Today I attended a screening of the documentary "Camp 14: Total Control Zone," the story of Shin Dong-hyuk's life growing up in a North Korean prison camp, his unlikely escape, and his ultimate defection to and life in South Korea. (Watch it on youtube here!) If you've read the book Escape from Camp 14, the details of the story won't surprise you. But seeing his face as he tells it--through an interview that seems at times painfully persistent, with long pauses of pregnant silence, uncomfortable shifting, and unwanted remembering--is so much more personal than reading the book. I found myself nodding my head as if he were actually talking to me. In fact, seeing him struggle through the interview made me feel a bit guilty as a "consumer" of his story, someone who reads or hears a story, feels an emotional response for a few days or weeks, and then puts it on the shelf and starts a new story--like food going in and out of my digestive tract without my body absorbing the nutrients. To do such an interview, I'm sure his intention, as well as the intentions of the other two men interviewed--a former policeman and a guard at a prison camp--was not to elicit isolated cases of sympathy or compassion, but to educate, prepare, and lead us to work together for social change and advocacy. However, watching the interviews, my heart was stirred not so much for the people in North Korea, dire as their circumstances are, but for the defectors who, while living in political and physical freedom, are still in spiritual and psychological bondage.
I can't tell you the burden I felt as I watched Shin Dong-hyuk and the other two men reflect on their roles as victim and offender and sometimes what seemed to be a grey area in-between. One man mentions his fear of reunification, of someday running into the people he tortured. He didn't want to do the interview, but he knew if he didn't, others would. He says he'll never talk about it again after the interview's done. The other man seems more settled down in a way, but he lives with the burden of someday having to tell his young son the truth about his past. Both men seem anxious and insecure, laughing uneasily, sitting uncomfortably, visibly troubled and, I would add, tethered to their past like prisoners bound by ball-and-chain. Shin Dong-hyuk was in no better a condition, from my perspective. The past still haunts him in nightmares and daydreams, and you can see in his eyes a cloud of gloom hanging over him. He is still filled with shame, confusion, and, he says himself, anger. But what burdened me most was the three men's ignorance of truth, sweet truth, as outlined by God in the Bible: of atonement, salvation, and resurrection in Jesus.
Toward the end of the movie, Shin Dong-hyuk says that when reunification happens, he wants to be the first to move back to North Korea. He wants to live in the camp, in the little house where he was born, grow a garden, and live off the fruits of the ground. I was rather astonished. Move back to the camp? To the place of unspeakable pain and suffering? He says that while his body lives in South Korea, his mind is in the camp. Asked what he misses about the camp, he says, "I miss the innocence of my heart. . . I miss the purity of my heart."
I couldn't help but pray for him as I watched the interview. If I could speak to him--to any of the three men, actually--this is what I'd want to say...
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Oh, Precious Soul, so loved, so wounded,
That you would know how to regain that innocence and purity which you seek. That you would know the truth, and the truth would set you free! The truth is, you did lose your innocence, but you lost it before you were born. You lost it when Adam sinned. Through him, we all became corrupt (Rom.10:23). Your sinfulness is in your very nature. You're right that you can't find your innocence in South Korea. But you can't find it in North Korea, either. You can't find your innocence in the camp, nor in the little house where you were born, nor in a garden plot up to your elbows in vegetables. But don't be dismayed, Precious Soul--there is Good News for you! You can find all you need in Jesus. "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive" (1 Cor. 15:22). In Him, there is love, forgiveness, mercy, healing, and eternal, abundant, resurrection life. While you were still a sinner, Christ died for you (Romans 5:8), paying the price for all of your sin--past, present, and future. When He died, atonement was made for your sin, that you might be reconciled to God through Christ (Romans 8:10-11). For the promise stands: "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). Through faith, your "old self"--your sinful nature--is crucified with Christ (Gal.2:20). "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new" (2 Cor. 5:17). There is no doing--only believing and receiving what Christ has done for you (John 6:29, Eph. 2:8-9). In your old man, regardless of your day to day "success" or "failure" (experience), positionally you are a sinner. In your new man, regardless of your day to day "success" or "failure" (again, experience), positionally you are seated at the right hand of God, for your new life is hidden in Christ (Col. 3:1-3). That purity which you seek? I believe that desire is from God. And the frustration and despair that grip you? Is God not using them to draw you toward Him, to lead you to the end of yourself, that you might finally seize your striving and collapse into His nail-pierced hands, which are your healing (Isa. 53:5)? Precious Soul, Christ died for you, that you might have life. Hear what he says: "The thief [Satan] does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). Let Satan steal no more. By faith in Jesus Christ, receive God's gift of salvation and eternal life today (John 3:16). And let it be known that God loves you! For it says, "In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitation for our sins" (1 John 4:9-10)
"Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Cor. 5:20-21)
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