Stephen W. Hiemstra's Blog, page 79

Schmidt Defines Characters and Journeys

Victoria Lynn Schmidt. 2001. 45 Master Characters: Mythic Models for Creating Original Characters. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books.

Review by Stephen W. Hiemstra

As an avid movie fan, I have long been drawn to foreign films where character development trumps routine Hollywood plots. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy an occasional action film, but I chide at their predictability, use of special effects, and dependence on deus ex machina, often relying on unbelievable timing or special gifting. Superhero movies are especially cliché in this respect slavishly adhering to the hero’s journey template.

 Introduction

In 45 Master Characters: Mythic Models for Creating Original Characters Victoria Lynn Schmidt starts off writing:

“I wrote this book for every writer who has ever felt weighed down by the rules of fiction writing. The theories and information presented here are meant to offer writers a way out of the stifling maze of structure, form, and rules surrounding fiction writing. It is a book that honors the spark of passion and vision with the heart of every writer.” (1)

This is an ambitious goal that she pursues by outlining male and female archetypes and feminine and masculine journeys, writing from a feminist perspective.

Background and Organization

According to her back flap, Victoria Lynn Schmidt graduated from the film program at the University of California at Los Angeles and holds a master’s in screenwriting from Loyola Marymount University. Details of her biography are surprisingly scarce among the references to her many books and fans. The website cited in her book is no longer active.

Schmidt writes in twenty-five chapters divided into five parts:

I. Getting Started

What are archetypes and why should writers use them?

How to use the archetypes

II. Creating Female Heroes and Villains

Aphrodite: The Seductive muse and the femme fatale

Artemis: The Amazon and Gorgon

Athena: The father’s daughter and the backstabber

Demeter: The nurturer and the overcontrolling mother

Hera: The matriarch and the scorned woman

Hestia: The mystic and the betrayer

Isis: The female messiah and the destroyer

Persephone: The maiden and the troubled teen

III. Creating Male Heroes and Villain

Apollo: The businessman and the traitor

Ares: The protector and the gladiator

Hades: The recluse and the warlock

Hermes: The fool and the derelict

Dionysus: The woman’s man and the seducer

Osiris: The male messiah and the punisher

Poseidon: The artist and abuser

Zeus: The king and the dictator

IV. Creating Supporting Characters

Introduction to supporting characters

Friends

Rivals

Symbols

V.  The Female and Male Journeys

Introduction to archetypal journeys

Plotting the feminine journey

Plotting the masculine journey (vi-viii)

Archetypes

Almost invariably authors write characters that end up being too much like themselves and when they do not, their characters act out their own stereotypical prejudices. An archetype is a generalization of a stereotype that reflects a fairer, more complete reading of underlying characteristics (10). External characteristics—face, skin, hair, age, body type, style, and impressions—must be mapped with behavioral attributes (11-12).

Schmidt asks four basic questions of her archetypes:

What does you character care about?

What does she fear?

What motivates her?

How do other characters view her? (14)

Schmidt focuses on female archetypes first both because of her feminist views, but also because for many writers, the female characters are weakened by cultural presumptions and stereotypical treatment. This may show up, for example, in strong female characters being just a male character wearing a skirt rather than a distinctive female character with authentic personality and responses to life’s challenges. This is why twenty years after publication, Schmidt’s work on archetypes remains fresh and why she needed to follow them with an exploration of an alternative female journey.

Hero and Heroine Journeys

Women forced into the hero’s journey are set up to fail. Schmidt sees the female journey differing from the male journey in three respects: Differences in power, differences in support, and differences in expectations.

Differences in Power. Just like there is a reason why women do not compete directly with men in the Olympics, differences in physical strength factor into their daily lives in ways that men cannot easily comprehend. Physical assault is a veiled threat that they live with and take into account in rational decision making. Schmidt writes: “Many women realize that they’re living a life filled with other people’s goals and ambitions.” (194-195). Their journey accordingly starts differently than the men’s.

Differences in Support. Schmidt observes: “The female hero isn’t genuinely supported in her effort to leave her community and embark on a journey.” (195) Where men are expected to slay dragons, women are dissuaded from such things.

Differences in Expectations. Where the ideal women is encouraged to have children and be a good housewife (196), the ideal man meets three societal expectations: Performing, providing, and protecting. Performing is a career expectation, even if it no longer involves battling monsters and running off to war. Providing is all about making lots of money. Protecting involves being a tough guy and repressing emotions (244-245).

