Son Jong Nam died for following Jesus

Son Jong Nam.

LOCATION: North Koreaⁱ

ARRESTED: January 2006ⁱⁱ

DIED: December 2008ⁱⁱⁱ

“From 1973 to 1983, he served in the Korean People's Army as part of the presidental security service, rising to the rank of master sergeant...” “In 1997, his wife, pregnant with their second child, was arrested for allegedly insulting Kim Jong-il's mismanagement of the economy and blaming him for the North Korean famine.”^iv

“In January 1998, Son took his wife and daughter and fled North Korea...”^v This lead to his conversion to Christianity. “After becoming a Christian, Son began helping the missionary try to convert other North Koreans hiding in China.”^vi

“Son returned to North Korea with bibles and cassette tapes in an effort to proselytise people in his home country. However, in January 2006, police found the bibles at his home in Hoeryong and arrested him again. According to his brother, the charges were illegal border crossing, meeting with enemies of the state, and disseminating anti-state literature. Son was imprisoned in the basement of the State Security Department in Pyonyang.”^vii

Son Jong Nam spent more than 2 years in prison for returning to North Korea to preach the Gospel.“He risked his life returning to North Korea to preach the gospel. When the Prisoner profile was first posted, Voice Of the Martyrs contacts believed he was still alive, although contact was limited. In 2007 The Voice of the Martyrs made a concerted effort to publicize the arrest and imprisonment of North Korean Christian Son Jong Nam. We have continued to follow Son Jong Nam’s case since that time, in spite of difficulties getting information out of North Korea. Our contacts on the Korean peninsula have informed us that the most recent information leads them to believe that Son Jong Nam has died in prison. We are thankful for all those who prayed for and wrote letters to Son Jong Nam; we are also thankful for his example of faithfulness to Christ. He’s arrived safely Home.”^viii

“According to a November 2009 statement from a fellow State Security Department prison inmate, Son died there in December 2008.”^ix

As always I encourage readers to seek more information by reading the Bible.

© Ken Glasgow 2010

This page was written using Open Office 3.2.1, open source software from the www.openoffice.org this software is available to download for free.

i19 July 2010, “Son Jong Nam Prisoner Profile”, Prisoner Alert, http://www.prisoneralert.com/qry/vp_prsnprofile.taf?pfilid=176&_nc=8a51eb658a1187163cdc9da436179036

ii19 July 2010, “Son Jong Nam Prisoner Profile”, Prisoner Alert, http://www.prisoneralert.com/qry/vp_prsnprofile.taf?pfilid=176&_nc=8a51eb658a1187163cdc9da436179036

iii8 July 2010, “Son Jong-nam”, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_Jong-nam

iv8 July 2010, “Son Jong-nam”, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_Jong-nam

v8 July 2010, “Son Jong-nam”, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_Jong-nam

viFloyd, 6 July 2010, “Son Jong Nam R.I.P.”, http://www.threedonia.com/archives/26754

vii8 July 2010, “Son Jong-nam”, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_Jong-nam

viii19 July 2010, “Son Jong Nam Prisoner Profile”, Prisoner Alert, http://www.prisoneralert.com/qry/vp_prsnprofile.taf?pfilid=176&_nc=8a51eb658a1187163cdc9da436179036

ix8 July 2010, “Son Jong-nam”, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_Jong-nam

Christians drew wrath by objecting to sexual assaults

Muslims Order Christians to Leave Village.

Source: http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/pakistan/21375/

Christians drew wrath by objecting to sexual assaults on girls and women.

KHANEWAL, Pakistan, June 7 (CDN) — The head of a Muslim village last week ordered 250 Christian families to leave their homes in Khanewal district, Punjab Province, local residents said.

Abdul Sattar Khan, head of village No. 123/10R, Katcha Khoh, and other area Muslim residents ordered the expulsions after Christian residents objected too strenuously to sexual assaults by Muslims on Christian girls and women, said a locally elected Christian official, Emmanuel Masih.

