- [Dr. Foley] What's it like
for, on a Tuesday afternoon, for an average North Korean Christian? They are walking home and they are going to pass
by one of 40,000 statues or monuments to Kim
Il-Sung or Kim Jong-Il. Now we've got two murals to Kim Jong-Un. They are going to be in
the Wednesday lecture at their workplace in which they receive
the latest information about Kim Jong-Un's wife. They are going to have their
kids come home from school and their kids have all the latest stories and they are required
to memorize 100 stories of the life of Kim Il-Sung; even up to the PhD level
in nuclear science, right? If you are a North
Korean rocket scientist, 1/3 of your PhD work will be in the ideology of the Kim family. (compelling dramatic music) - [Announcer] Jesus never
promised his followers an easy path. In fact, he told his disciples
the world would hate them. He sent them out as sheep among wolves. Jesus' words came true in
the life of the apostles and are still coming true today in the lives of his
followers around the world. Join host Todd Nettleton as we hear their inspiring stories and learn how we can help right now on The Voice of the Martyrs Radio network. - [Todd] Welcome again to The
Voice of the Martyrs Radio. My name is Todd Nettleton. We are connected across
many miles of internet cable with Dr. Eric Foley. He is the CEO of VOM
Korea, based in Seoul, our sister-mission office in Seoul, Korea. Let's start, Eric, with
some North Korea news, and I know you find North Korea, as I do, endlessly fascinating. In fact, I recall one of
our previous conversations. I called North Korea "amazing,"
I think was the word I used, and a listener wrote in and said, "How can you compliment North Korea?" And I said, "I wasn't complimenting them; it's amazing; it just raises amazement." Recently in the news, Kim Jong-Un has been photographed
with his young daughter. There are people who read
those tea leaves who say, "Oh, they are revealing that this daughter will be the next generation
of the Kim family." What do you hear about North Korea? Are there any changes, any
changes on the horizon, and especially for us
at Voice of the Martyrs; is there anything on the
horizon that would affect how our Christian brothers and sisters in North Korea are treated? - [Dr. Foley] If you look back a year ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, almost every prediction about North Korea has been absolutely dead wrong. What we can take from the appearance of Kim Jong-Un's daughter, it relates to Kim Jong-Un's portrayal. Kim Jong-Un is revered and so now we are seeing portraits and so we are seeing
more about his family. You have the portrayal of not
only Kim Jong-Un but his wife and his daughter as being revered
personages in North Korea. So I think what we have
to say is that North Korea has had continuous leadership
from the same family and that that leadership has not deviated from the same basic principles. Those basic principles
include the recognition that Christianity is an existential threat to the North Korean state, and there is no sign that that will change regardless of who the leader is. - [Todd] It's interesting to me that they are portraying Kim Jong-Un as sort of a father figure now. - [Dr. Foley] Yes, absolutely. - [Todd] The thing it reminds me of as we worked on the book about
the church in North Korea, went through lots of propaganda paintings and I will never forget
one of Kim Il-Sung, the founder of North Korea, kneeling in the snow to
tie a soldier's boot. - [Dr. Foley] Yeah, yeah. - [Todd] Look at... he is
the servant of the people; he is a father figure for all of us. He kneels down and ties
our boots in the snow. And it seems like they
are kind of presenting that same fatherly, paternal
picture now of Kim Jong-Un, maybe using some of those
pages out of the playbook from Kim Il-Sung. - [Dr. Foley] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think, Todd, people
may have a misconception that when Kim Jong-Un became
the leader of North Korea that he entered the
same level of reverence and the same pantheon as his
father and his grandfather. That was not true. For the first time on
Kim Jong-Un's birthday this past year, kids received candies and the elite families in
the North Korean hierarchy received these very lavish
packages of different meats and rare food items and things like that. Kim Jong-Un is entering
a new period of his rule where he is well beyond
where his grandfather was at that same age in terms
of the level of reverence that he receives from North Korean people. Appearing in murals, being portrayed as a father of the people, receiving the titles that he has; these are things that his
father and grandfather did not have; there is no parallel for it. There's loyalty tests, there is special education seminars; that's what's happening in North Korea and that always impacts Christians because for Christians
the main issue they face is the issue of the first commandment which is what does it mean to
