Italy Refreshed Me

During this year's long Chusok holiday, finally I could have some restful times in Assisi, Italy. Last year, I had no chance to go on vacation because of work, so I had waited for this trip. In the beginning of the trip, I didn't know why I got lost several times from Rome. I was quite distracted by many complicated thoughts and unhappy feelings. However, in the middle of my journey, I could find my peace of mind through meeting a gracious lady at a bus stop in Assisi. After then, small changes occurred to me.

At the bus stop, I waited for a bus, but the bus did not turn up, so I and someone started to chat. It turned out that she is a spiritual coach who leads a special retreat for pastors, priests, and seminary students every year in Assisi. Her name is Dr. Benefiel, Margaret. At the morning, she was waiting for a bus to leave for Rome, and eventually for Boston! After she got to know that once I lived in Boston, we both were very excited to talk about a lot of things including city of Boston, politics inside churches, Christian conferences: Urbana and InterVarsity, etc. At our parting, she kindly gave me her book 'The Soul of a Leader' and said to me to pray for me. The book with author's signature and the short but intensive conversation with her encouraged me a lot. I was grateful to God for giving the unexpected encounter to me, such an inattentive one.

I could have other interesting meetings during the journey. Except one person, all asked me about North Korea after they learned that I came from South Korea. I might be stood out in the crowd since there were few Asians in Assisi. I thought that the experience was abnormal. I have not known that before, more Europeans that I expected seem interested in how North Korea will turn out. They threw so difficult questions at me, "How is North Korea doing?" or "What do you think about North Korea's future?" like that! One of them is a young Rumanian, he talked about his dead father in the communist regime, who liked communism, and his mother, who prefers capitalism in a capitalist country, Italy. I had never expected these kinds of conversations during my vacation in a secluded village in the mountains, Assisi.

A night classic concert at Basilica di San Francesco, and every some time gentle ring of various churches bells, and a Friday evening wedding ceremony, and genuine Italian cannoli and cappuccino and Umbrian pizza and pasta.. everything were novel pleasures I cannot forget. Plus, while wandering several days, I got to know every inch of the city. I fell in love with this small town. Also, I could recall I have a lot to do for repaying grace given to me through my entire life journey. Especially Dr. Benefiel's book and the unexpected casual meetings stimulated some of my passions. It is a kind of creating a dynamic platform for people interested in NK, and professionals from each field who want to be connected with others for developing NK. I decided to give shape to the idea concretely in the near future. I seem to still have a long way to go! Here are some pictures of my Italy trip. Enjoy! https://goo.gl/photos/9YTfVdrfVFrVZxkcA

[Article] An Unlikely Marriage - The Hard-line Communist State and Wealthy Christian Capitalists

Seoul, South Korea — Of all the fantastic tales to come out of North Korea — the country’s leader is injected with the blood of virgin girls, he made 11 holes-in-one during his very first round of golf, each grain of rice he eats is inspected by hand for imperfections, his youngest son and would-be successor has had cosmetic surgery to make him resemble his grandfather — not one of these seems as improbable as the event that took place on Monday, when a science university founded by American evangelical scholars began its first day of classes in Pyongyang, the capital of the secretive Communist state.

North Korea, the nuclear-armed “hermit kingdom,” is so poor that there is almost no supply of concrete, bricks or window glass. People suffer shortages of rice, gasoline and even underwear. The Internet barely exists, not to mention computers, and the economy is so moribund that most factories barely function for lack of raw materials and electricity.

In spite of all this, classes in technical English started Monday at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. A fuller curriculum in information technology, business management and agriculture is supposed to get under way in March.

“It’s amazing, and kind of a miracle,” said Park Chan-mo, one of the founders of the school, which was largely financed by contributions from evangelical Christian groups in the United States and South Korea. “Many people were skeptical, but we’re all Christians. We had faith.”

The driving force behind the school was Kim Chin-kyung, an American born in Seoul who founded a university in China in 1992. He made periodic trips from China into North Korea and in 1998 was arrested at his hotel in the capital and thrown into prison, accused of being an agent for the C.I.A. The relentless interrogations went on for six weeks and almost broke him. “I was ready to die,” he said in a 2001 interview, even writing out a will and bequeathing his organs for transplants and medical study in Pyongyang. He was finally released, he said, after convincing the authorities that “I was not the kind of person who would spy on them.”

In November 2000, a man appeared in his university office in China — oddly, the same man who had ordered his arrest for espionage in Pyongyang in 1998. But this time he had a proposal from the North Korean government: could he duplicate his Chinese technical university in Pyongyang?

“Doing business with North Korea is not for the faint of heart,” Mr. Kim said on the school’s Web site, “but the effort is ennobling and necessary.”

