The bus filled with foreign tourists cut through the darkness covering the 10-lane highway. Everybody, including the driver and the guides, was exhausted from the long day of touring North Korean sites. Suddenly the bus driver slammed on the brakes. In an instant, everyone was wide awake.
 

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There in front of the bus stood a girl – motionless. She was clothed in rags, her face dirty and her look bewildered. She could be 9 years old, but it was hard to tell. Because of severe malnutrition, North Korean children are often stunted.

The driver got out, gently pushed the little girl to the side of the highway, walked back to the bus and got behind the wheel again. He exchanged sad looks with the guides, but they didn’t talk. Slowly he put the bus back in gear, driving the tourists and their government minders back to their hotel.

Why was this child walking on a highway hours after dark? Why didn’t she move when the bus almost hit her? Because this girl was a kotjebi – a North Korean word for “wandering swallow.” It’s the derogatory word most North Koreans use for street children, considered parasites on society.

Famine, diseases, arrests and killings have destroyed millions of North Korean families. Children who lose their parents often have nowhere to go. So they are sent to orphanages or children’s detention facilities. Or if left on their own, they try to live on the streets, sometimes forming gangs to beg and steal for food.

Most of the time, these kotjebis only have one set of clothes, and no shoes. They’ve sold their shoes, and to survive they steal food and other necessities. So everybody dislikes them. The police hunt them down, sending them off to so-called orphanages, which are more like death row. There is little or no food. “I saw children jumping from windows, because they couldn’t take it anymore,” one child who escaped said.

But even children who still have homes are brainwashed, particularly at school. Since young children are never good at keeping secrets, school teachers are trained to probe their pupils. “Do your parents read from a certain ‘black book’ at home?” they ask.

As part of the North Korean regime’s massive deception imposed upon its citizens, parents are required to teach their children to say, “Thank you, Father Kim II-Sung,” as soon as they can talk. It’s like saying grace before dinner. The family must bow to the portraits of the Great Leaders on the wall, thanking them—even if only bitter grass soup is served, or if mother has worked hours grinding bark to make the porridge.

In school, students are taught mostly from the “scriptures” of the Leaders. “We had to memorize and recite them,” said Joo Eun, a North Korean refugee now living in South Korea. But occasionally, she recalled, Western textbooks made reference to something about the “resurrection.”

“We were told how bad the religion was which taught about the resurrection,” recalled Joo Eun. But during her childhood, she remembered hearing stories which she later realized were Bible stories.

“My parents sometimes told about a great flood which covered the whole earth with water. I also knew something about the cross, and the virgin Mary, but I am not sure exactly how.”

In these repressive conditions, North Korea’s underground Christians struggle painfully with how—and when—to share their faith in Jesus with their own children.

“My parents did what many Christian parents still do,” explained Pastor Lee Joo-Chan, a refugee now working among North Koreans in China. “They shared stories from the Bible, but they omitted words like Bible, God, Jesus and Israel. They told me about a man who went up a mountain and received from the sky two stone tables with ten rules. They said I should love my neighbors like myself. So I knew my parents were different from other parents.

Everybody else was so harsh, but they were so loving and they took care of people, even of kotjebis.”

Lee was 32 when he fled to China, followed a year later by his mother. Only then did she feel free to explain the gospel to her son and identify herself as a Christian.

Open Doors has a passion to come alongside these burdened believers and their families, as well as the untold thousands of little “wandering swallows” who are so hard to reach. Because of heavy restrictions, the ministry has focused on investing in North Korea’s families of secret believers, strengthening the underground church through desperately needed food aid and clothing, as well as Christian materials and training.

But even destitute little kotjebis who are reached with the gospel can end up paying the price for daring to put their faith in Jesus rather than in North Korea’s idolized heads of state.

One such little boy, 11-year-old Jong-Cheol, had escaped into China in the days before the borders were so heavily guarded. Open Doors was able to provide him with food and shelter there, placing him with a Christian family who led him to Christ.

But while begging one day with other North Korean children near a hotel frequented by South Korean businessmen, Jong-Cheol and his comrades were caught and repatriated back to North Korea, where they were interrogated and beaten. After most were released, one child fled back to China, where he told an Open Doors representative what had happened.

“When the guards asked if we had become Christians in China, Jong-Cheol didn’t deny it,” the boy said.  “So what happened to him?” the man asked.

After a reluctant pause, the boy replied, “Jong-Cheol didn’t survive. He laid down his life for Jesus.”