have no other god before God? And so that's the issue
that is being forced. North Korean Christians have
to deal with it every day, every time there is a new mural, every time that there is
a new speech to study, every time that there's new
history to memorize, you know. How do we deal with
functioning in the society without having to defect from the country? How can we say and be faithful
Christian witnesses here? - [Todd] So how does someone follow Christ in the midst of all of this? What does it look like to be a Christian on a Tuesday in North Korea? - [Dr. Foley] What I think
is the most remarkable thing as you ask the question where is the church growing faster, North Korea or South Korea? I think people in the West are, "Ah, it's got to be South Korea; they have 10 of the 11
largest churches in the world, they send out more missionaries than any other country but the US." But the South Korean church
has been in numeric decline just like the Western church since 1989; but at this time, the North
Korean church continues to grow and by all objective estimates, Christianity continues to spread in a country where Bibles are illegal, where every church building was seized, where even the slightest hint of evidence of Christian behavior
will get you executed. How does that happen; and
the answer can only be God. So, it also happens because North Koreans are not hunkered down
waiting for a regime change; they just pray for their leader
just like the Bible says, and they pray that he will
come to know the Lord. What's it like for like
a Tuesday afternoon for an average North Korean Christian? Well, they are walking home and they are going to
pass by one of 40,000, that's an actual number, 40,000 statues or monuments
to Kim Il-Sung or Kim Jong-Il, now he's got two murals to Kim Jong-Un. So they are going to pass by those and in every case they have to
make some show of reverence. They are going to be in
the Wednesday lecture at their workplace in which they receive
the latest information about Kim Jong-Un's wife and why she should be
revered at the same level as Kim Il-Sung's husband. They are going to have their
kids come home from school and your kids have all the latest stories and are required to memorize 100 stories of the life of Kim Il-Sung, even up to the PhD level
in nuclear science, right? If you are a North
Korean rocket scientist, 1/3 of your PhD work
will be in the ideology of the Kim family. That's life in North Korea. So North Koreans will walk
along the train tracks, there is a hymnal of songs
of praise to Kim Il-Sung and they'll take those songs and they'll belt out verse
one that everybody knows but along the train tracks you have a much better view
of who is in front of you, who is behind you and what's on the sides. So when they get to
verse two and verse three they get to sing the Christian lyrics, and they do at the top of their lungs. When they walk through the
marketplace, they pray; they don't sneak into a corner to pray. They could be praying
right in front of you as a North Korean state security agent and you wouldn't know they were praying because they would say like, for example, "Aren't we so fortunate
that the dear leader who is watching over us
all cares so much for us? That for Todd's grandson,
we can be confident that the sniffles that
he woke up this morning that the dear leader knows and cares about that and
will take care of that." That wasn't a praise to Kim
Jong-Un; that was a prayer. - [Todd] That it's kind of in code. - [Dr. Foley] Yes, absolutely. - [Todd] And if you are a border guard and you heard them saying, you wouldn't think anything about it. - [Dr. Foley] Absolutely. - [Todd] But what they are
saying is talking to the Lord. - [Dr. Foley] So I guess
what I want to emphasize is North Korean Christians
are not hunkered down, hiding out, sneaking out in forests; they are carrying on their everyday lives and people are simply not aware. That's what makes them so, so powerful, in my opinion, in the Lord, because they are not hiding
their lamp under a bushel. So people say, "Oh yes, do they tithe?" And I say absolutely. How do you tithe? Well, in the marketplace, you
accidentally overpay vendors who are badly in need, because they have sick children and in constant issues of hunger. So you tithe by overpaying
in ways to cause people to think that you are careless or foolish. A very common aspect of
North Korean Christian life is they understand that they
will likely end their life in a concentration camp, so they prepare for faithful witness in a concentration camp. So their Christian life is different from beginning to end than ours. - [Todd] We are talking this week on Voice of the Martyrs
Radio with Dr. Eric Foley. He is the CEO of VOM Korea,
our sister office in Seoul. One of the things that you at VOM Korea do is radio broadcasts into North Korea, gospel radio broadcasts, people sharing their testimonies, people reading the Scriptures. I feel like I should congratulate you; recently the North Korean government has worked very hard to
