Defector helps N. Korea residents seek unification

By Park Jin-hai

Ju Gyung-bae, 47, North Korean defector and former co-host of FEBC Korea’s radio show “Missing Home Away from Home,” says radio has been his only window to the outside world.

Raised to believe that Kim Jong-il was the supreme leader and North Korea is the center of the universe, Ju said that what he heard from a small illegally-assembled radio used to listen to outside channels was an electrifying experience.

“When I heard in my teens the unfamiliar soft tone of the Korean language on the radio, I realized that half of Koreans are in a separated country. It was an electrifying and eye-opening realization,” he said.

Since his elite father was sent to a notorious political prison camp when he was nine, he had been ostracized from the rest of the society, stripped of all hope, including the right to do the mandatory 10-year military duty, which North Koreans perceive as the ultimate honor for the country.

With the craving for something to fill the emptiness and helplessness, he spent 8,100 won, the price equivalent to feed a whole family for more than half a year a decade ago, to pay for the radio. “When the day darkened, all of my family under the blanket listened to the voice of freedom.” Listening to South Korean radio is regarded a felony and if caught, people have to serve years in labor camps. Nonetheless, it didn’t discourage Ju’s search for truth.

After three failed attempts to defect to South Korea, he finally made it and became a South Korean citizen in 2008. But his life in the South has not been easy, he says.

“The moment I clinched the resident registration card and found home here finally, ironically, I started to have nightmares,” he said. “Every night I had to suffer the guilt that I am alone living in a world of wealth here, while so many friends and neighbors in the North have died from hunger. In the North, no matter how desperate the situation was I never thought of killing myself, but here for the first time, I just wanted to die.”

What made him rise again was his faith, he says. A born-again Christian missionary, he hosted the FEBC Korea’s missionary radio show to air the gospel to the hope-depleted North Koreans between 2011 and 2013. He wanted to give them hope and solace like he received a decade ago from the radio.

He is also leading a movement called the “N.K. Diaspora” under the FRBC Korea, where he tries to help poverty-stricken North Koreans financially to facilitate change in the North from inside.

“One of the biggest mistakes people here make is believing that the North is a closed country. It is already an open country,” he said. “With 30,000 North Korean defectors living here, they are communicating with their families and relatives in the North on a daily basis through smart phones and receive updated news.”

It only takes ten minutes to send money to people in Pyongyang now. As of 2012, the amount of money transferred from the South by defectors to the North annually reached 15 billion won, according to Ju.

“I believe unification cannot be earned by a few politicians or policies. It should come from an uprising from inside,” he said.

“About 100,000 won is enough to feed a four-member family for a month. By helping those starving people financially as well as by delivering a message of hope, more people will be disillusioned and crave for freedom. This could ultimately bring down the barbed wire fences separating the two Koreas.”