For three sisters who came South last year with Rev. Kim’s help, this is their first chance to properly celebrate the New Year, after completing the process of interrogation by the National Intelligence Service and settling in at a government-run facility.
Hearing the sisters call him “Dad,” Rev. Kim replied with a smile, “Mandu are tasty when the wrappers are thin.” Although Kim has rescued many children over a period of more than 10 years, he has never before been able to make them part of his family. That is because it is customary for child defectors without relatives to go to the designated Hana Foundation facilities.
Only recently has the court designated Rev. Park Esther, Rev. Kim’s wife, as the custodian of the three sisters. This is the first case in which underage North Korean children without relatives have been placed with an individual family rather than at the facility.
In North Korea, starting from the age of 11, the sisters had worked carrying 30~50 kg bags of coal from underground shafts up to the surface, as their way of staying alive. Hearing that life was better in China, they ran away in 2015, but at the border between North Korea and China they were tricked by a human trafficking criminal and nearly became victims of organ harvesting. In their life-and-death process of defecting, the sisters naturally came to call Rev. Kim “Dad.”
Article and photo by reporter DongWoo Kim (love@kmib.co.kr), from Cheonan, with Marion Kim (marionkkim@icloud.com)
Full Story in Korean:
북한식 만두 빚으며 맞는 ‘따뜻한 첫 번째 설’: 목사 가정에 입양된 탈북 자매의 설 준비
