‘Overwhelming’ to be home, says pastor
Hyeon Soo Lim talks about events that led up to his imprisonment in N. Korea
After more than 150 humanitarian trips to North Korea, a speech in the U.S. made Rev. Hyeon Soo Lim’s last journey there far different.
He told an American audience that “you should not serve Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il like a God.”
This was seen by the North Korean government as a crime against the state, and defamation of the Kim dynasty, which has been in power for almost seven decades, with Kim Jong Un now at the helm.
In his first interview with the Star since he was released from a North Korean jail earlier this month, Lim described the events leading up to his arrest more than two years ago.
When Lim arrived in the northern city of Rajin in January 2015, a senior officer approached him and asked for help.
Lim said the officer told him: “We’ll talk about how you can help us more.”
Soon after, Lim was arrested and detained in a hotel before he was taken to a detention centre, where he stayed for 10 months.
At the detention centre, he went through a series of interviews, and anyone in North Korea with ties to him was investigated. It was there that he was asked about his speech in the U.S.
At Lim’s trial, he was sentenced to life in a hard labour camp. He spent winters digging holes in the frozen ground, and the warmer months farming corn, potatoes, hot peppers and beans.
At all times, two guards would watch him while he was working, and they would rarely speak to him. Only sometimes would an older guard make small talk with Lim, but his time in North Korea was mostly quiet and isolated.
Lim’s spokesperson Lisa Pak, who was also at the interview at Light Presbyterian Church in Mississauga where he preaches, said the hard labour was to reform Lim.
“There was no real purpose except to make his life difficult,” she said.
Lim wore a grey uniform, which had more padding in the winter to accommodate the weather. His meals were either rice or noodles, but usually rice. The portions were small, until he lost 50 pounds over two months.
“Then they gave me a little more rice,” Lim said.
His routine was the same nearly every day.
Wake up at 6 a.m.; clean and eat breakfast until 8 a.m.; work until 6p.m., with an hour-long lunch and a half-hour break in the morning and afternoon; eat dinner at 7 p.m. From 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., he was permitted “culture time.”
He spent that time reading the Bible. Then he would sleep at 10 and start again.
He also had Sundays off, where he worshipped by himself.
Lim spent time in the hospital while in North Korea, suffering from frostbite and soreness from the labour. He said that rest helped, and he did receive some medical care, like antibiotics and physiotherapy.
On Aug. 9, Lim was freed, notified only 15 minutes in advance. North Korean officials did not speak to him when he left. Freedom felt like a miracle.
“All of a sudden . . . he was being released, so to him it’s like the hand of God intervening because all these human efforts failed,” said Pak, referring to efforts from the Canadian government and Swedish officials, who act as Canada’s protecting power in North Korea since Ottawa has no embassy there.
Lim expressed extreme gratitude to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, to Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and national security adviser Daniel Jean, who he said were instrumental in getting him home safely.
He said Canadian officials did not ask him for many details about his experience.
On his way home, Lim spent a night in Guam to keep his travel confidential. There, he began to catch up on current events. Guam was in the middle of an international crisis with North Korea threatening to strike American military targets there amid rising tensions with the U.S.
Lim joked that it felt like North Korea was following him when Guam was in the news cycle.
Lim says that his “mind is open” to going back to North Korea, where he had been going for 10 years before he was captured. He provided food and aid to people in North Korea, especially orphans whose parents had died.
Although contemporary North Korean culture teaches that missionaries are Western spies, he was welcomed to the country without a visa because he provided aid that was needed.
He said in the interview that he often thinks of other foreign prisoners he left behind. He believes the death of American college student Otto Warmbier after 17 months in detention in June shortly after he was released to the U.S. affected how Lim was fed.
Lim also said he felt he was treated better because he was a Canadian.
While in captivity, his granddaughter was born.
“I cannot express, it’s overwhelming,” Lim said when he heard the news.