How the Cross Led a Starving North Korean to America

Joseph Kim tells story of how underground Christians smuggled him to freedom
In Korea, the only "god" he knew was the country’s leader, Kim Il-Sung, and any perceived blasphemy against him could land a person in a prison camp.

So when Joseph Kim finally crossed the Tumen river into China, he did what he was told—follow the cross—even though he didn’t know what a cross or a Christian was.

Kim tells his story in a new book, Under the Same Sky: From Starvation in North Korea to Salvation in America (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), and at a time when North Korea occasionally surfaces in the headlines for its continuing beligerence towards the West, the tale gives some insight into life in the largely hidden society. 

And a harrowing tale it is. 

Kim and his family led a relatively normal life until the death of Kim Il-Sung, followed by Russia’s cutting off foreign aid to North Korea. Combined with severe weather events, the political move left the socialist country open to a severe famine. Kim recalls filling his belly with whatever his parents could scrounge up but having the feeling that his body was not getting enough nutrition. Eventually, a handful of weeds was about the only thing the family had each day. On some days, it was only a few sips of water. 

Death and misery were rampant throughout the country. Kim’s own father died, despite heroic efforts to feed his family. His mother finally decided to engage a broker who could smuggle her and her children into neighboring China. She was caught and sent to prison. Before she was arrested, she had sold Kim’s sister to a Chinese man. Alone now, the 12-year-old Kim lived with relatives and finally landed in a detention center, which had its own set of horrors. Finally, by age 15, on a cold winter night, he snuck across the frozen Tumen River.

Safely on the Chinese side of that natural boundary, Kim followed the "sign of the cross" to a church, and was eventually plugged in to a Christian underground network. A pastor helped him blend into Chinese society, and a missionary offered Kim a way to get to the United States. As the New York Post’s Maureen Callahan relates it: