[INTERVIEW] 20 Years on North Korea's underground railroad (Part I)

By Rachel Stine

I don't think any article has caused me as much deliberation as this one did. How do you interview an activist couple that helped over 1,000 North Korean refugees escape into free countries?

How do you begin to comb over the lives of people who have been compared to Oskar Schindler, and who started a "Ton a Month" food aid program that probably saved thousands at the peak of North Korea's famine? If you've volunteered with this couple's charity for four years, it gets more complicated. How do you write about that with transparency?

It's not an easy task. Still, I'm going to attempt to do it. The biographies of Tim and Sunmi Peters, who co-founded the Seoul-based NGO Helping Hands Korea in 1990, deserve to be recorded beyond a two-minute news segment.

The following is a personal reflection. It requires pesky backstory that my editors won't like. Its word count soars beyond the recommended limit, which is why I've divided the Peters' story into three segments ― the food aid story, the railroad story, and guesses about the future. If nobody except die-hard North Korea analysts makes it through these articles, that's fine. It's the price I'm willing to pay for emotional honesty.

Tim and Sunmi's work has been covered by major outlets like CNN, Time, and The Christian Science Monitor. These articles were strong, but of course, a traveling reporter will never have the full portrait that a family friend does. (Even if you are the black sheep of the family friend pool ― a Millennial, Bernie Sanders-supporting atheist from New Jersey? Unusual, but Tim and Sunmi never squabble over such issues. They are Christian in the truest sense of the word.)

This is the story of a married couple who receive distress calls from North Korean refugees in the middle of the night. It's about people who have risked detention in China to protect strangers' lives.

These are the people I got to know over tea, every Tuesday, at 7 p.m. in the winding alleys near Samgakji Station.

Tim and Sunmi Peters.

Perhaps it's easiest to start with Sunmi, who has been virtually absent from international media. It's well-known she hates being interviewed. When I proposed this article, she looked at me solemnly, responding with a single word: "No."

I've always been surprised by this, especially considering her incredible precision when it comes to analysis of North Korean affairs. At Helping Hands Korea's weekly "Catacombs" meetings, she usually oversees the preparation of vegetable seeds for transport into North Korea. Although quiet, she interjects political insight when she feels context is missing. When she speaks, everyone listens.

Tim attributes her firmness largely to her upbringing. "You can take the girl out of Jeollabuk-do," he says, "but you can't take the Jeollabuk-do out of the girl."

Sunmi was born in the southwestern province shortly after the Korean War, when it was still common to see anti-communist posters on buses. She remembers radio PSAs encouraging citizens to report spies. Once a month, her school had an air raid drill, complete with students scrambling underneath their desks.

"I used to walk 10 miles to get to my grandparents' house back then," she remembered over her kitchen table. "We used to run past the military boot camp as kids, and hear the gunshots. We would get freaked out, cover our ears, and run."

Here, Tim laughed.

"Well, I mean, it wasn't really dangerous," she clarified, "But you know how kids are. We got freaked out."

Sunmi sees the hypermodern Seoul of 2018 ― with its neon lights and 24-hour Internet cafes ― in stark contrast to the quiet province of her childhood. Perhaps most of all, she misses the night sky.

"I remember back then, in Jeollabuk-do, you could see a lot of stars. But you can't see them anymore. It's all city now." Sunmi pauses over her coffee. "North Korean refugees say they miss the stars, and I do, too. I can relate to them in that way."

Deeply religious, Sunmi became a Christian in her late teens. Perhaps this is what made her such a strong romantic match with the young Tim Peters, who arrived in Korea in May, 1975.

When Tim landed, he was 25. He had been a Christian missionary in the U.S., Argentina, and Venezuela. Korea was the furthest he had ventured from his original home in Michigan. He married Sunmi shortly after meeting her.

Before long, the couple was traveling the Pacific, where they became dedicated "tentmaker missionaries." They traveled to several island nations, and eventually made a more permanent home in Fukuoka, Japan. By 1993, they had five children. One year later, U.S. president Bill Clinton would seriously consider bombing the DPRK in retribution for its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Although Clinton's attack never came, political conditions still aligned so that North Korea would suffer greatly. In the mid-1990s, the Peters first noticed news reports claiming the country was suffering food shortages.

"What we didn't really know at the time," Tim said, "was how severely North Korea was impacted by the fall of the Soviet Union. Patronage from Moscow was over. There were news reports about the famine in the DPRK, but nobody really understood how bad it was."

Sunmi added: "Well, the government knew, but not the people. Nobody outside knew what was going on … not really."

What they're referring to here is the North Korean famine of 1994-1998 ― something defectors and long-term activists struggle to encapsulate in words. Known as the "Arduous March" in North Korea, it's estimated that about 3 million people died in this four-year window.

If you're a North Korea analyst in your twenties, it's virtually impossible to not have peers who are physically stunted because of the Arduous March. This is the dimension of DPRK analysis I feel most uncomfortable in. Military numbers and statistics? Fine, I can swallow my nerves, show up at a TV studio, and (looking horrendous because I don't own any makeup) blather on about Libya's effect on Pyongyang's nuclear policy.

But when you're listening to seminar attendees ask panelists questions about the Arduous March, words become hotter in your brain. Flashes of your friends' disfiguring injuries rattle in your skull. Suddenly, it becomes hard to concentrate on what the Q&A guy is asking. Sometimes, your mind turns mean. "Aren't there enough gruesome documentaries on YouTube about this," you snarl to yourself. "Does everybody have to keep bringing this up?"

Tim and Sunmi field these questions with unfailing grace and composure ― something I aspire to, but will definitely never achieve. My highest form of measured self-expression comes in the form of memes and internet snark.

With infinite patience, Tim and Sunmi explained in detail how their NGO began to mobilize during the famine years. Their Christian work soon became almost exclusively focused on North Korean human rights. South Korea, by Tim's reckoning, had "advanced so far beyond the mid-70s, when you could still feel post-war repercussions in the economy … they had the Olympics in '88, and Korea was fulfilling its role as one of the Asian Tiger economies. As Christian aid workers, we had to move on to the greater need."

In August of 1996, they returned to Korea after three years of Christian volunteer work in Japan, including relief efforts for the Kobe earthquake. They founded the Ton-a-Month Club, which raised $250 each month to buy corn for North Koreans. The program was partially inspired by Romans 12:20, which reads: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink."

Tim and Sunmi stand on a Chinese bridge with North Korea in the background

The Ton-a-Month Club was financed by small fundraisers held in Seoul's major hotels, including The Chosun, The Swiss Grand, and the Hilton. Hilton manager Bernard Brender was a particularly stalwart ally in the long campaign to keep food aid flowing. While the program always hit its $250 a month goal, navigating North Korean bureaucracy proved difficult.

"Nothing was systematic or regular," Tim said. "We did our best to surgically insert aid to reach the vulnerable and not the privileged class in the DPRK. But later on, that became difficult."

The issue was complicated further in 1996 and 1997, when new legislation put their humanitarian work in a legal grey zone.

Helping Hands Korea would need help from an interfaith coalition to make sure it was effectively delivering food to famine victims. In the late 1990s, it partnered with the Korean Red Cross and an organization run by Buddhist monks. The monks, in particular, knew how to work around sanctions and ensure all humanitarian work was legal.

Later, an American journalist used his friendship with Cambodian prince Norodom Sihanouk to convince the DPRK's ruling Kim family to grant NGOs access to Nampo Port. This is how Helping Hands Korea was able to continue its work, even during North Korea's most unstable years.

Looking to meet trustworthy field partners who could collaborate with the Ton-a-Month Club, Tim and Sunmi soon began trawling China's Korean indigenous region, Yenbian, near the North Korea border.

There, the raw impact of the famine was impossible to ignore.

Almost every day, the Peters were confronted by roving North Korean street children, locally known as kotjebbi. The nickname translates to "flowering swallows" and is inspired by their tendency to wander aimlessly, seeking food, opportunity, and a warm place to sleep. Some of them cross the Tumen or Yalu Rivers into China. Others stay in the DPRK. Regardless, kotjebbi are highly vulnerable to exploitation, and in the famine years, many did not survive.

My old college buddy, Joe, wrote what is possibly the best account of a kotjebbi childhood in his autobiography. He was forced to eat out of trash cans, work in a mine, and even watched a police officer arrange brutal fights between orphans as a form of entertainment. It was an impossible life, made worse by constant malnutrition.

Throughout the 1990s, the famine built up in a deadly crescendo. Parents died. Incomes plummeted. And while Tim and Sunmi explored the North Korea border, they often ran into skeletal children looking for food.

At this point in the interview, I noticed Tim's lips stiffened a little bit. When you're talking to a seasoned railroad operative, you can sense those intrusive thoughts flashing in someone's brain ― they sear white-hot and hum so loud it's hard to stay on-topic. But I know his memories are far more intense than mine.

"I was baffled and offended," he said. "These people were coming out gaunt and shrunken. I mean, visibly stunted because of malnutrition. All the big players in the humanitarian world were missing … it was small groups only _ stray Christians, Buddhists, or secular groups. People thought it was politically awkward to get involved … so the big players just sat in the bleachers and watched."

This is how Helping Hands began its underground railroad operations. At the occasional risk of arrest, Tim and Sunmi began providing fundraising and logistical support so North Korean defectors sheltered in China could escape into free countries. In 22 years of operation, and in close partnership with field activists, the NGO has helped well over 1,000 people escape.

Next week, we go underground, and look into the massive activist network that saves lives even today.

You can learn more about Tim and Sunmi's NGO, Helping Hands Korea, at their website, HelpingHandsKorea.org.