Running out of the Darkness: just one heart-wrenching story from North Korea

On a winter's day in late 1998, Kim Myong Suk, 20, lay shivering and weak from hunger on the cold concrete floor of a cell in a prison camp in North Korea, not far from the Chinese border. She was five months pregnant and was about to lose her unborn child. Of all the horrors she recalls from that day, she says, two stand out. One is that her sister, who lived in a nearby town, had been brought in to watch what was about to happen to her. The other is the name of North Korean guard, the man who she says killed her unborn child: Hwang Myong Dong. It is not a name, she says, "that I'll ever be able to forget.''

Hwang, Kim says, referred repeatedly to the baby as "the Chink," because the father was a peasant from northeastern China, where Kim had fled earlier that year. As she lay on the prison floor, Hwang demanded that she abort the fetus herself. She refused, so the guard began kicking her in the stomach. Then he beat her and, as her sister screamed, continued beating Kim until she blacked out. When she regained consciousness, she says, she "was taken to a clinic in the camp, and in the most blunt manner, they removed [the fetus] from my body."

Source: April 26, 2006 - Running out of the Darkness by Bill Powell - Time
Read the complete article here.

Please pray for the people of North Korea!
Similar horrible stories happen TODAY in North Korea. You can close your eyes, try to forget about this and move on with living your own life... But you can also try to raise awareness and join the prayers of thousands of Christians around the world. Please support these organisations:
Voice of the Martyrs
Open Doors

Do you want to know more?

Please visit Soon Ok Lee's web site and read her book Eyes of the Tailless Animals (Dutch edition: Zij mogen de hemel niet zien).

Reader's review on Amazon: "It's hard to say that a book like this is good. Perhaps HORRIBLY informative is a better way to put it."

You can buy a copy of this book here.

You can also read earlier posts about North Korea on this blog here and here.