Robert Park

Brief Bio of Robert Park
Park, the younger of two children, was born in Los Angeles and moved to Tucson, Arizona with his family as a teenager. Park’s parents, Pyong and Helen Park, are South Korean immigrants. While in Tucson, Park attended Life in Christ Community Church, on Tucson’s south side, and also helped the city’s homeless as well as poor people in Nogales, Sonora. Park began doing missionary work in South Korea in June 2008 but soon shifted to providing aid to a highly secret underground movement in China to help border crossers. Park comes to South Korea for the purpose of leading prayer vigils and mass demonstrations to call attention to the suffering of the North Korean people and has led the worldwide campaign Freedom and Life for all North Korean and help runs Global Justice Prayer Network.

December 25, 2009
The 28-year-old Park at 5pm on Christmas Day 2009 crossed the freezing Tumen River from China carrying a letter containing a list of abused human rights in North Korea, and the request for Kim Jong Il to step down in leadership. The full text of Robert Park’s letter reads:
“To Mr. Kim Jong Il and North Korea’s Leaders: I proclaim Christ’s love and forgiveness towards you today. God promises mercy and clemency for those who repent. He promises forgiveness for every sin and re-birth through the Holy Spirit for those who believe Christ died for the atonement of all their sins, as a sacrifice from God, given in love. He is the true and living God. He loves you and wants to save you and all of North Korea today. Please open your borders so that we may bring food, provisions, medicine, necessities, and assistance to those who are struggling to survive. Please close down all concentration camps and release all political prisoners today, and allow care teams to enter to minister healing to those who have been tortured and traumatized. All we are asking is for all North Koreans to be free, safe and have life. With Love, Respect and Goodwill towards All People.”

Upon arriving Park was badly beaten and seriously hurt by border guards “I heard from soldiers that he was beaten so severely that he will need several months to recover.” Thereafter Park was transported to Camp 14 at Kaechon in central North Korea (rumored to be the most nortious out of the six camps). “Robert Park will be isolated from the general public,” said Kim Tae-jin, co-director of the Democracy Network Against the North Korean Gulag, who fled from North Korea more than a decade ago after having been imprisoned in the infamous Yodok Camp for more than four years. “He will not be mixed with North Korean citizens in prison for the fear of  Park’s evangelical message.”

February 5, 2010, Robert  fake confession interview with KCNA
American Trespasser Interviewed
Pyongyang, February 5 (KCNA) — As already reported, American national Robert Park was detained for trespassing on the northern border of the DPRK in December last year.
He was interviewed by KCNA at his proposal while he was under investigation by the relevant organ of the DPRK.
At the interview, he said that he was taken in by the false rumor spread by the West and committed a criminal act in the end.
He went on to say:
I trespassed on the border due to my wrong understanding of the DPRK caused by the false propaganda made by the West to tarnish its image.
The West is massively feeding ‘Children of Secret State’, ‘Seoul Train’ and other documentary videos with stories about non-existent ‘human rights abuses’ and ‘mass killings’ in the DPRK and ‘unbearable sufferings’ of its Christians and the like.
This false propaganda prompted me, a Christian, to entertain a biased view on the DPRK.
So I didn’t know what to do at that time. I just prayed and fasted and that was my initial response, but year by year more news reports, international media reports came and there were more videos saying the same thing, in fact, saying that it was getting worse, and so that’s why I started to become more and more distraught. If there are people in concentration camps, if Christians are dying like this, if there is starvation I have to die with them. If I help them I would go to Heaven but if I don’t help them I would go to Hell.
At last I made up my mind to go to the DPRK.
Upon trespassing on the border, I thought I would be either shot to death by soldiers or thrown behind bars, prompted by Americans’ false propaganda about the DPRK.
However, the moment I trespassed on the border, the attitude of soldiers toward the trespasser made me change my mind.
Not only service personnel but all those I met in the DPRK treated me in a kind and gentlemanly manner and protected my rights.
I have never seen such kind and generous people.
People have been incredibly kind and generous here to me, very concerned for my physical health as never before in my life. I mean, my family, of course, is concerned about my physical health but people here have been constantly concerned and I’m very thankful for their love.
Another shocking fact I experienced during my stay in the DPRK is that the religious freedom is fully ensured in the DPRK, a reality different from what is claimed by the West.
Being a devout Christian, I thought such things as praying are unimaginable in the DPRK due to the suppression of religion.
I, however, gradually became aware that I was wrong.
Everybody neither regarded praying as something unusual nor disturbed it. I was provided with conditions for praying everyday as I wished.
What astonished me more was that a bible was returned to me.
This fact alone convinced me that the religious freedom is fully ensured in the DPRK.
I came to have stronger belief as I had an opportunity to attend the service in the Pongsu Church in Pyongyang.
I worshipped and there, there was the Jondosa, there, there was a pastor, there was a choir, they knew the hymns, they knew the word of God. That’s why I was completely amazed. But I began to weep and weep in the Christian service because I learned that there are churches and Christians such as Pongsu Kyohoe (Church) in different cities and regions all throughout the DPRK. They worship, pray and preach freely the word of the Bible and Christ word. I’ve learned that in the DPRK people can read and believe whatever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want, that there’s complete religious freedom for all people everywhere throughout the DPRK.
What I have seen and heard in the DPRK convinced me that I misunderstood it. So I seriously repented of the wrong I committed, taken in by the West’s false propaganda.
I would not have committed such crime if I had known that the DPRK respects the rights of all the people and guarantees their freedom and they enjoy a happy and stable life.
I have felt shock, embarrassment, shame. Here I’m in the lands where people respect human rights and, not just respecting human rights, they have actually loved me and showed me more than just human rights. They have shown me grace. I repent and ask for forgiveness to the DPRK for my misunderstanding totally DPRK’s reality and my criminal illegal behavior. Had I known the reality of the DPRK, what I’ve learned here, what I have been shown here, what I’ve been taught here, what I’ve been informed here by all the kind people here about the DPRK, I would have never done what I did on the December 25th and I repent and I’m very sorry.
Prompted by my desire to redeem the crime I committed against the government of the DPRK, I would make every effort to let those who misunderstand the DPRK properly know what I experienced here so they may have a correct understanding of it.”

February 6, 2010
Robert Park is is finally released  after spending 43 days in the communist country and heading back to America to be reunited with his family in Los Angelus.

State of Robert Park
Since the release Park has
- been hospitalized for exhibiting extremely suicidal behaviour
- been treated by multiply psychiatrist
- lost most of his friends
- undergoes fear of video tape of his sexual torturing in NK going public
- prayers  consist of asking God to let him die
- constantly battle spirits of death, terror, hopelessness and despair
- serious heart condition caused by the treatment he received in North Korea. Robert cannot tolerate anyone touching him, because a touch triggers feelings of utter terror that make him wish he were dead.

That is how awfully they treated him in North Korea.