jam those radio broadcasts, so apparently they are successful; apparently they are effective, because the North Korean government is worried enough about it. They wouldn't waste
resources jamming broadcasts they didn't worry about. - [Dr. Foley] So we do
five radio broadcasts a day and our broadcast is Bible, right? It's reading the Bible and it is also the preaching by current, modern-day North Korean Christians of the sermons of the
early Korean Christians. So, we started doing this
broadcast in 2005, 2006, sorry. The reason why we started was because North Korean
Christians told us, they said there are two things
that they wanted us to do. One was balloons and the other
was the radio broadcasts. And so with the radio what
they were saying is yes, there was Christian radio that was being broadcast into North Korea but it was done from
a South Korean mindset and a South Korean dialect, and the dialects are about 40% different. And what we found was
the best way to reflect that was simply through the sermons of the
early Korean Christians. We started doing this radio broadcast and the interesting thing was immediately it attracted the jamming of
the North Korean government. But we have increased the
number of broadcasts we do. We used to do one, and now we do five! We used to do them in the evening, now we do them throughout the daytime. You know, even now when
listeners hear this broadcast I would say "Hey,
please, stop for a moment and pray for the broadcasts," because one will be happening
either at that moment or soon. It's a fight every night and every day. And so we have to really
rely on the power of prayer. So what we like to say
is pray that God jams the jamming efforts of the
North Korean government. - [Todd] We are talking this week on Voice of the Martyrs
Radio with Dr. Eric Foley. He is the author of a book called "These Are the Generations." We will give you a link
to get a copy of that when you come and visit
us at vomradio.net. Talk a little bit about the balloons and what's happening today, because I know the same level
of technological expertise you are bringing to the radio broadcasts you are also bringing that to
the balloon launches as well. Talk about how that works and what's happening
with getting God's Word attached to balloons floating
over into the Hermit Kingdom. - [Dr. Foley] Well, you know, I think it's really interesting
on the news, Americans, especially now, are talking a lot about balloons, aren't they? Even today around the world people could not imagine the number, literally in the tens
of thousands of balloons that are launched every day for all kinds of scientific
purposes, weather, everything like that. Balloons are great, balloons are high tech and balloons are not antiquated
in any way, shape or form. The balloons that we are talking about are just what you think of
as ordinary weather balloons and they're all different kinds of sizes, but they are environmentally
friendly in that they pop and there is no trace left of them because they are made of latex
and they are biodegradable. You can attach GPS
devices to them to track precisely where they go. So if you were to ask the
question what accounts for the number of people in North Korea seeing a Bible in their own eyes, jumping from basically zero
to almost 8% in 20 years, the answer is balloons delivering about 40 to 50,000 Bibles
a year into North Korea in a variety of forms,
printed and electronic. You will notice that I
am using some ambiguity in my verb tenses. As you know, and it is true
of Voice of the Martyrs all over the world, but we don't comment on our
current field operations of what we are or are not doing and there is very good reason for that. Because in March 2021, a law
was passed in South Korea that criminalizes not only
the launching of balloons but the movement of
anything across the border, even by the internet. So this is not just an anti-balloon law, this is a, if you are moving
north across the border with information even by internet, the only thing that is not
included in that is radio, praise God, but even at that
point in 2021 they said, "Yeah, we are looking at radio to determine how best
to deal with that, too." So we can't say officially what we are or are not doing because
it is now criminal to bring a Bible into North Korea from any country using any medium. - [Todd] And it's criminal in South Korea, not under Kim Jong-Un's government, under the South Korean
government, it's criminal. - [Dr. Foley] Of course, I
was arrested in June 2020 and I was charged with three counts related to balloon launching. At that time, that was before
the balloon law was passed so they focused on charges
like the transport of helium and even charges related
to public advertising. I went through a series of
interrogations with Interpol, 12-hour days and the constant, you know, I kept thinking