The first group of 160 undergraduate and master’s students has been chosen by the North Korean government, selected from its top colleges and from the political and military elite. Their tuition, room, board and books are all free, financed by foreign donors and individual sponsors. The plans call for an eventual student body of 2,600 and a faculty of 250, with classes in public health, architecture, engineering and construction.

Sixteen professors from the United States and Europe arrived in Pyongyang over the weekend. For now, no South Korean professors are allowed because of recent political tensions between the Koreas. It seems an unlikely marriage — the hard-line Communist state and wealthy Christian capitalists — and it remains to be seen how well the match has been made.

North Korea, while reluctant to expose its citizens to the outside world, has been seeking foreign investment for its decrepit educational system. For their part, the evangelicals, who have antagonized the North by encouraging defections and assisting refugees after they cross over, are seeking a foothold inside the churchless state.

North Korea has made a similar bargain before. The Unification Church of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, not only a Christian but staunchly anti-Communist, operates a car factory in Pyongyang, for instance. But the church is allowed to make only cars, not Christians or capitalist converts.

There is no campus chapel at the new university, Dr. Park said, and there is not one in the plans. But neither, for now, are there any official portraits of the North Korean leader,Kim Jong-il, or his father, the late Kim Il-sung, which hang in every school and public building in the North.

The $35 million, 240-acre campus includes a faculty guesthouse and world-class dormitories and classrooms, all of which are said to have running water, power and heat. The school has its own backup generators, but with so little diesel and gasoline available in the North, fuel has to be trucked in from neighboring China.

Classes will be taught in English, and Internet access has been promised to all students. The campus has sirens that go off before rolling electrical blackouts, so work on computers can be saved. “The Internet will be censored, and we can’t imagine that it won’t be,” said Dr. Park, who has been involved in educational exchanges with the North since 2000. “Even in South Korea things are blocked. I’m sure North Korea has been looking at my e-mails. I keep them businesslike.”

Dr. Park, the former president of the prestigious Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea, said the university project could not have been completed without the approval of the United States government. Officials at the school, eager not to run afoul of international sanctions in place against the North, have even sent its curriculum to the State Department for vetting.

One request from Washington was that the name of the biotechnology course be changed for fear that it might be seen as useful in developing biological weapons, Dr. Park said. So the course title was changed to “Agriculture and Life Sciences.”

The United States government also was also “very sensitive,” Dr. Park said, about young North Korean scientists learning skills that could be used by the military or in developing nuclear weapons. “We can’t be fooled into teaching them those kinds of things.”

Several conservative lawmakers from South Korea called for Seoul, which gave $1 million to the school in 2006, to cut off all support. One legislator, Yoon Sang-hyun, was angered that the North insisted that future economics classes include lessons about juche, or Kim Il-sung’s founding philosophy of self-reliance.

Some critics also have suggested that there must have been heavy payoffs made to the North Korean government to move the project along, but Mr. Kim insisted that no deals had been made. “Every brick we used, every bit of steel, every bit of equipment, we brought in from China,” Mr. Kim, who was in Pyongyang for the opening, said in an interview in Fortune last year. “I have never brought any cash into North Korea.”

“I have unlimited credit at the Bank of Heaven,” he added.

This article is written by Mark McDonald

Published: October 25, 2010 @New York Times

Choe Sang-hun contributed reporting from Palo Alto, California.

The Kite Runner

Afghanistan, which has a rich history, is an important geostrategic location, connecting East, South, West and Central Asia. For the reason, the land had been a target of various invaders before the country's independence from the United Kingdom.

The independence seemed to end its foreign affairs, however, it was not. Since the late 1970's Afghanistan has experienced a continuous state of civil war punctuated by foreign occupations, now the country is being rebuilt slowly with support from the international community and dealing with a strong Taliban insurgency.

"The Kite Runner" directed by Marc Forster with Khalid Abdalla, Atossa Leoni, and Shaun Toub is about the country's story. After spending years in California, Amir returns to his homeland in Afghanistan to help his old friend Hassan, whose son is in trouble. The movie shows Afghan history and its scars quietly but also hope, which would not be given up in the Afghan's hearts. I'd like to recommend this movie or novel to all my friends.

