Lessons from a North Korean defector

‘The key to staying alive is closing your mind. Because if you think, it will eventually leak out of your mouth, and our words will destroy us!’

This chilling survival lesson was taught to Justin Seo by his late father in North Korea, a place where silence and obedience are the keys to staying alive and out of the prison camps.

I had the privilege of interviewing Justin recently for my podcast, Faith under fireand my burden for North Korea – a huge carceral state – was reignited. After decades of studying the country and hearing countless testimonies from defectors, I was once again struck by the plight of millions of people living in a brutal dictatorship that is incomprehensible to most Westerners.

In North Korea, the soul’s desire for freedom is crushed every time. The country, ruled by the Kim family for three generations, has become one of the most closed and oppressive regimes in the world. To survive in such a place, where thinking is dangerous and speaking can mean death, means living an existence that most of us cannot even fathom.

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North Korea is not just an authoritarian state. It’s a gigantic gulag. The country does not operate in the interests of its people, but for the security and enrichment of the Kim family and a select elite. The rest of the population – millions of ordinary citizens – live like slaves in this grotesque political theater, where the government controls everything, even the thoughts of its people.

This is not hyperbole. Justin told me, “The moment you think something is wrong with the government is the moment your life is in danger.”

One misstep and you spend the rest of your life in a prison camp, some of which are the size of Washington DC, vast open-air hells where political prisoners are worked to death, starved or summarily executed.

It is difficult for us in the West to grasp the reality of such a place. In North Korea, multiple generations of families are disappearing into prison camps and erased from history because of the thoughtcrime of one individual.

What makes this all the more tragic is that before the rise of the Kim dynasty, Korea was a country alive with faith and hope. In the early 20th century, Pyongyang was known as the ‘Jerusalem of the East’ due to the incredibly rapid growth of Christianity.

Thousands of churches dot the landscape, and the Bible was a source of spiritual and intellectual nourishment for many Koreans. But when the Kims took power, they tried to erase that legacy.

Based on my own research, I believe that the Kim regime has been responsible for the deaths of as many as a million Christians, either through executions or by slowly starving them in concentration camps.

A perverse mirror of Christianity

Because humans are intrinsically religious beings, the North Korean state has created a religious system that reflects the Christian faith, making the Kims not only rulers but also deities.

In Christianity there is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In North Korea there is the Great Leader (Kim Il-sung), the Best Leader (Kim Jong-il) and the current ruler, Kim Jong-un. Weekly gatherings resemble church services, where citizens are required to sing songs in praise of the state and its leaders – hymns for their so-called “kingdom of heaven.” There is also a form of confession, in which citizens must admit their shortcomings, not to God, but to the state. And just like the Bible, North Korea has its sacred text: the Good ideaa set of teachings that dictate every aspect of life and demand total loyalty to the regime.

The emperor’s clothes

If you live in North Korea today, you are living the twisted fable of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Everyone is forced to pretend that the nation is a paradise, a utopia, led by the messianic figure – Kim Jong-un. And yet, as Justin told me, “In my town, everyone knew it was a lie. We all knew it, but we couldn’t talk about it openly. We didn’t even dare to let ourselves think it, for fear that we would make a mistake and say something out loud.”

Escape

Eventually, Justin escaped North Korea and made it to the United States. Upon arrival, he was naturally amazed at the wealth of our nation. I asked him for his reaction to going into a Walmart, but he said it didn’t take a Walmart to overwhelm him. He spent the entire day in a simple Dollar Store and found it mind-boggling to examine almost all the items in the store one by one.

The wealth of the US was astonishing, but something much more subtle affected him when he arrived here. It was the freedom he experienced. “The ability to think, speak and act based on what I thought – it was the most beautiful thing I have ever experienced,” he said.

Freedom, which we take for granted, was a revelation for Justin, a moment of pure intoxication. For the first time in his life he could open his mouth and speak without fear of consequences.

The fragility of freedom

As we reflect on Justin’s story, it’s impossible not to see the larger lesson it teaches us about freedom: how fragile, precious, and rare freedom really is. If we look at all of history, we see that almost all people have lived under political systems in which power and wealth were concentrated in the hands of a king, dictator, or oligarchy, while the masses lived as serfs or slaves.

Today, this is still the reality for billions around the world, and in every country there are forces waiting to destroy freedom and concentrate power in the hands of a select few.

If you need a reminder of what lurks in the shadows of all political systems, look no further than China, Russia, Turkey or the narco-state of Mexico. The method of tyrants is always the same: leaders come waving reform flags, denouncing the establishment, promising utopia, or offering security at the expense of freedom.

Once they come to power, they use the organs of state to attack and imprison their political enemies. They control the press and use propaganda to control the masses, who – always unaware of their own danger – act as willing accomplices to their own slavery.

This is why democracy is such a rare and fragile flower. It requires constant vigilance, and we must never become complacent. The Founding Fathers understood this well. They warned that freedom must be defended and cherished and never taken for granted.

Justin’s father told him, “Don’t think,” because thinking could get him killed. But as Westerners, we need to remind ourselves of another lesson: freedom is like oxygen. We only notice it when someone else’s fingers are around our throat.

The coming anniversary

This truth also holds the key to the ultimate downfall of the North Korean regime.

Systems like the one Kim Jong-un oversees are incredibly vulnerable. They are held together only by bullets, knives and rope because they are in direct opposition to the human spirit’s unquenchable desire for freedom.

For now, bullets, knives and ropes hold the North Korean people captive. But freedom comes. It may come next year, or it may come in 10 or 20 years, but it will come.

Because while we may take freedom for granted, millions of people around the world will tell you that freedom is like oxygen – and you can’t live without it for long.