PHILIP BLENKINSOPÑAGENCE VU FOR TIME

TRUE CALLING: Rev. Peters realized his mission was to aid North Koreans

Long Walk to Freedom
	With the aid of Christian activists, North Koreans brave unspeakable horrors to reach safety. The inside tale of one escape
	By Bill Powell

Posted Monday, April 24, 2006; 20:00 HKT
On a winter's day in late 1998, Kim Myong Suk, 20, lay shivering and weak from hunger on the cold concrete floor of a cell in a prison camp in North Korea, not far from the Chinese border. She was five months pregnant, and about to lose her unborn child. Of all the horrors she recalls from that day, she says now, two stand out. One was that her sister, who lived in a nearby town, had been brought in to watch what was about to happen to her. And the other is the North Korean guard's name, the man who she says killed her unborn child: Hwang Myong Dong. It is not a name, she says, "that I'll ever be able to forget."

Hwang, Kim says, referred repeatedly to the baby as "the Chink," because the father was a peasant from northeastern China, where Kim had fled earlier that year. As she lay on the prison floor, Hwang demanded that she abort the fetus herself. Kim refused, so the guard began kicking her over and over again in the stomach. Then he beat her, and continued beating her as her sister screamed, until Kim Myong Suk blacked out. When she regained consciousness, she says, she "was taken to a clinic in the camp, and in the most blunt manner, they removed [the fetus] from my body."

Continued...

	Missing in Action [Jan. 31, 2005] Is Pyongyang still in the kidnapping game? Waking Up to the Nightmare [Dec. 06, 2004] At last, the world is taking notice of North Korea's brutal prison camps Opening the Gates [Nov. 01, 2004] A U.S. ruling paves the way for North Korean refugees A Whole New World [Aug. 02, 2004] For North Koreans who manage to escape to the South, life is modern, strange and full of challenges Seoul Searching: Mercy Dash [Mar. 15, 2002] Desperate for food and a future, 25 North Koreans storm the Spanish embassy in Beijing seeking asylum Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide [Jun. 18, 2001] North Korean refugees fleeing poverty and repression at home now face a fierce crackdown in China More Related Items | Search all issues of TIME Magazine