Posted on 05/21/2016 4:18:01 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
After a year in the North Korean prison, Kenneth Bae softened toward his guards.
“There were many small conversations like, 'How much do you make in the United States? What's it like to live in the U.S.?” Bae told KUOW’s Kim Malcolm. “Do people really have houses and cars?”
When he told his captors about life in America, the guards were shocked.
“They said, ‘No way. No way most common people can live like that,’” he said. “They were told that 1 percent of people in the United States have everything, and the rest of them are living in poverty. And this is what they were told throughout their lifetime."
In 2013, Bae, a missionary, was convicted of trying to overthrow the North Korean government. The Lynnwood man was sentenced to 15 years hard labor. He was released after two years – the longest stretch any American has spent in a North Korean prison since the Korean War.
When the guards were in public they called Bae by his prison number – 103. But in private, they called him pastor. Bae is an ordained Southern Baptist minister.
“People opened up quite a bit and one by one they're coming to me and saying, 'Pastor, can I talk to you?'" Bae recalled.
"And then they're talking about their marriage problems and parenting issues. So I ended up doing quite a bit of counseling and sitting down and talking and chatting. And I became kind of like a friend to them."
They began to see him as concerned for them – and other North Koreans.
"They realized that I wasn't CIA, I wasn't there really trying to overthrow the government,” he said. “I was a missionary who was sent there to love people, love God, even in the midst of the prison."
Bae was born in South Korea, but his family hails from North Korea.
He was arrested after entering North Korea from China – where he lived – with a group of tourists.
"I felt compassion for the people of North Korea,” he said. “I wanted to see is there anything I can do to help their economy and at the same time let the world know what it's really like to live in North Korea?
"I made a very honest mistake by carrying in an external, portable hard drive that contained some anti-North Korean footage from the Western media. And they accused me of attempting to overthrow the government.”
He said the prosecutors were most concerned about his prayer.
Bae asked them, “You don't even believe in God; why do you believe in prayer?’ That's what I said to them. And I said, 'Why do you think the prayer is so threatening to you?'”
They worried he had come to pray against North Korea, “so that we come crumbling down.”
“They literally took the prayer as a powerful weapon against them," he said.
Bae credits his release in part to former NBA star Dennis Rodman. Rodman was visiting North Korea for an exhibition game with other NBA players.
"A couple of weeks later, a prosecutor came to me and he was very upset,” Bae said. “It turned out that Dennis Rodman made a remark while doing an interview on CNN, and that led the reaction of the public and important figures.”
(Bae thanked Rodman on CNN last week for helping bring attention to his case.)
He said his experience taught him to truly appreciate freedom.
"This is the first time I truly valued how precious freedom is. And it's because of this experience that I realized what we have in the United States is so precious; freedom to speak, freedom to demonstrate our faith, and it's so important."
Bae said he hopes to go back to North Korea one day and see his captors. “I consider some of them as friends," he said.
> They were told that 1 percent of people in the United States have everything, and the rest of them are living in poverty.
just let keep things going the way they’re going and we’ll get there soon enough
Thanks 2ndDivisionVet.
Those guards will all be shot now.
The real Truth to Power. God bless him.
I can see the Norks were getting their info from the Democrats.
Quote from Bernie supporters.
or anyone who follows macroeconomics closely
Interesting about Dennis Rodman playing a part in his release.
God’s mysterious ways..
I wonder how that kid that was tried and sentenced to fifteen years labor is doing.
“”I made a very honest mistake by carrying in an external, portable hard drive that contained some anti-North Korean footage from the Western media.””
Have to wonder what he was going to do with a hard drive in N. Korea...borrow a computer?
Well, what the North Korean’s are telling their people is true. The trick is the definition of poverty.
——They were told that 1 percent of people in the United States have everything, and the rest of them are living in poverty-——
They must be bootlegging in Sanders stump speeches...
< They were told that 1 percent of people in the United States have everything, and the rest of them are living in poverty.
######################################
In the ‘70’s and ‘80’s , the Soviet TV showed clips of drive by mob shootings from the TV show, “The Untouchables” with Robert Stack on their news broadcasts and claimed that was everyday life in the USA....
Notice how Norks and RATS believe the same things about America? At least the Norks have an excuse, they don’t know the truth. RATS just lie.
My father went to China for business, and they asked him about America. He showed them pictures of his ham radio antennas on the house. They asked him if that is where his apartment was, no one there had a house that big to themselves, couldn’t imagine it.
I’d take Rodman over Kerry as Secretary of State any day.
The USSR showed the movie "The Grapes of Wrath" to Russian audiences in 1948, to depict how bad life was in the US.
They withdrew the movie when what Russian audiences noticed, was that in America, even the poorest family owned a car!
I hadn’t heard about that one....Thank you....:o)
“They withdrew the movie when what Russian audiences noticed, was that in America, even the poorest family owned a car!”
In the 1970s, the Russians sent a reporter to show how bad everything is in the United States. He went into one of our drug stores and used it as an example of how sickly Americans were. But the people watching the report knew enough to tune out the reporter and instead looked behind him, and found shelves fully stocked with stuff they could only dream of ever getting their hands on. Same thing...Russian people are much smarter than their media thinks they are.
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