One day you take a trip abroad. You make a mistake. You dishonor your leader. You are afraid to go home. You leave it all behind to save your life. Life isn’t so good any more.

You have less than three years to live, but you don’t know that. You are ill. You are bored. Nothing to do but regret the past, suffer with your sickness, fear the future. You know death will come sooner or later. You wonder if you should have stayed in your own nation to invite it sooner.

You love your nation. Its land, its people, and the part you once played. Will you be remembered, will it all matter?

You write a poem. The pessimistic and plaguing thoughts you have been thinking are penned for all the world to see.

You die. And it’s over.

Well, not exactly. Your dear leader did not prepare you for this, but existence does go on. Forever. Now what?

Such was the life of Hwang Jang Yop, architect of Juche, the governmental form that mimics Communism but puts it in a framework consumable by the North Korean dictatorship. Having lost favor in his homeland, he spent the rest of his days in fearful and mentally tortured exile in the West. He died on October 10 of this year, having prophesied that death on January 1, 2008, in a poem that has just been released.

click here for poem

Another victim of the Kim dynasty has gone to eternity without – we only presume – knowing Christ.