Last month, myself and a Northern Irish fried, Che, made our way to the DMZ. Our host was Jeung Hyeun, a friend from before. We prayed as we looked over the no man's land that gave way to the sprawling North Korean landscape. We prayed for reconciliation and an end to the division and for the Church in North Korea. As we stood in the train station bordering the two countries, Che pointed up towards the idealic sign over and above the guard's stance "To Pyeongyang" - the place where the revival that swept the Korean peninsula exactly 100 years ago took place. Now South Korea remains the 10 strongest economy in the world, has 6 of the ten largest churches in the world including the largest and sends out more missionaries per capita than any other nation on the planet. God has written a special story for the southern region of Korea. We hope for the same in the north where persecution rages on, where brothers and sisters are still imprisoned, beaten and killed for their belief in Jesus. The world has their eyes bent on North Korea. Google Earth has been used much lately to peer into this impossible nation from a bird's eye view. I can only believe that God overlooks this country with a broken heart and desire to see the removal of the dividing wall of hostility that still remains.
We had the amazing privilege of hiking down into a shaft that was dug underneath the DMZ by the North Koreans, one of 5 they have found and this one was only 56 km from Seoul. It was told that 30,000 men could be moved through this tunnel in an hour had it reached Seoul. Peace between brothers and sisters almost seems more difficult than between strangers. We can hope and pray that what happened at the Olympics when the North and South marched in together will move into the reality of these two nations divided that were never meant to know division and that this region of the DMZ will no longer exist, except for as a reminder of what it can cost a nation to be divided.