Be Diplomatic for Life

(back row) Eric Rubin, Seemoon Choi, Hyuna Lee, Stephen Linton, Youngjeon Shin, Woojin Lew, Matthew Carroll, Nackmoon Sung, Edward Nardell, Sonya Shin, Jim Kim (front row) Heejin Choi, Jason Ahn, David Kim, Christie Jeon, Eugene Yim, Ted Cohen on Tuesday 25th November 2008, @Busch Hall, Harvard University

Harvard Medical School, Harvard Korea Institute, Harvard Asia Center, and the EugeneBell Foundation organized a conference entitled: "Tuberculosis in the Korean Peninsula and Global Health" in Cambridge on November 24th and 25th, 2008. As a new grant writer of EugeneBell, I went to the conference with Dr. Stephen Linton, the Founder and Chair of EugeneBell. This conference was for seeking for new collaborations that will improve the future health of the North Korean people. A small number of dedicated scientists, clinicians and donors shared their experience on preventing and treating drug-resistant tuberculosis in the Korean peninsula.

In 1997, EugeneBell was officially invited to expand EugeneBell’s work to treating tuberculosis by the Ministry of Public Health in North Korea. Since then, EugeneBell started assisting programs for tuberculosis, however, physicians found many patients suspected of having multi-drug resistant strains. So EugeneBell has tried to expand organization’s program to include multi-drug resistant tuberculosis patients, who do not respond to primary medications.

The problem is now North Korea does not have an operating MDR laboratory, so Eugenbell has collected samples from patients in North Korea, had them analyzed at Masan National Tuberculosis Hospital and returned with individual prescriptions. Patients’ sputum samples are transported from Pyongyang to Masan via China and Seoul. It takes 5-20 days. It is indeed totally crazy process. That is why in the States EugeneBell is seeking for collaborations to build a laboratory and medical facilities; and to develop strict treatment programs for MDR-TB in Pyongyang. As well-known, North Koreans are highly suspicious of South Koreans’ intentions so North Korea government dislikes any Koreans or Korean-Americans’ helps. It means no Koreans and Korean-Americans can go to North Korea so only non-Koreans can access the laboratory and facilities.

Fortunately, productive conclusions were made at the conference in spite of highly complexed situations. Currently the Chair of Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School is a Korean-American, Jim Young Kim, MD, PhD. At the end of the conference, he said his father was from North Korea so there are still so many family members in North Korea. Then he asked Dr. Linton directly, “How Harvard Medical School can help North Korea with EugeneBell?” and mentioned he has known some people of Gates Foundation, and now the Foundation is preparing to build MDR-TB facilities in China. He is sure that Bill Gates will be quite interested in interrupting North Korea with medical aids. And he added he would like to call a conference with Bill Gates soon. If once a consensus is reached among the Gates foundation, American scientists and clinicians and EugeneBell, it is really amazing progress!

Global health has become a core political and economical reality of our time. Will improvements in health spur improvements in economic development? Or will economic development drive improvements in health? This argument is still ongoing. Anyway our response to NK is urgent to save life and from now on we must think seriously how we can use the possible grant and the chance diplomatically to open up the closed society.

God Grew Tired of Us

In God Grew Tired of Us, the film shows the lost boys-Sudanese refugees. They altogether fled from Sudan to Kenya, and have been locked up in UN refugee camps. Some of them were selected and sent to the US. John Bul Dau and other three people sent to Syracuse, and other four people sent to Pittsburg. 

After a few years passed, among them, John and a few started to take leadership roles for their people and country. One studied economics in the States and went back to their country to build a school. John set up a foundation for academic and medical expenses of Sudanese refugees (johndaufoundation.org).

I can see they spent time together almost for 10 years in a camp, so there is a close bond among them. Also they think it is a shame if they do not take care of their own people. It really touched me.

In terms of North Korean refugees, it is really sad that they are quite different with Sudanese refugees' situation. Their first destination is China, but the government keep holding UNHCR's investigation so there is no refugee camp even the total number of North Korean refugees in China is between 300,000 and 400,000. The refugees are just hiding in China. They can hardly help each other but unwillingly have to be scattered all over the world. It is a tragedy, indeed.
.

I cannot remember since when I got to have an intention to help them, anyway I have a strong attachment to them, in some ways, I would like to help them and am waiting for the chance I can do something.

[Article] South Korean Film's Reception Shows a Big Chill Toward North

Just three years ago, South Koreans were full of warm feelings toward North Korea. They spent billions of dollars on economic projects there, hosted the North's leaders for joint holiday celebrations and put one of its celebrities in TV ads, all part of the afterglow of political efforts to bridge their divided countries.

A new movie here called "Crossing," the first by a South Korean director to portray the living conditions of North Koreans, seemed destined to take advantage of those feelings. Laura Yoo, who hasn't seen her father since he got stuck in the North in the Korean War more than 55 years ago, left a recent showing in tears. "I came here and I thought about him," she said. But Ms. Yoo turned out to be an exception, as the movie attracted far fewer people than its producers hoped. Its mediocre showing is another sign that South Koreans have turned cool toward the North after realizing their outreach was bearing little fruit. Aid agencies say this shift in sentiment is making it harder to interest people in helping out North Korea. "This is the least fashionable topic in South Korea," says Erica Kang, Seoul director of Good Friends, a Buddhist charity that works on hunger relief in North Korea.