Given these differences, the female journey has a different starting point than the male journey. Therefore, the female journey has three movements: Containment, transformation, and emergence, while the three movements of the male journey are: Challenge, obstacles, and transformation (199, 242). The feminist agenda can be interpreted by attempting to merge the female journey onto the male journey, effectively removing the three differences that Schmidt cites.

Extending the Journeys

The two journeys Schmidt lays out should not be seen as the only two journeys, but rather as templates for developing new journeys. A Christian writer might, for example, eschew both journeys in favor of a coming-of-age journey, such as that of the Prodigal Son. A psychiatrically motivated author might likewise see additional archetypes, such as various types articulate in the DSM-V. The Prodigal Son grew to become a functioning adult, while others may fall into addiction, develop alternative lifestyles, or evolve co-dependent personalities. The failed journeys of anti-heroes may actually be more interesting than successful journeys, such as with a Doctor Faustus, King Lear, or Hannibal Lector.

 Assessment

Victoria Lynn Schmidt’s 45 Master Characters: Mythic Models for Creating Original Characters should be seen as a postmodern classic, useful in helping the fiction author to understand and appreciate the world of fiction today. Her archetypes and articulation of journeys should help authors to develop meaningful character arcs. The book can be read cover to cover or used as a writing aid, helping to reference how particular archetypes should be treated.

Schmidt Defines Characters and Journeys
Also see:
The Who Question
Preface to a Life in Tension
Other ways to engage online:

Author site: http://www.StephenWHiemstra.net
Publisher site: http://www.T2Pneuma.com


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Nuance: Monday Monologues (podcast), October 10, 2022

 By Stephen W. Hiemstra

This morning I will share a prayer and reflect on Parables as Genre. After listening, please click here to take a brief listener survey (10 questions).

To listen, click on this link.

Hear the words; Walk the steps; Experience the joy!

Nuance: Monday Monologues (podcast), October 10, 2022
Also see:
The Face of God in the Parables
The Who Question
Preface to a Life in Tension
Other ways to engage online:



Author site: http://www.StephenWHiemstra.net
Publisher site: http://www.T2Pneuma.com




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Nuanced Prayer

By Stephen W. Hiemstra

Father God,

All praise and honor, power and dominion, truth and justice are yours because you reveal to us in Jesus a more nuanced picture of yourself, someone we can trust and emulate.

Forgive us for remembering only the discipline of our youth when we tried your patience and did not display your mercy, grace, patience, love, or truthfulness.

Thankfully, you are more patient and merciful than us

IN the power of your Holy Spirit, grant us your strength of character in dealing graciously with one another.

In Jesus’ precious name, Amen.

Nuanced Prayer
Also see:
The Face of God in the Parables
The Who Question
Preface to a Life in Tension
Other ways to engage online:

Author site: http://www.StephenWHiemstra.net
Publisher site: http://www.T2Pneuma.com


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Parables as Genre

Nathan said to David, You are the man! 

(2 Sam. 12:7)

By Stephen W. Hiemstra

In 2 Samuel 12:1-7, the prophet Nathan tells King David the story of two men, one rich and the other poor. The poor man has only one small lamb that the rich man steals and slaughters to serve his guest. When David hears this story, he becomes indignant because he had been a shepherd and understood the cruelty of the rich man. When Nathan declares that he is this rich man, because of David’s sin with Bathsheba, David is cut to the core and repents of his sin. This parable of the lamb is an allegory, where the context is shifted and the true context is only revealed at the end of the story. The true context then becomes the key, like the denarius in the parable of the vineyard, to the entire story.

Although the story of Nathan’s parable told to David is normally held up as the only example of a parable in the Old Testament to compare with Jesus’ parables, the story is not described in the text as a parable. When the Old Testament uses the word, parable, it is in the context of stories of divine judgment.

Old Testament Parables

Our use of the word, parable, is taken from the Greek word, παραβολὴν, that is used only three times in the Old Testament (Ps 78:2, Ezek 17:2; 24:3). In each case, the parable given is a prophecy of judgment on the nation of Israel for their lack of faith.

Psalm 78 recounts the history of the Israel during the desert wandering following the Exodus from Egypt and unwillingness of even Moses to rely on God provision, when he struck rather than spoke to the rock at Kadesh, as God directed:

“Because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.” (Num 20:12)

The judgment against Moses is personal. The parable in this case is the story of Israel’s disobedience.

Ezekiel 17 recounts Israels attempt to rebell against Babylon by forming an alliance with Pharaoh in Egypt rather than relying on God with a story about two eagles. Ezekiel 24 talks about Babylon’s siege against Jerusalem and the destruction to come with a pity little story about a meat stew.

