Underground University

You're a North Korean. You're starving or you fear political repression, so you escape. Through a harrowing series of events, you make your way to South Korean authorities, the diplomatic mission of a third country, or even South Korean territory itself. You're safe and now you can live in freedom. What do you do next? 

"I'm going to Disneyland!" is not the answer, though you will end up in a fantasyland of sorts, full of characters, with a Mickey Mouse government. 

That's right: You're going back to North Korea. 

The preparations for North Korean "Christian exiles" to go back into the DPRK is the subject of an article by Christian Newswire:

... a group of North Korean exiles at Underground University in Seoul, South Korea are training to grow the North Korean church while avoiding the attention of Kim Jong Il's regime.

These students are part of a 12-month intensive Underground University program that provides North Korean exiles with the skills and training they need to return to serve and grow the North Korean Church.

Christianity is illegal in North Korea, despite three government-run churches in Pyongyang. Returning to North Korea after defecting is punishable by death in a concentration camp. "A modern-day Holocaust is occurring in North Korea. What Underground University students are preparing to do is deadly," says Mrs. H.S. Foley, Executive Director of Seoul USA. "But this program is designed to equip them to face these realities while spreading the Gospel to North Koreans."

If they're just up there saving souls, I have quite a bit of criticism to send their way. But if they're working to bring people out, I'll cut them some slack. As I wrote at Kim Samie's blog, the Christian-run  underground railroad is one of the few organizations where people are risking their lives to help these people. If it is their religious zeal that pushes them to do it — these are God's people and we must even sacrifice ourselves if it will save lives and souls — then so be it. It's not like there are a lot of other groups helping these 불쌍한 refugees. [I wrote something similar in 2005]

I pity the people stuck up in North Korea, especially when giving Kim Jong-il the finger is about all the finger most people will bother to lift. Sure, South Koreans tried to liberate the North Koreans in the early 1950s, but many got shot and killed for it. It's a little to easy to think that the North Koreans got the fate they deserved, except that the people in the DPRK today are mostly not the same ones who were around before 1953.