every night I would come home and, of course, I certainly
don't want to compare it to what our brothers
and sisters experience in other countries. I
don't want to compare that, but what I can tell you is for myself I would stand there in the shower and I would have my head
against the tiles of the shower and I would say, "What is going on?" And after the first interrogation session, and they come with these
huge stacks of documents, photos of me, surveillance photos, receipts of things from
my private receipt; everything that you can imagine. And they are asking questions
about they are exploring whether I am a political operative. The guy that was running
for president said that I was a spy and he said that I was
doing this for publicity and I was doing it for money. Of course it's really funny, because the fact I'm a missionary, I have to raise my own support. I don't get any money
from balloons, right? So exploring all these crazy things and so that night I was in the shower, my head against the wall,
and I said, "Is it worth it?" And immediately I said, "Lord, if you would just
let me launch one more, then I would be grateful. That's it, just one more." So at a later time when we are together, I can tell you how that happened. We have to leave it in this
great cloud of obscurity because I can say that
Voice of the Martyrs continues to be bringing
Bibles into North Korea through a variety of means. I simply can't say what
they are at this point. But what I can say is that
what I learned in that moment was not about, it wasn't any lesson about persecution or suffering or anything. What I learned was the
value of the Word of God. And so I think we have
to be really careful that we don't glorify
suffering for suffering's sake or persecution for persecution's sake. Our focus is on faithful witness; that has always been true
in Voice of the Martyrs. We are not Voice of Persecution. We share stories of persecution, but they are stories about persecution in response to faithful witness, faithful witness to the Word of God and the power of Christ
to reveal himself fully through that Word and that Word alone. And so what I realized that that was a turning point in my life because I realized that
getting God's Word anywhere, even a single copy of it, is worth whatever price you have to pay. That is the basic lesson
that Pastor Wurmbrand lived, taught and embedded in
Voice of the Martyrs. And so that still happens
today around the world, certainly still happens for us. So even though I couch it all
in a great deal of obscurity, what I can say with
confidence is that today it is illegal for any country to bring a Bible into North Korea. Today, Voice of the Martyrs
continues to find ways to get Bibles into North Korea. - [Todd] Dr. Foley, as we finish up, we always like to leave
listeners with ways to pray. We've talked about the radio broadcasts and the challenge of
getting around the jammers or jamming the jammers. We've talked about
delivery of the Scriptures into North Korea, some of the challenges; certainly those are things that we can have our listeners pray for. Are there other specific things that we can pray for the
ministry of VOM Korea, for the gospel work inside North Korea? Just kind of equip us to pray
this week for this ministry. - [Dr. Foley] North
Korea, for the 20 years that we have been involved,
it's never a steady state. It's never a static situation. There's always new challenges emerging. So I think the popular
picture, that's wrong, it's hard to imagine how things, why would things get worse,
how could they get worse? They have always been as
bad as they have ever been, so when you say it's worse,
aren't you just exaggerating? What I would say is no. When you look at the things that are true, which is again, not
truckloads of Bibles coming in at the bottom of rice bags, not people sneaking out to forests in
the middle of the night. What's true is individuals, ones and twos, moving Bibles by ones and
twos, and so we talk about, you know, what's amazing is that not only... things are getting
much harder in this work. Again, a big reason why
is the criminalization of this kind of activity in South Korea. So now, why is it harder? Because in the area where we were standing now becomes criminalized, right? So that's a new challenge. In addition to that, we were facing challenges like North Korea's increase in technology, its ability to intercept
cell phone signals. We have always said the frontline
in North Korean ministry is not the border between
China and North Korea; it is here in South Korea where more than 60% of
North Korean defectors are in regular monthly
contact with their relatives. So when North Korea improves exponentially its ability to more quickly and accurately detect cell phone signals, that impacts our ability to share the gospel with their relatives and North Korean defectors
still inside North Korea. So new challenges, these
