northkorea

North
Korea

www.fretnotgospel.com/northkorea.html

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Learning how to love everyone

Country of the Month         Restaurant

Jan 2003 - Armenia            La Mediterranee, Berkeley
Feb 2003 - Poland              Old Krakow, San Francisco
Mar 2003 - Ireland             Kells, San Francisco
Apr 2003 - Jamaica            Jamaica Station, Oakland
May 2003 - El Salvador      Balompie, San Francisco
Jun 2003 - Nepal                Kathmandu, Albany
Aug 2003 - Turkey             Bosphorus, Berkeley
Oct 2003 - Cambodia         Angkor Wat, San Francisco
Dec 2003 - Philippines        Aroma Cafe, Concord
Jan 2004 - Saudi Arabia      Rihab's Bakery, Belmont
Feb 2004 - Mexico             El Huarache Azteca, Oakland

Country of the Month         Restaurant

Mar 2004 - Mongolia          Col. Lee's Mongolian BBQ, Mtn View
May 2004 - Switzerland      Fondue Fred's, Berkeley
Jul 2004 - Afghanistan        Da Afghanan Kabob House, Fremont
Sep 2004 - Morocco          Menara Moroccan Restaurant, San Jose
Nov 2004 - Portugal           Souza's Restaurant, San Jose
Jan 2005 - Thailand            Saysetha, Oakland
Mar 2005 - Tibet                Taste of Himalaya, San Francisco
Apr 2005 - South Korea      Sahn's Korean Cafe, Oakland
Jun 2005 - North Korea      Jong Ga House, Oakland
Aug 2005 - Japan               Todai, Pleasanton
Sep 2005 - Nicaragua

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north korean army tunnel to south korea

FIRST IMPORTANT THING ABOUT NORTH KOREA
Korea is a divided nation. When a nation is divided that means it used to be one country but now it is two. Korea now is two separate countries: North Korea is Communist and South Korea is a free democracy, where the people choose who gets to rule by voting. In 1904, Japan conquered Korea. The United States, England, Canada, Australia, and other allies fought Japan and won. Russia said that it would fight the Japanese but it didn't until the last two days of World War II. They sent their army to take part of Japan-owned Korea. The United Nations were going to have elections in Korea in both parts to get one president for the whole country. But the Russians pounded their table at the UN with their shoes and got up and left because they were worried that the Communist candidate would lose. The UN had a vote anyway but when they came to Korea, the North was closed off. The elections only happed in the south. The two countries got mad at each other. In June 1950, North Korea attacked South Korea and captured Seoul and all of South Korea except a tiny area around the city of Pusan. Then US and their allies came in a fought and recaptured South Korea and North Korea up to the Yalu River, but then the Chinese army, poured in and drove the UN army back past Seoul. After two years of fighting between the UN army and the Chinese army it was a stalemate and Korea had to remain divided. North Korea tried to build 20 secret tunnels but the South found all of them and now they are tourist attractions. Also the North Koreans tried to assasinate the South Korean president in the Blue House, which is the South Korean equivalent to the White House.

SECOND IMPORTANT THING ABOUT NORTH KOREA
North Korea is a ruled by totalitarian leaders. A totalitarian leader controls everything. The first in North Korea was Kim Il-Sung. They called him the Great Leader. He is the leader they revere the most. He became the leader in 1945 and died in 1990. Now the leader is Kim Jong-Il whom they call the Dear Leader. He is Kim Il-Sung's son. The people don't get to choose their leaders. A person who commits a crime against the communist party is called a political prisoner. The biggest crime is doing or saying something against the leaders. There are 200,000 political prisoners in at least 11 concentration camps. Also more than 300,000 North Koreans flee through China every year many of them Christians. The tiny numbers of Christians are increasing but North Korean agents execute them or send them to the prison camps.

