The first sight that greeted us as we entered the Lees' high rise apartment was a collection of clear plastic bags, filled with thousands of fliers. We knew exactly what they were for and for whom. Kim Jong Il would be receiving a downpour of blessing as this brother and his colleagues would soon be launching helium-filled balloons carrying a payload of tens of thousands of messages for time release in the unfriendly skies of North Korea.

Lee and his wife have been here several years now, attempting to make the difficult adjustment from one country to another. South Korea is not North Korea. With all its conveniences and liberties, the new country is never the old. Separation anxiety is not just a human to human event. Being wrenched from one's land is an awful, tormenting pain.

Brother Lee comes from a city that received much Gospel on the Korean Peninsula in the early days. Unfortunately, by the time of his birth that fact was lost on the population.

His earliest memory is of Mom working in a restaurant to support the family in a North Korea that was surviving, though not wildly prosperous. And of Dad. Not such a pleasant memory there. One day Dad is just gone. Disappeared. Lots of such magic takes place in North Korea. Here one day, gone the next. Dad is careless in his speech one day. Dares to speak favorably, or so it seemed, of the Americans of the Pueblo incident. That was the 1968 event wherein North Korea accused the USS Pueblo of straying into its waters, killed one of its men, captured the rest, tortured them...

To favor in any way the American side of things, that's all it takes in Kim Il Sung's Korea effectively to end one's life. Dad is reported. He is never seen again by his family.

Lee is eight years old. The government confiscates all their belongings and sends the family packing to the countryside. No restaurant income now. To the fields for sustenance in backbreaking all-day work. And where is the rest of the family during these dire straits? All under pressure because of those same comments by Dad. No one dares to help these outcasts.

Even his older sister, married some time before, won't be getting a visit from Mom any time soon. She's not allowed to travel. Can't obtain the necessary paperwork to go from here to there. Travel passes are required of all North Korean citizens. No pass, no passage.

The mark that is on young Lee continues through school days. Discrimination is his partner for many years. He is elected, because of his considerable abilities to a foreign language institute, but a friend is chosen over him. A friend not quite his peer in talent, but who is politically more sound. His mother in tears has to explain what happened. She does not defend her husband. That is not permitted. She merely warns the son of her love, that he needs to be very careful. He must work twice as hard just to keep up.

The advice is followed. But he is still not allowed to join the military, go to college. One stray comment has done all this.

It is unpleasant to note here that in the first 18 years of his life, our Mr. Lee has never heard the name of Jesus. Mother occasionally talks about the "sky", a place where one might go, or at least a symbol for better things. But not the Bible's "Heaven." Lee suspects though, that since his city was such a well known spot for Christianity in the years not too long before this, that Mom probably knew, and felt she had to protect her son from imprisonment by keeping silent.

It is probably in the mid 70's that a major turn in Lee's thinking occurs. Surely he has to suspect before this that something is rotten in Pyongyang, but it all comes into focus when his friend, like his father, disappears. This particular ally is the captain of his classroom, the main man. His father is a professor in the University. One day, comrade captain does not show up for class. Very unusual for him. Lee stops by his house after school. It is empty. He finds that every member of the house has been taken to a prison camp.

Yet this is a good man. He thinks of his own father. Why entire families made to suffer? He is shocked, angry. All his other classmates had rejected him, but this one had not. He asks his mother for more details, for more information about Dad, his character, his philosophy. He finds that his dad had been arrested many years before his birth in the famous Sinuiju demonstration, for which he had been sent to Russia for several years. Dad always spoke his mind.

He begins to think positive thoughts about his father. Surely Kim Il Sung is wrong about that one. And, he knows that Americans are wealthy. Something his government denies. Two strikes against the truthfulness of his "god." He then considers all the political prisoners out there in much worse shape than is he. He begins to turn his heart toward them. They're all good people, he believes. But they're cut off. Why? Kim Il Sung looks worse and worse.

Lee goes to work in the metal industry, and then another turning point. Kim Il Sung makes a monumental decision as the decade of the 80's begins. He reasons that even the low-class folks who may have made a mistake somewhere down the line, deserve a chance to be embraced by Communism and his Utopia. Why not let them work their way back into his favor?

In a general amnesty of sorts, Lee is now given schooling opportunities, if he is willing to work, work, work. He is. He goes into the study of Chinese traditional medicine. While in college though, he is not allowed to enter the "Party," gateway to all privilege in a Communist country, for the same reason as before. Mother becomes worried that after college her son too will make a mistake, and end up like his father.

True, his views have changed. He finds himself increasingly taking the side of anyone who is opposed to his government. Seeing a Nodung Daily article (North Korean newspaper) criticize the Chosun Daily (from South Korea), he assumes the SK paper is correct.

And when that same North Korean daily criticizes France for demanding younger beef and protesting against the government, Lee sees only, "Hey, the French can actually eat beef!" And his frustration with things as they are continues to grow.

After graduation from the medical program, Lee is allowed to enter for a couple of years into a job in a hospital, followed by more doctors' training, and yet another hospital. During all this time, he never makes public statements against the government, though he does allow himself to confide in relatives from time to time. He says things to them like, "Wouldn't it be great to go into a school classroom and write on one of the chalkboards there just how evil the Kim government is?"

But publicly he is so careful that even on one of his frequent trips to the countryside he refrains from picking up one of the multitude of air-dropped fliers he sees on the ground. There the truth keeps flying in, but citizens are forbidden to know it.

And where is the message of Jesus now in his thinking? Twenty years have passed in his story. By now he has heard the message! Clandestinely, via shortwave radio. Good news, yes?

Sadly we hear the words of the Ethiopian eunuch of the Bible story, "How can I understand unless someone helps me?" Not a bad question when a Philip is standing by to expose the Word. No Philip. So no Word. Frankly, he tells us, the program is meaningless to him. Not a clue.