From being North Korean commando to becoming a South Korean pastor, a very interesting profile of Kim Shin-jo
NAMYANGJU, South Korea - What would Jesus Christ do to North Korea? Unfortunately for South Korea’s newly inaugurated President Lee Myung-bak, a pious Christian and an elder of a Presbyterian church, there is no ready answer. Lee is still busy sculpting a concrete body of North Korean policy amid his outwardly tough talk on the North. Lee, for instance, had initially planned to scrap the government’s North Korean department only to back down and preserve it after an uproar.
In the meantime, Lee may want to listen to what a former North Korean commando and now a faithful disciple of Jesus has to say on North Korea. “North Korea shares the same ethnicity with South Korea. We should love people there. But we should also keep in mind that the two remain as ideological enemies. This is
true even today,” Reverend Kim Shin-jo, 67, said in an interview at his hillside church in the Mount Ungil, Namyangju City, east of Seoul.
In 1968, Reverend Kim was Lieutenant Kim. He was the only commando captured alive in a 31-member special force squad that had been dispatched from North Korea to Seoul. “I’ve come here to cut off the throat of Park Chung-hee,” this very chilling statement from Kim on his arrest made the international headlines. Park Chung-hee was the South Korean president at that time.
The most interesting aspect, in my opinion, seems to be that Christianity and the Juche ideology seems almost interchangable. Obviously, they preach two radically different beliefs, the rituals seems similar. That does explain why Christianity is so appealing to North Koreans and why most Koreans that work to help them is so eager to convert them.
