On the last Sunday in January, Reverend Hyeon Soo Lim’s sermon was about overcoming evil and feeding your enemies and blessing your persecutors. A few days later he left Toronto for China, where he was to cross into North Korea for one of his routine humanitarian missions.
It was supposed to be a short visit. He wanted to check up on a school, a nursing home and an orphanage that he supports. But on Feb. 4, Rev. Lim didn’t make contact with an aid worker in China as planned. Now, after more than a month of silence, the preacher’s church has asked the Canadian Foreign Affairs department to help find him. But as an official noted in a statement Tuesday, Canada has no one there to start looking.
When the 60-year-old pastor didn’t re-emerge on schedule in early February, his parishioners in Mississauga, Ont., were more confused than worried. The trip was one of more than 100 he has made to the hermit kingdom since the 1990s — all of which have been approved by North Korean authorities, a church spokesperson said.
“He is wise,” said Lisa Pak, a staff member at Light Korean Presbyterian Church who has stepped up to field media requests so Rev. Lim’s wife and 32-year-old son can have privacy.
“He would not do anything unwise that would jeopardize the humanitarian mission,” she said. “He would not say anything against the government, he wouldn’t try to convert people. He’s smarter than that.”
Humanitarian aid work in North Korea is increasingly perilous for foreigners — particularly religious missionaries, who are seen as “agents of Western cultural imperialism,” said Richard Bush, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
Early last month, church leadership thought Rev. Lim was merely locked in a 21-day Ebola quarantine — which is reportedly mandatory for all foreign visitors to North Korea.
“So, we thought, ‘let’s not make it a huge issue,’ Ms. Pak said. “The feeling now is, after the days have gone by, that this is a highly unusual situation.”