How good is Korean food? The food was great! The restaurants we ate at were Sahn's Korean Cafe and Jong Ga House. At Sahn's I had chips of flat fish. At Jong Ga I had whole fish. There was a food at Jong Ga called bean jello. I did not try it because it looked really gross and Mommy said it didn't have much taste. In the Korean restaurant the big plates go right in front of the people who ordered them. Then there are a lot of little bowls of other things that we did not order covering the table. There were little bowls of sea-weed, baby fried fishies, kim chee which is very spicy and vinegary vegetables, steamed egg, and kim chee soup. The favorite food was bulgogee. It was spicy marinated beef wrapped in a leaf. I think you should go to a Korean restaurant.

by Noah Arthur

Country of the Month

THIRD IMPORTANT THING ABOUT NORTH KOREA
North Korea allows no religious beliefs because it is communist. In com-munism, people must think of their leaders almost as gods. The leaders don't let anyone have religious beliefs. They are worried that religious people would think of their god as more important than the leaders. The most important thing to believe in communism is that the state owns everything and that everything is for the benefit of the state. Communism wants all people to be exactly equal but there is very much inequality in North Korea. The low class is for any person whose relatives helped the Japanese or lived in Japan or escaped to the South or owned land or owned a business, or any person who is physically disabled, or is a dwarf, or is an unmarried woman over 40. In Pyongyang, no disabled people are allowed.

communist posters

kim il sung mauselum

kim il sung statue

communist poster

kim jong il

mayday stadium

soldier

national emblem

men harvesting barley by hand

empty subway station

me with flag

malnurished kids

mayday

pyonyang empty street

pyonyang street

propoganda

juche tower

map

The North Korean soccer team after they defeated the powerful Italian team 1-0 in the 1966 World Cup in England

Tell me about this book. Aquariums of Pyongyang is a book about a North Korean boy, named Kang Chol-Hwan, who was sent to a concentration camp and he grew to be a man there. The camp is called Yodok and he was put there at the age of 9, He was 19 when he got out in 1987. He was put in there because his grandfather had committed a "crime" and the North Korean government send criminals' families to the concentration camps. People in the camps are made to do very hard work and the camps do not give the prisoners enough food, only corn. The prisoners will eat just about anything edible including rats, salamanders, cockroaches, frogs, and centipedes. Kang Cho-Hwan's father, uncle, grandmother, and sister, who was only seven, were put in Yodok with him. His mother was left behind and forced to divorce Kang Chol-Hwan's father. Kang Chol-Hwan's family came from Japan but moved to North Korea because they believed in Korean Communism. When they were taken to Yodok, they barely got to take anything with them. The soldiers took all of their stuff. They were given very bad clothes at the camp and in the winter, where they did logging, it was very, very cold. They had to work if it was above -13F and they were not given any extra clothes. They only got Kim Il-sung's and Kim Jong-il's birthdays off. At the camp, Kang Chol-Hwan would start by getting up at 5:00am and going to school which was really just telling kids about Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-il and Communism. After school he would go home to the family hut for lunch and then to do his afternoon work detail: logging, digging in a gold mine, carrying gold ore on his back, harvesting corn, or taking care of rabbits. He would get back around 8:00p unless he had punishments to do. Kang Chol-Hwan's teachers beat the kids or made them work hard labor at night as punishment. They would get badly punished if they did not speak well of Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung. Many prisoners died there of disease, cold, hunger, gold mine cave-ins, falling trees, and executions, but none of his family died. He was released on Kim Jong-il's birthday with his family because his grandfather, who had committed the "crime" died in another camp. After he was released he had to stay on a farm in the area around Yodok for four years. In that time his father and grandmother died. He moved to Pyongsung a city near Pyongyang and he was about to be thrown into the camps again because he had been listening to South Korean radio with his friends. One of his friends told the Security Force that he had been listening to South Korean radio. One of his favorite radio programs was the South Korean Christian broadcast. "We liked listening to the Christian programs on the Korean Broadcasting System. The message of love and respect for one's fellow man was sweet as honey to us. It was so different from what we were used to hearing. In North Korea, the state-run radio and television, newspapers, teachers, and even comic strips only tried to fill us with hate - for the imperialists, the class enemies, the traitors, and who knows what else!" He and friend sneaked away to China, bribing guards all along the way. He said that a good wad of cash would stop a guard from stopping them. They spent a year in China before sneaking away on a ship to South Korea. After his interrogations, it took him a long time to get used to living in Seoul, South Korea. They interrogated him because they wanted to know as much as possible about North Korea, and to protect him because North Korean agents would assassinate "renegades". Many things that surprised him about living in South Korea: how nice the guards were to him, how many cars and people there were, how proud of his country he was when he learned that most of the cars were made in Korea, how he was allowed to do anything he wanted, how people were wasting lots of money on going to restaurants, and how many of the students and the journalists were critical of the government. He became a Christian and was baptized in Seoul. "At present, I want to work on behalf of the unfortunate souls attempting to flee repression and famine."

