Out of Many, One by George W. Bush

Author:George W. Bush [Bush, George W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2021-04-20T00:00:00+00:00

SHINHAE OH

Shinhae Oh agreed to be part of this project on one condition: that her story would be shared not as a credit to her, but as a testament to God and the people who have helped her throughout her remarkable journey.

“I was born in North Korea in 1991 and grew up during a time frame called the Arduous March,” Shinhae says. Shinhae was raised by her mother, who enlisted her help after school to keep up with housework and tend the crops that the family relied on for sustenance. At night, they huddled side by side under a lantern. Shinhae studied while her mom sewed her clothing.

“The dictatorship is the dominant national religion that North Korean citizens must practice,” Shinhae explains. “We were made to worship Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il as supreme gods. I was exposed to that kind of brainwashing since I was a child. My mother would always encourage us to hope for a life outside of North Korea. In the last year of high school, I started to realize that the reality in which I lived was very different from the wonderful things about the government that we learned in school. And my mother masterminded the plan for my escape.”

Shinhae’s sister had escaped to China six months earlier. So in the spring of 2009, Shinhae’s mother encouraged her to reunite with her. She followed the trail her sister had taken toward the Yalu River, roughly fifteen hours north on foot. For the next month, she studied the border crossing and the patterns of the guards. Then, with the protection of a loving God she wasn’t yet aware of, she crossed safely into China.

Shinhae describes the next two years in China as a very dark time. “The word hard can never represent how painful it was to leave my mother, knowing I would likely never see her again. The fear of being caught and sent back to face imprisonment or death, and having nowhere to go and no one to tell about my situation, were all part of my daily experience,” she says. Shinhae felt guilty for leaving her mom behind and started to question her meaning and value as a human. She reunited with her sister but still felt vulnerable and alone, as if the world had turned its back on her.

When Shinhae needed it most, she was introduced to a South Korean couple who worked as underground missionaries helping North Korean defectors. Shinhae calls them her “spiritual parents.” She says her spiritual father helped her rebuild her identity and reinvent her inner self. “He offered help and told me that I was not useless; I was a person who deserved to be loved.” Shinhae stayed with the missionaries while they developed a plan to liberate her. In 2011, they helped her slip into Thailand after multiple bus trips. She spent a year there in immigration detention facilities while the American embassy in Bangkok processed her refugee documentation with support from the South Korean government.

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