are constantly changing. So it is not about saying, oh, it was bad before, but it's worse now. What I am saying is the
level of challenge requires, every time a new challenge
requires a new response. We have to step up our game, and fortunately God has
continued to do that. It's not about human creativity. God has continued to open the
door, new tools, new people, and so we always say
we have the next man up off the bench attitude. Because in North Korea people
are always being martyred; that is a fact of Christian life. And so it's a new generation of believers having to learn what the
last generation had hard won, but the teaching begins from zero. So, yes, it's a new set of challenges. And so people should never
pray as though they say, well, yeah, not a lot's changed. Everything is changing every day. Who's in charge of every area is changing because people are being
martyred every day. The technology to jam is improving, the technology to detect cell
phone signals is improving; criminalization of
activity in South Korea. You look at it on a human
level, you tear your hair out and say how is it possible, and yet in the midst of that God doubled the number of
Bibles each year during COVID and made that a center
of Christian activity. So it's happening, and it
happens because people pray. So don't pray for imaginary,
romantic pictures. Listen to this broadcast;
listen to it again. I am not trying to sell the book "These Are the Generations,"
but read the book because it will help you
to figure out how to pray, definitely The Voice of
the Martyrs' newsletter. We are constantly supplying information that Voice of the Martyrs
publishes on the website, social media, newsletter can
help you pray knowledgeably. But I just listed off
some new technologies and what I would say is
it's not about technology, it's about people. It's about brand-new Christians being trained to be Christian and carrying on the legacy
of what they received before. Pray for all of these
new Christians every day. Pray for the people who
today will receive Bibles, audio Bibles in work camps, whether that be in Russia or
in China or Southeast Asia or even in Eastern Europe
or the Middle East. Pray for new Christians growing up to be the North Korean
underground church of today, because it has to
constantly be replenished. Even though the church is
growing faster in North Korea than South Korea, it takes a lot of
Christians dying every month for that growth to continue. So pray. Pray for this new generation of believers. Like I say, don't pray
about the technology, don't about leaders, changing
leadership in a country; pray that Kim Jong-Un
will come to know Christ. That's what the North
Korean Christians pray. But pray mainly for this
new generation of believers that is being raised up daily and that all they know is the Word of God and that is sufficient
to carry on the work of the most persecuted
church in the world. - [Todd] Amen! I love every
chance we get to chat. I love it especially when we get to record and share these conversations
with our listeners. Dr. Eric Foley, again, the CEO
of VOM Korea, based in Seoul, the author of a book called
"These Are the Generations." We will give you a link to order a copy when you visit us at vomradio.net. Pastor Foley, thank you so much for being our guest this week
on Voice of the Martyrs Radio; thank you for your work, literally at great personal
risk, the work that you do; we appreciate it, and thanks
for sharing this week with us. - [Dr. Foley] Any time.
It's always worth it. It's always worth it and thank you for what you do getting good, accurate
information out to people. That is a real ministry
and I hope the listeners are praying for you in that work, too. - [Todd] Well, I know that some are. I do get the emails from people that say, "Hey, we are praying for you,"
and I so appreciate that. I know you appreciate the people that lift up our work in prayer, as well. Until next time, Dr. Foley; we will try not to wait for
two or three years this time. We will try to get you
back sooner than that, but thank you again for being our guest. - [Dr. Foley] Always a pleasure, Todd. Thank you and God bless you. - [Todd] You have been listening to The Voice of the Martyrs Radio. As always, if you just
happen to be joining us at this point, go to vomradio.net, find this episode of the broadcast or find VOM Radio wherever
you listen to podcasts. And I hope you will this week pray especially for our
brothers and sisters living in North Korea as we have talked about so
many ways to pray for them, so many needs that they have, and pray that the gospel
will continue to advance. I think about 8% of the
people having seen a Bible; let's pray that a year
from now that's 15% or 12% or 50%. God can do amazing
things, so I encourage you to pray for North Korea this week and I encourage you to
join us again next week to hear more about what God
is doing around the world, right here on The Voice of
the Martyrs Radio network.