The change also stands to complicate international efforts to lure North Korea out of its isolation and end its strategy of wringing aid from others with military threats. An opening in the North could pacify a region beset by tensions for decades and, some hope, even lay a foundation for the two Koreas to reunite.

The shift in sentiment made a difference in the presidential elections here last year. Voters chose conservative candidate Lee Myung-bak, who promised to attach strings to the economic aid South Korea had been providing to the North. This month, that sentiment hardened further after a North Korean soldier fatally shot a South Korean tourist at a resort the South had built in the North to boost its neighbor's economy.

In light of broader challenges now facing South Korea as its export-driven economy copes with the global slowdown, many South Koreans consider further overtures to the North to be a luxury when they are so poorly received. "Every time we've made an agreement with them, they break it," says Choi Doo-hwan, 53 years old, a fruit-juice vendor in Seoul.

Ten years ago, then-president Kim Dae-jung ended decades of hostility from the Korean War of the 1950s by developing a policy of economic and political outreach that was designed to spur North Korea toward openness and change. North Korea allowed videoconference reunions for some Korean families separated in the war's aftermath, but it did little else, falling far short of South Koreans' hopes. A turning point came in 2006 when North Korea tested new missiles and a nuclear weapon.

It was in the warmer atmosphere that movie director Kim Tae-kyun four years ago began work on "Crossing," hoping to show ordinary life in North Korea instead of the political and military imagery that South Koreans had seen for years.

A veteran of comedies aimed at teenagers, Mr. Kim spent more than two years to research and write the serious, fictional drama. To get details right, he interviewed more than 100 North Koreans who had fled the country and cast some as extras. "In the process of interviewing North Korean refugees and reading the literature, I did feel a very deep sense of shame as I realized how much I didn't know," Mr. Kim says.

"Crossing" depicts the journey of a miner who makes an illegal trip to China in search of medicine for his wife. After almost being caught by Chinese police, the man joins a group of North Koreans seeking safety with a charity worker, not realizing that doing so has put him on an escape route to South Korea from which there is no turning back. He tries to reconnect with his wife and son, who become desperate without him, while adapting to his modern, wealthier new life in Seoul.

Reviewers strongly praised the movie, with several noting it depicted North Korea in a way that has never been seen here. After a month in South Korean theaters, "Crossing" attracted only 900,000 viewers and hasn't made up its $4 million production cost, producers say. By contrast, the movie hit of the summer here, a cowboy adventure called "The Good, the Bad and the Weird," attracted 1.7 million people in its opening weekend.

The Wall Street Journal
Evan Ramstad (evan.ramstad@wsj.com) July 29, 2008 

Dating with David Ross

From Friday(27th) to Sunday(29th), we had revival weekend filled with stirring and powerful messages delivered by special guest speaker, Pastor David Ross. He's an American, however, he had served as a missionary in Korea since 1961. So he is also a Korean and has a Korean name '오대원'. Maybe you know about YWAM. He established Korean YWAM in 1973. Now he is in Seattle and has focused on North Korea.

I have a prayer book for North Korea by David Ross. The title is 'God loves North Korea(북한을 사랑하시는 하나님)' When I was in Cambridge, every Wednesday morning, I used to pray for North Korea with Hongchul, Shinae, and Dan. Guess what? On Sunday, after service, I was with him in campus. I can't believe that I met David Ross personally and dated with him in Ithaca! We went to sightseeing in Cornell; visited Johnson Museum of Art; and talked about many things over coffee. He is such a sweet man.









Mountain Spirit with a Tiger VS. David Ross, who is led by the Spirit of God at Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University

I've been truly blessed during this revival weekend as well. The messages I heard through David Ross touched me. I hope God will continue to transform me, so that I want to be a real servant of God. Anyway, a few hours ago, I wrote David Ross to ask how he was doing since he left Ithaca early in the morning. To my surprise, soon he answered to my email. Actually I've been sick a little bit but now I feel better because of his encouragement. His warmhearted reply is here.

Hi Heejin, Yes, I really enjoyed my date with you and Paul on Sunday. You are such a refreshing person to be with. And your name fits your character so very well! You are a blessing. The time there in Cornell was very special and good for me also. I believe I was the most blessed. I'll keep praying for you, and for all God has in store for you. And don't forget the pictures :) Love, David