Hyun‐jung Hong, North Korean, is the name associated with the following translated narrative from our new 30 day prayer manual. Do you have your manual yet? It's free, and available at http://baekjeong.com . For a small fee you can order that book in its original Korean, at the same website.

The description of North Korean politics that follows is given by a refugee out of her experience. By reading it, you will understand better how North Korea controls its people and with what kind of ideology:

It is well known in the world that North Korea is governed by one man. Kim Il-sung's dictatorship which is unique in the world has been continued by Jong-Il Kim and his tyrant government. North Korean politics is so abnormal that this kind of political style cannot be found even in any other Communist country. Since 1980, the economy in North Korea has fallen rapidly. These days, Kim, who does not have any other way to recover the economy, is enforcing absolute loyalty to himself. He also forces his people into the Red Flag Spirit.

The Red Flag Spirit is like a life-decree which is, you win if you follow the Communist way, you die if you don't. It terrifies North Koreans who are suffering poverty and destitution. One of the most verifiable series of events related to it is the public firing squad and shooting on the spot carried out from October 1996 to March 1997.

The six-month shooting events happened all over North Korea , in Pyong-Seong, Soon-Cheon, Hoi-chang, Seong-Cheon, Mu-San. The charge was always, "National Traitor", and people who were shot to death were charged that they ate well like the people of property, while others starved.

Among the shooting events that I witnessed, there is one scene that is before my eyes now like a nightmare, even though five years have passed. It is the dead body of a mother who had been shot in a train station. They say she was from a rural village in Hwang-Hye do. She was trying to sell 30 bullets to the Chinese which she carried on her person. She was caught and searched by a non-uniformed security staff. Scared, she started to run, her pursuers shooting at her ruthlessly.

She got hit and fell down on the cement ground... with her baby on her back. People around who did not believe that they would shoot her were extremely shocked. They came to assist her, but she was already dead. The bullet had gone through her head. The baby on her back was crying and could not open its eyes as Mother's blood was all over its face. People shivered when someone pulled the baby away from the dead body.

This is shooting on the spot. It is not widely known how much of this has happened during the years. Even in the feudal age and Japanese imperialism age, innocent people like the baby's mom were exempted from shootings. Why in North Korean society, which says that it considers human lives so important, can someone take away another's life so easily? Powerless and sometimes innocent North Koreans live like dead people because their precious lives are not guaranteed in society.

The whole world saw how serious the situation was when Jang-Yeop Hwang, the godfather of the Juche Ideology, and other high-ranked government personnel, got out of North Korea and became exiles.

Then came the "Food Decree". It was issued by Kim to North Koreans who were eating rice roots and arrowroots as their meals. The decree allows for shooting a person on the spot if he steals an ear of corn. As a result, North Koreans started to escape to China. Jong-Il was embarrassed. His fascistic and dictatorial politics were revealed to be a very low-class methodology. The world was watching, by means of North Korean refugees.

With the cooperation of the Chinese government and the North Korean secret military agency, the number of refugees who were sent back to North Korea was as many as 3000 in the winter of 1998. For punishment, they had to wander here and there on bare feet, beaten, holding signposts saying, "I am a betrayer of society and our people," in the severely cold winter.

When we hear Kim's accusations of these tormented citizens, we're supposed to be angry, not sad. "Why did they desert their country? Why did they leave their hometown and relatives and move to foreign countries," citizens are supposed to say. The obvious truth is, if the North Korean government had provided enough food to keep people from starvation, they would never have left their beloved home. History cannot be dressed up in new clothes nor taken off like old ones.

Jong-il and other North Korean rulers are trying to do anything to keep their government from falling. Internally, they are threatening their people with guns and knives. Outwardly, they are telling other countries that North Korea is an "invincible Democratic People´s Republic of Korea" with its chief, its party, and its people as one.

The aged In-mo Lee was a war correspondent and a non-converted long-term prisoner in a South Korean P.O.W. camp. He changed his mind and wrote songs such as "the incarnation of love" and "the incarnation of faith" to support the ideology of North Korea. Please, who would want to call Kim Jong-il an incarnation of anything except misery? He and those around him have made a huge number of his people starve to death and wander to other countries to save their lives.

The North Koreans called Il-sung their "gruel general" and Jong-il their "grass general". An old saying goes, The mind of the people is the mind of heaven. The North Korean leader who is cursed and accused by his people should not be allowed to rule anymore. He must fall if he cannot give any hope.

As the firm Jericho castle was collapsed by God's words and power, many pray that this dictatorship is demolished like snow melting in the spring.

While reading this chapter, I came across an event which took a big portion of newspaper space. The article was about a scene from a firing squad in North Korea. It was taped in secret and released to many countries including South Korea and Japan, in March, 2005. Since then, they have set alarms and are hunting down refugees around the boundaries such as the Hoe-Ryung area. Also, North Korean secret agents have come into areas near the China boundary. All of this shows the reality of North Koreans suffering, a suffering initiated by their own government.