R eflections from the Editor Praying for North Korea’s “Fear Leader” The first time I saw footage of Benito Mussolini, addressing a huge gathering from the balcony of his Roman palace, I was shocked–and repulsed–by the physical manifestations of his megalomania. His chest swelled like a full sail, pregnant with the wind of self-aggrandizement. He rocked up and down on the balls of his feet in a restless vertical swagger, his arms pumping the air around him like a drowning man. His lower jaw jutted up and out to meet a frowning sneer. Eyes bulged and neck swelled so that he appeared to be choking on his own ego. The man was, quite literally, sick with self. Contrast this with North Korea’s Kim Jong-il, a Tweedledee lookalike who appears to wander, half asleep, through the stark bureaucratic landscape he inherited from his absentee, career-politician father. Flaccid-faced and void of even a drop of charisma, he bears the blank, befuddled expression of a spoiled child who has been deprived of both love and limits. The country’s “Dear Leader” is a lost soul–unable to save himself, let alone his 24 million subjects–and so he rules with banal terror. While no less sin-sick than Mussolini, Kim inspires my pity in a way that few dictators do. Handed a kingdom over which to rule, fed from infancy on lies and legends, he simply swallowed the pill that his father (and his concomitant communist machine) handed him. But regardless of the external package, the internal result is the same: spiritual death. When we put ourselves in the place of God, we suffocate on our own bloated ego. Eventually we drop off the horizon, but not before we take a lot of other folks down with our sinking ship. Kim’s been on my mind a lot lately as I’ve prepared this issue’s cover story and read one heartbreaking account after another about what goes on in his
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country. I listened to defector testimonies, watched interviews with party and military leaders, read the stories of torture survivors. The destruction is vast, the pain deep, and the fear widespread. From the elite party member to the local police officer, Kim’s system of oppression poisons the hearts and minds of those who hold power in that country. It seems that power–no matter how small the amount–deforms us when we seize hold of it instead of leaving it in our Creator’s hands. Two of my Sunday school students with the letters they wrote to the North Korean people.
I teach Sunday school to a cozy group of children aged 2 to 10. Oppressed by visions of Kim Jong-il, I’ve been diluting my despair by sharing it with them. We’ve been reading about the Bible’s mad dictators: Saul, the paranoid and insecure king; Nebuchadnezzar, the ADD-afflicted, worship-me-or-else monarch. And we’ve been praying–bless their little bowed heads and clasped hands–that God would turn the heart of Kim Jongil (whom we refer to as the “Fear Leader”), just as surely as he turned Nebuchadnezzar’s. Send him out into the wilderness, Lord, for as long as it takes to clean house and free the people of North Korea. And then call him home, Lord Jesus; heal his heart with your love. We know you can do it. Lord, hear our prayer. We’ve sent love letters to be broadcast into North Korea, telling the people that they are not forgotten, that someone out there
Kristyn Komarnicki
loves them, knows their stories, and is praying for them. We’ve sent money to groups that are aiding escapees and rescuing orphans–did you know you can buy an orphan on the streets of North Korea for less than the price of a candy bar? There’s a lot to lament in this story, but when I feel discouraged, praying fervently with these little kids for Kim’s heart really does help. The view of North Korea at night, as imaged by Google Earth, is a ghostly black shape flanked by light to the north (China) and the south (South Korea). Even in the capital of Pyongyang, lights are turned off at night to conserve electricity in this land of recklessly induced poverty. This is a place of both literal and metaphorical darkness. It should make us stop and pray–against the spiritual gloom in North Korea...and against the murky darkness in our own souls. For while dictators like Mussolini and Kim paint a dramatic picture of the human condition without God, all of us are prone to self-worship, and all of us know the bitter taste that pride leaves in our mouth and how quickly it can lay waste to the world around us. And so, let us pray, as we step into another year in this broken world: Lord, deflate my ego and pump me full of love for you, my neighbor, and my enemy. Free us from enslavement to ourselves– our agendas, our appetites, and our apathy. And work a miracle in North Korea today so that your will may be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.
Kristyn Komarnicki just celebrated her 10-year anniversary as editor of PRISM Magazine, a job she loves because it lets her tell stories of pain, joy, despair, and hope. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and three sons.