Tell me about the 1966 North Korean World Cup soccer team. A man from the World Cup team lived in the Yodok prison camp with Kang Chol-Hwan. After a win in England against the powerful Italians, half of the North Korean players had a drinking party which was not allowed because it was "bourgeous". Many of them were sent to the camps. The man in camp with Kang-Chol Hwan was Park Seung-jin and he had been there 13 years, three months spent in a sweatbox, which is just big enough for a man to crouch in. He survived in a sweatbox longer than anyone else by eating bugs.

FOURTH IMPOR-TANT THING ABOUT NORTH KOREA
North Korea is a very poor nation. South Korea is far more prosperous than the North. Now South Koreans make $19,000 per year per person. In the North it is only $800 per year per person. Until 1976, North Korea was more prosperous because they had more resources like coal and iron. Something the North did that the South didn't do was "juche", which mean self-reliance. That made their econo-my bad. For example, they didn't make ships and trade for food but tried to make only food. There is not enough food rations to feed even close to the number of North Koreans. Only high class party members can get pork or beef. Lower class people only get dog which is not rationed. Many people suffer from malnutrition and diseases. Two-million people have died of famine since 1995.

Tell me about North Korea. North Korea is called the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. The capital is Pyongyang. There are many mountain ranges in North Korea with forests and bears. In the story called the "Aquariums of Pyongyang", he talks about getting chased by a bear in the mountains around a concentration camp. It is very cold in the winter there. It gets colder than -13F, and it a snowy cold. The people who escape North Korea call it the "Hermit King-dom". A hermit is a person who lives away from other people. So a Hermit Kingdom is a country that doesn't let people from other countries see it. The Yalu River separates North Korea from China to the north. To the south of North Korea is South Korea. In the far northeast is a tiny piece of Russia. North Korea's does not think well of South Korea. They are not quite enemies. There are millions of people that are sad about a divided Korea. The main reason is because friends and relative are separated and North Korea does not allow people going in and out. There was once a chance for people to see each other in 2002. It had been 52 years.
Tell me about the history of Korea. A dynasty is when a country is ruled by kings that are from the same family for a long time. Silla was a Buddhist dynasty in the 8th century. The next was Koryo, which was famous for celadon ceramics and the invention of the movable-type printing press in 1234. General Yi rebelled and turned it into the Choson dynasty in 1392. The Choson dynasty is called the "Forgotten Kingdom" because they wouldn't let anybody in except the Chinese. Most lived under a feudal system, where the rich ate most of the money. IN 1446, King Sejong invented han-gul, the Korean alphabet. Japan fought with the Choson to defeat the Chinese in 1894, but then Japan took over Choson in 1910.

What are North Koreans world famous for? North Korea is very famous for having famine and making missiles and bombs and wanting atomic bombs.
What do you admire about the North Korean people? I admire that they can do so much hard work and not complain about it. I also admire that they can be Christians there and be joyful even though they go through so much suffering and are almost dying of starvation all of the time.
What do you pray to Jesus about North Korea? I pray that North Korea will be completely freed of communism. I pray for North and South Korea every day, especially the North. I also pray that all of the people would be free to be Christians like South Korea. I also pray that South Korea will be allowed to help North Korea. I also pray that North and South Korea will be reunited into one free nation.