Everett pastor fears for those left behind

Published 9:00 pm Friday, August 25, 2006

BELLEVUE – There’s a reason the Rev. Phillip Jun Buck of Everett risked life in a Chinese prison.

He did it for people, such as the woman he met who would rather die than return to North Korea.

When Chinese authorities came to arrest her, she pulled a knife and dragged it across her throat.

“Whenever I think about that, I feel like I’m a sinner,” Buck said in his native Korean as his youngest daughter, Grace Yoon, translated.

“Of course, I didn’t send her back or make her commit suicide, but I still feel guilty,” he said.

Buck, 68, returned home Monday after spending 15 months in a Chinese jail. Chinese authorities told him the woman who cut her throat survived. He really doesn’t know her fate.

She was among a group of North Korean defectors the missionary was trying to help spirit through China and on to freedom in South Korea.

They never made it.

Buck worries the defectors were returned to North Korea. The reclusive country has a fearsome reputation for punishing dissidents, including holding public executions.

In March, activists smuggled out video purportedly depicting the execution by firing squad of three North Korean men accused of helping refugees escape into China.

Buck, who fled North Korea as a child, is reluctant to talk about family members and others he knows still living in North Korea.

He fears they would be punished by the North Korean government.

Buck, whose ministry is based in a Korean-American church, estimates he has helped feed and shelter at least 1,000 North Korean refugees in China in recent years.

About 100 now live in South Korea, he said.

Economic collapse in North Korea has forced the government to rely on international aid to feed its population. By contrast, Chinese enjoy more modern, prosperous lives.

Many North Koreans he’s met have endured stunning deprivation, Buck said.

“The way they think is totally different,” he said. “When they first came to China, they didn’t know how to open a soda can or flush a toilet.”

One 12-year-old boy he met had never before seen beef and was surprised when Buck and is wife served him the meat.

The boy is now 17 and feeds dreams of becoming a movie star at an acting academy in South Korea, he said.

Buck was arrested in May 2005. Chinese prosecutors in the booming border town of Yanji accused him of human smuggling. Buck admitted he had been paying people up to $1,000 per person to sneak North Korean refugees through China and into South Korea.

Human rights groups estimate 200,000 to 300,000 North Korean refugees are hiding in northeastern China. They are such a fixture that road signs are in both Chinese and Korean.

Buck’s imprisonment was twice brought up in congressional hearings regarding human rights abuses in North Korea.

China considers the North Korean exodus an economic problem and views it much as the U.S. does illegal immigration from Latin America, experts say.

Buck and other activists counter that the issue is more complicated because of political and religious persecution.

Life for refugees in China is dangerous, activists say. Because they live under the threat of deportation, many are targeted for exploitation by criminal groups. Some women are forced into marriages and others work as virtual slaves.

“China should fall in line with the rest of the world and recognize these people as refugees,” Buck said.

Foreign policy experts say China wants to stem the tide to support its communist allies in Pyongyang.

Sipping coffee at his son’s Japanese restaurant in Bellevue, Buck said he worries about the refugees he tried to help.

They likely would face a firing squad if word got back to North Korea that they’d been aided by an American Christian missionary, he said.

The refugees know they shouldn’t admit anything. “But if you are severely tortured, you can confess to anything,” he said. “My heart just aches to think about them.”

Buck was found guilty of human smuggling in December. He could have been sentenced to 20 years. Instead, he was deported.

He is forbidden to return to China. Buck vowed that won’t stop his efforts.

He sees his work as humanitarian relief – not human trafficking.

“My only goal was to help them survive, and by the grace of God I did,” he said.

Buck spoke of a past trip where he escorted refugees on a long and dangerous journey through China and into Laos and Thailand.

The trek included travel by rail and boat. It required bribing corrupt officials and dodging police.

In all, 30 North Korean defectors made it to Bangkok in a rented truck. They later were granted entry to South Korea.

While behind bars in China, Buck said he drew strength from visits from his four grown children and letters from his grandchildren.

He battled the pain of a stomach ulcer and subsisted on a diet that was mostly rice porridge.

Buck said he drew strength and comfort from his Bible, particularly the 23rd Psalm.

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,” he recited in Korean, his daughter translating at his side.