Most of the village’s Christian men work in the fields of Muslim land owners, while most of the Christian women and girls work as servants in the homes of Muslim families, said Rasheed Masih, a Christian in the village who added that the impoverished Christians were living in appalling conditions.

The Muslim employers have used their positions of power to routinely sexually assault the Christian women and girls, whose complaints grew so shrill that four Christian men – Emmanuel Masih, Rasheed Masih, his younger brother Shehzad Anjum and Yousaf Masih Khokhar – sternly confronted the Muslims, only to be told that all Christians were to leave the village at once.

“The Muslim villagers came to us with the expulsion order only after Christian women and girls raised a hue and cry when they became totally exasperated because they were sexually attacked or forced to commit adultery by Muslims on a daily basis,” said Khokhar, a Christian political leader.

Khokhar said the unanimous decision to compel the Christians to leave their homes and relocate them was possible because the Christians were completely subject to the Muslims’ power.

“The Muslims had been telling the Christian women and girls that if they denied them sex, they would kick them out of their native village,” Emmanuel Masih added.

Christians created the colony when they began settling in the area in about 1950, said Anjum. Since then the migration of Muslims to the area has left the Christians a minority among the 6,000 residents of the village, said Emmanuel Masih.

“There is no church building or any worship place for Christians, and neither is there any burial place for Christians,” Emmanuel Masih said.

He said that the Rev. Pervez Qaiser of village No. 231, the Rev. Frank Masih of village No. 133 and the Rev. Sharif Masih of village No. 36, Mian Channu, have been visiting the village on Sundays to lead services at the houses of the Christian villagers, who open their homes by turns.

Asked why they didn’t contact local Katcha Khoh police for help, Emmanuel Masih and Khokhar said that filing a complaint against Muslim village head Khan and other Muslims would only result in police registering false charges against them under Pakistan’s notorious “blasphemy” statutes.

“They might arrest us,” Khokhar said, “and the situation would be worse for the Christian villagers who are already living a deplorably pathetic life under the shadow of fear and death, as they [the Muslims] would not be in police lock-up or would be out on bail, due to their riches and influence, very soon.”

Couples Charged with ‘Blasphemy’
That very fate befell two Christian couples in Gulshan-e-Iqbal town, Karachi, who had approached police with complaints against Muslims for falsely accusing them of blasphemy.

On May 28, a judge directed Peer Ilahi Bakhsh (PIB) police to file charges of desecrating the Quran against Atiq Joseph and Qaiser William after a mob of armed Islamists went through their home’s garbage looking for pages of the Islamic scripture among clean-up debris (see “Pakistani Islamists Keep Two Newlywed Couples from Home,” May 27).

Additional District & Sessions Judge Karachi East (Sharqi) Judge Sadiq Hussein directed the PIB police station in Gulshan-e-Iqbal to file a case against Joseph and William, newlyweds who along with their wives had shared a rented home and are now in hiding. The judge acted on the application of Muslim Munir Ahmed.

Saleem Khurshid Khokhar, a Christian provincial legislator in Sindh, and Khalid Gill, head of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance in Punjab, said that police were threatening and harassing relatives and close friends of Joseph and William to reveal their whereabouts.

Islamists armed with pistols and rifles had waited for the two Christian couples to return to their rented home on May 21, seeking to kill them after the couples complained to police that the radical Muslims had falsely accused them of desecrating the Quran.

The blasphemy laws include Section 295-A for injuring religious feelings, 295-B for defiling the Quran and 295-C for blaspheming Muhammad, the prophet of Islam – all of which have often been misused by fanatical Muslims to settle personal scores against Christians.

Maximum punishment for violation of Section 295-A, as well as for Section 295-B (defiling the Quran), is life imprisonment; for violating Section 295-C the maximum punishment is death, though life imprisonment is also possible.

In village 123/10R in Khanewal district, Anjum noted that it is only 22 kilometers (14 miles) from Shanti Nagar, where Muslims launched an attack on Christians in 1997 that burned hundreds of homes and 13 church buildings.

Yousaf Masih added, “Muslim villagers have made the life a hell for Christians at village 123/10R.”