In efforts to provide North Korean defectors with access to God’s word in a way that is understandable to them, VOMK will often provide copies of its NK Bibles to North Korean defectors free of charge. Sometimes, North Korean ministry organizations or local churches ministering to North Korean defectors will ask us for NK Bibles to distribute to NK defectors. 

But we have had some unfavorable experiences with distributing this way, including Bibles that were never actually given to NK defectors like promised.

Being confronted with these issues, we decided to make some firmer stipulations for the way that we distribute to NK defectors through organizations or churches. This is to make sure that the NK Bibles are distributed and use for their real purpose: 

1 On occasion, VOMK may provide free copies of its NK Bibles to leaders of existing NK ministries who are active in discipling NKs. “Leaders” means that we don’t provide free NK Bibles to people who want to do personal outreach to NKs or to give a Bible to their NK friend, etc. We only give to people who are serving in official leadership positions, either at their church’s NK congregation or as a missionary appointed to serve NKs or as a leader at a Christian NGO. “Existing NK ministries” means that we don’t provide free Bibles to people who are interested in starting an NK ministry, either at their church or as a missionary or at an NGO, nor do we provide Bibles to organizations interested in reaching out to NKs through special events, nor to NK-related organizations whose work is not primarily discipleship. For example, we would not provide free Bibles to a Christian ministry that teaches NK defectors how to use computers, or to leaders of a group doing a political rally or New Year’s party that want NK defectors to attend and thus they create a gift bag for them and want to put our Bible in it as a “free gift”.

2 We only consider requests from leaders of NK ministries who already have an ongoing Christian discipleship relationship with NKs and who have a plan to use the NK Bible as part of that discipleship relationship. So, if a church just wants to give out Bibles as gifts to NKs, they should purchase the Bibles from us. When the Bible is given, it should be made clear that it was provided as a gift from VOM Korea. In other words, a church or ministry should not claim or imply that the Bible is a free gift from their church or ministry. It should be stated that the Bible is provided free of charge by VOM Korea.

3 We don’t need the contact information of NK recipients. However, (1) NK recipients should be given our contact information in case they want to reach out to us. (2) The ministry should provide verification that all the Bibles were given out shortly after they were received. A photo is an acceptable form of verification. In this way, it is not possible for churches to receive Bibles from us only to store them for future use. They should only receive what they can give at the present time.

4 The organization requesting the Bibles should produce a basic statement about how the Bibles will be used in ongoing discipleship ministry. We give out free Bibles when a qualified group (as according to the above) gives us a qualifying plan for how they intend to use the Bibles in an ongoing discipleship process. So if a church just wants to give out a New Year’s gift to NKs, they should buy the Bibles from VOMK and then give them as an actual gift from the church; we should not give them free Bibles for this purpose. We provide Bibles as tools to existing NK ministries doing discipleship. We do not provide Bibles so that churches or ministries can give them as special gifts, or store them and use them later.

We consider NK Bibles as genuine discipleship tools and not souvenirs. We understand that some such organizations and churches will view our stipulations as strict or rigid. But we tell them that Christians around the world have donated to provide these Bibles to North Korean defectors for discipleship and we want to make sure that is what happens.