University of Oregon alum and Reverend Kenneth Bae said that it was a matter of time before the North Korean intelligence officers discovered that he wasn’t running a tourism agency. At least not completely. When they discovered his hard drive containing information about his work — bringing Christian missionaries into North Korea — they said that he was trying to overthrow the North Korean government. When he asked how, they told him that it was “through prayer and worship.” He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in a North Korean prison.
Bae gave a presentation about his two-year imprisonment in North Korea on Saturday at the Giustina Ballroom in the Ford Alumni Center. Accompanying Bae was Grace Jo, a North Korean activist and defector. The room had around 50 people in attendance. The event was sponsored by the UO Korean Student Association and the Eugene-Jinju Sister City Committee, according to the event program.
Kenneth Bae said that certain things on campus stayed the same since 1988, when he was a student at the University of Oregon. He was married on campus, he said, and his son, Jonathan, was born in Eugene.
When he moved to China in 2005, he started a travel agency to bring Christian missionaries inside North Korea, he said. That was before he was detained and later arrested in North Korea. His 15-year sentence of hard labor, he said, made him the first American sent to prison in North Korea since the Korean War.
Bae said he performed outdoor farm labor from the early morning into the evening. When he fell ill from malnutrition and ended up in the hospital, he said he was thinking about food constantly. He said that when he would work during the day, he would daydream about food. Later, when his mother visited him in the hospital, he said that she brought the same foods he daydreamed about. “God remembered,” he said.
Multiple envoys attempted to reclaim him and take him back to America, he said, but the missions were unsuccessful. “Lord, you know my heart,” he remembered praying, “I want to go home.”
Bae said he was in North Korea for two years before he received news that a special envoy would come rescue him. On Friday, he said, the envoy arrived. On Saturday, he came home.
Bae said that he received an outpouring of support after his North Korean imprisonment. “Kenneth, you are not forgotten,” Bae said, remembering the letters. “Twenty-five million people don’t have access to the outside world,” he said. “Everyone should be able to live like a human being.”
Bae said that the state of North Korea’s population was not a Christian issue, but a humane issue. “Every human being should have the freedom to speak, to believe, to do what they need to do,” he said.
Grace Jo told the story of her escape from North Korea. “I’m a normal woman who dreams to live a normal life with liberty, peace and without any fear,” she said. Jo was born in North Korea in 1991, and said she experienced malnutrition multiple times. “Malnutrition was a constant threat,” she said.
“This is just my story and there are so many other stories like this,” Jo said. “I represent 25 million North Korean people who are living without peace and without liberty.”
Jo’s mother and older sister are her only remaining family, she said. Her parents crossed the border into China to get food for their children, and upon their return, her parents were arrested and beaten. Jo said her father died from his wounds on his way to prison. Later, her grandmother and two brothers passed away from starvation.
Jo’s mother decided to flee to China to save her children, Jo said. The family lived in China, moving from place to place to avoid discovery, with Chinese plainclothes police serving as a risk to their discovery. Jo’s family was discovered and were sent to prison, she said. “It’s still very difficult for me to explain the torture, intimidation and pain I endured in North Korea and in the Chinese prison as a teenage girl,” she said.
Jo said her family was finally able to enter the United States as refugees in March 2008. She said she received citizenship status in 2013.
“The government decided it was better to punish us for trying to survive than lose control over North Korean people,” Jo said, “even when they couldn’t feed us.” Jo now studies at Seattle Pacific University.
The Korean Student Association and Abe Schafermeyer, the director of international student and scholar services, introduced the event. Schafermeyer said that, on behalf of UO President Michael Schill, the university was honored to host the event. “The university has always been an international institution,” Schafermeyer said, explaining how the event was a symbol of the university’s reach and commitment to internationalization and the exploration of different perspectives.
Representatives from the Eugene-Jinju Sister City Committee attended, as well, sharing how the arrangement between Eugene, Oregon and the city of Jinju in North Korea was “one of the longest lasting sister city arrangements in the world.”
“This work of understanding one another, appreciating one another’s stories is our only good pathway to peace,” Eugene mayor Lucy Vinis said, stating that maintaining a close relationship with Jinju was a priority for the city of Eugene.
Pamphlets on the seats in the ballroom advertised the Nehemiah Global Initiative, one of the foundations established by Bae. The pamphlet stated that NGI has “ceaselessly worked to remember 25 million North Koreans and help North Korean refugees to physically and spiritually reestablish new lives in South Korea.” North Korea Relief is another of Bae’s organizations, with the intention of providing North Korean refugees with “much needed emergency relief,” according to the pamphlet.
“Please remember the people of North Korea as you remembered me. Please stand with the people of North Korea as you stood with me. Please pray for the people of North Korea as you prayed for me,” he said.
