One of the recently released American prisoners in North Korea says his crime was prayer.
Kim Hak Song told of his year-long ordeal in a North Korean prison at his home church, the Oriental Mission Church in East Hollywood, California. He told fellow worshipers that his time was not wasted.
Kim Hak Song was arrested in May 2017 while traveling from North Korea to China by train. Before he crossed the border he was approached by the North Korean security service who accused him of hostile acts toward North Korea.
“I was thinking, I don’t know what I did wrong.” When he asked his captors what hostile acts he reportedly committed against North Korea, he was told his crime was prayer.
Prayer, he thought, was normal. The North Korean government, he said, did not.
Kim Hak-song went to North Korea as a Christian missionary who intended to start an experimental farm at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, a school founded by evangelical Christians and attended by elite North Koreans.
Kim Hak Song did not waste his time behind bars and God used him there. While detained, an official asked him to write about Christianity. He said he started with Genesis, the first book of the Bible.
He said “I was grateful and thankful that at this time I was able to share God’s message to this person,”
“God’s miracles still happen,” Kim Hak Song said during his sermon. “And prayer is still very important.”