Neighbors

I watched a documentary today about North Korean Refugees who have escaped to China and are in hiding there. They have to stay hidden because if they're found they'll be sent back to North Korea. I believe the statistic was that some 70-90% of women who escape to China are sold into the sex trafficking industry there, or are sold as wives to Chinese men. Their main goal is to escape up to Mongolia or back down to South Korea, while even others have America set as their final goal. One boy had swam across a huge river separating North Korea and China, and left his family behind. He couldn't tell them he was leaving for fear that they wouldn't let him attempt to escape because of the dangers, and when he reminisced about them he talked about how the government had so much control over everything the people did that they never had enough to eat. One meal a day maybe? Just corn? He explained that the way his parents showed him love was by giving him one extra spoonful of porridge because that's all they had to give. But it showed this same boy during downtime and his smile. It showed plenty of refugees, their faces blurred out for their own protection, and even through the blur you could see the biggest most free smiles I've seen.

I was struck by the fact that complete oppression and labor camps still exist, that many people in North Korea don't know that the world outside their government is different, that real adventures and heroes still exist, that "white man" does not have to be the hero, that freedom exists in the soul no matter how starved and beaten a person may be.

People may say that you can't care about someone for real without a relationship, but I really believe I care for these people. It's not about knowing someone personally, it's about knowing that the stranger has the qualities and the worthiness of your best friends and seeing everything you love about the human beings you adore in that stranger. I don't think it's unrealistic for Jesus to tell us to love everyone, because once you've known enough people and loved enough people you see the potential in the stranger. You know the stranger has something to love, and before you know them, you love them: you know there's something to know. It's only when you've looked into yourself and hated what you've seen, but discovered those things that make you worthy of love, that you can look at a stranger and already know why they deserve to be loved.

The documentary I watched was called "Hiding" and was presented by the nomads of LiNK. http://www.linkglobal.org/

4/5/11