Late last year, the Lord allowed us to meet two North Koreans who received training from Pastor Han – our partner who was martyred in 2016 in Changbai, China. We are so thankful that the Lord continues to bring North Koreans across our path who were discipled by Pastor Han more than 8 years ago! We estimate that Pastor Han shared his faith with at least 1,000 North Koreans before his death. Pastor Han’s story was featured in this 2019 IDOP video we produced – https://youtu.be/lu9ejPlKdF4?si=qWuZdv_j_lunIqT5.  Below is one of these stories.

Our partner in China contacted us and let us know that a NK woman, Mrs. E, who he had ministered to many years ago in China, was now living in South Korea and is currently in need of a visitation. She was copying the Bible by hand, so the partner thought that she may be interested in joining the John Ross Bible translation project.

The VOMK team happened to be in an area nearby where Mrs. E lived when they contacted Mrs. E to set up a visitation schedule. One of the team members, UU student Mrs. G, talked to her on the phone and realized that they were from the same hometown in North Korea. The team drove over to the temporary shelter where she was staying and went inside.

The team sat down with Mrs. E in the living room to listen to her story. On the kitchen table was a Bible that she had been copying down. And on the bookshelf were a row of VOMK’s North Korean Study Bibles—it turns out that Christians ran the temporary shelter and received North Korean study Bibles from VOMK in the past in order to distribute to NK defectors.

Mrs. E defected from NK to China in the late 1990s and lived in Changbai, China. She had Pastor Han Chung-ryeol as her pastor and came to know VOMK afterwards. She had a Chinese (but ethnically Korean) husband in China and bore a son who was disabled. Her son came with her to South Korea and speaks Korean, so he is able to function on his own in South Korean society to an extent.

Mrs. E was diagnosed with stomach cancer a few years ago. Her son was afraid because another family member died as a result of radiation therapy, so he told his mom not to do radiation therapy but to just remove the cancerous area. Following her son’s wish, Mrs. E had 1/3 of her stomach surgically removed one month ago and has been recovering ever since. She is living at the shelter because she is waiting to receive an assigned apartment from the government. She requested an apartment close to the hospital she attends, but there were no apartments available. It also seems like there will not be any available for a while. All the other NKs who were staying at the shelter had left, so she was alone. Mrs. E said she was having a hard time being alone.

Mrs. E told us, that very morning, she had suddenly remembered the song The Trusting Heart to Jesus Clings  and repented of having ignored the Lord so much recently. Then, later in the day, we contacted her. She seemed to be prepared and interested to receive whatever we gave her because of how the Lord had prepared her heart in the morning. We told her about the history of the John Ross Bible translation and about the translation work we are doing. We gave her an 1882 Gospel of Luke Reader’s Edition and a copy of the original 1887 Matthew manuscript. We also gave her letters for NKs which our ICA partners sent to us. Before we left, we invited her to come to one of an upcoming retreat. UU student Mrs. G prayed for her and promised to stay in touch with her.