Not too long ago, I had one of the most astonishing conversations of my life with a man who defected from North Korea and is now in the business of smuggling other defectors out of the country. His story reshaped my understanding of freedom, a concept many people love in theory but seem to forget or take for granted in practice. I have even heard people ask the question: Is freedom a good thing?
I was on a personal trip to South Korea for a conference when I was invited to a meeting with the smuggler by Wendy Wright, the president of Christian Freedom International, an organization that helps Christians facing persecution. She planned to ask him to begin smuggling Bibles.
Wendy invited me because she knew that I care not only about persecuted Christians (many of them are trying to escape North Korea), but also about what it means to have a good government (because of my work with HSLDA’s Generation Joshua).
We met him for lunch. I don’t know much about Korean food, so I don’t really remember what I had to eat. But I do remember how the smuggler captured my full attention when he began to tell his story.
He was born in North Korea, where life was difficult. But growing up, he was told that North Koreans were lucky and that the rest of the world had it worse. The Supreme Leader knew what they needed and cared for them—the story went—and out of love he helped each of one of them to live a good and meaningful life.
Lies.
The man I will continue to call “the smuggler” (I cannot use his name because he is still active) didn’t know they were lies though, until he grew a little older and became an athlete. He was good at soccer and he was becoming famous. Maybe too famous, as it turned out, because a government bureaucrat contacted him out of the blue and told him his soccer career was over.