border village near the River Amnok, just opposite from a Japanese police station where his father could preach the Gospel without the Japanese being able to stop him.

His family became members of the Phophyong chapel which was more of a house church than a traditional church as they had been a part of in Pyongyang.  The chapel building had no spire tipped with a cross but instead was an ordinary tile-roofed house. The only difference that marked it out from other houses was that, on the inside, the whole of the house was a single room without partitions.

Kim’s father would teach and sing songs, leading people in worship by playing on the organ.  When Kim’s father would go and share at other house churches, Kim’s mother would still attend the Phophyong chapel services as well as his uncle Hyong Gwon.  Kim would sometimes take his friend Chol Ju with him to church and lead the believers in worship on the organ as his father had taught him.

Kim’s mother and father both showed him the meaning of Christian love for others.  In accordance with Mathew 25:40-45, Kim’s father often visited prisoners and gave them aid.  Kim’s father also sent him on errands to provide food and clothing for those that had been held in jail for their faith.

Kim witnessed his father sharing his faith with a military police officer named Hong Jong U.  Military police were natural enemies of the Korean Christians because they represented the Japanese rulers, but Kim’s father didn’t treat him harshly, but instead treated him with Christian love and eventually won him over.

One spring day a boy with serious boils on his left leg and neck was carried to Kim’s parents on his uncle’s back from a place called Huchang, Korea.  Kim’s father rushed out to see the boy, treated his ailments, and allowed both the uncle and the boy to live at their home while he recovered.

Every day, Kim’s mother mixed honey, wheat flour and soda and applied it to the boils. He was amazed at how his mother humbly dressed the dirty wounds and never frowned or complained even once.

When the boy recovered, the uncle offered a one yuan note – or about 25 cents.  It was all the money he had.  He had gathered pine needles for weeks and sold them in order to save up that much money.  “This kind of medical fee would normally amount to hundreds of yuan, but please accept this as a token of the thanks of a poor family. I hope you will buy some wine with it,” he said as he offered it and bowed.

“Please don’t bother about the medical fee,” his mother said. “Please forgive me for not feeding the boy as I should,” she said, apologizing.

“Please take this money,” the man begged.  It is all I have.  “Please do not reject it.”

Kim watched his mother take the money and then take it to the market and buy five yards of cotton cloth from which she sat throughout the night and made clothes for the young boy.

When she gave the clothes to the young boy, the uncle was surprised.

“A man dies not because he hasn’t money but because he is mortal. Money changes hands,” she said.  It was the motto she lived by.

She truly served every poor stranger in need and lived out the message of Jesus Christ in her life.

Kim remembered her being a kind and loving mother, always showing mercy to her children.  “When through mischief we got our clothes dirty,” he wrote in his autobiography, “damaged the household utensils or played noisily in the house, grandmother would ask her why she left her children alone without so much as scolding them once.”

Even though his father was a strong Christian, he was often traveling and speaking at home churches in distant areas and did not always get to spend a lot of time with Kim.  It was his mother that he spent most of his time with and showed him the example of what it meant to live a truly sacrificial Christian life.

When his father was put in prison by the Japanese, most likely for his faith, his mother moved back with her family in Mangyongdae.  She was always on her feet and serving her family.  She was the eldest daughter in a family of twelve and during the day she worked in the field and spent her nights washing dishes, laundry, and weaving.

When she had time off, without fail, she faithfully made her way to the Songsan Presbyterian church with Kim in tow.

Kim loved going to Songsan Presbyterian church in those days because they gave him sweets and little notebooks to doodle in, but in the absence of his father, he soon grew tired of attending the church services.

Kim eventually stopped going to church, but he never forgot the Christian example of his mother, eventually writing, “Still now in my dreams I see the image of my mother.”

Even today, Chilgol Church is one of the last Protestant churches allowed in North Korea and was dedicated to Kang Pan-sok, a Presbyterian deaconess and the mother of Kim Il Sung.