Parable Defined

The word for parable in the Greek is παραβολή that has two definitions:

1. Something that serves as a model or example pointing beyond itself for later realization, type, figure, or

2. A narrative or saying of varying length, designed to illustrate a truth especially through comparison or simile, comparison, illustration, parable, proverb, maxim(BDAG 5556) .

The Greek definition is close the our common understanding of a parable from those given by Jesus.

The Hebrew word translated as a παραβολὴν in the Greek is masal (מָשָׁ֑ל). Masal carries these inferences: 

1. A proverbial saying, brief terse sentence of popular sagacity,

2. A prophetic figurative discourse,

3. A by-word,

4. A similitude, parable,

5. A poem, of various kinds

6. A sentences of ethical wisdom (BDB 5753).

This is a wide range of meanings for masal in the Hebrew, inclusive of our understanding of Jesus’ parables, but also inclusive of Solomon’s many proverbs and things that we do not normally think of as parables.

What is interesting about a masal arises because of a potential play on words in the Hebrew. Written Hebrew is a consonantal language where only the consonants were written down. Written vowels were a late development (circa AD 400), long after the translation of the Hebrew into Greek about 200 BC. In this case, masal was written simply as MSL. If the S is associated with a short E rather than a long A, one gets the word, dominion, suggesting perhaps why a masal was associated with divine judgment in the three passages cited above. The analogy in English might be–run and ran—which share the same consonants, but have different vowels and definitions.

Jesus Extends Parable Genre to Reflect God’s Character

This excursion into Greek and Hebrew suggests that the focus of Jesus’s parables on God extended the Old Testament parable normally associated with divine judgment to offer a fuller characterization of God. The God of the Old Testament describes himself to Moses as merciful, gracious, patient, loving, and faithful (Exod 34:6). The characterization of God as wrathful is limited to situation where the people of Israel have been disobedient to their covenantal obligations or display hardness of heart like Pharaoh (Exod 4:21). God is not capricious like many other deities in the ancient world.

This observation leads Matthew Elliot (2009, 46-47) to articulate a cognitive theory of emotions: Like God of the Old Testament, we get angry about things that are important to us. Elliott (2009, 53-54) writes: “If the cognitive theory is correct, emotions become an integral part of our reason and our ethics,” informing and reinforcing moral behavior.

Jesus extended the Old Testament treatment of parables in two ways. First, while divine judgment in the Old Testament is primarily corporal (the nation of Israel), Jesus’ judgment is more personal, relating to individual demonstrations of faith or disobedience (e.g. Matt 25) as in th example of Moses at Kadesh. Second, Jesus associates parables attributes of God beyond judgment—mercy, grace, patience, love, and faithfulness (Exod 34:6). Thus, God becomes our father not only in the Lord’s prayer, but also in being pictured as a God who displays a range of attributes and associated emotions. We might say that Jesus pictured God the Father as more human, but that characterization neglects the fuller testimony of the Old Testament—he always was more than just a wrathful God.

Parables as Genre
Also see:
The Face of God in the Parables
The Who Question
Preface to a Life in Tension
Other ways to engage online:

Author site: http://www.StephenWHiemstra.net
Publisher site: http://www.T2Pneuma.com


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Oh and Hassig Paint North Korea in Living Color

Kongdan (Katy) Oh and Ralph Hassig. 2021. North Korea in a Nutshell: A Contemporary Overview. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Review by Stephen W. Hiemstra

As background for a sequel that I am working on, I have been reading about North Korea (NK), the Hermit Kingdom. In my debut novella, North Koreans appear in the plot as terrorists for hire by a rogue element in the Chinese intelligence community. Not wanting to paint North Koreans in a completely negative way, I looked for a plot in the sequel that would highlight positive elements in NK society. That motivation led me to undertake more in-depth reading on NK.

Authors Kongdan Oh and Ralph Hassig wrote North Korea in a Nutshell starting with a different Title: “The Hidden People of North Korea: Everyday Life in the Hermit Kingdom.” (x) This previous title sums up very adequately the objectives and content of this book. The high caliber of the endorsements for this book and of the writing leave one with the impression that this is a country handbook, a genre often underwritten by agencies charged with national security, that has also been published. Lanham, Maryland, where I grew up, is coincidently a short distance from the offices of the NSA.

 Background and Organization

Kongdan (Katy) Oh received her B.A. from Sogang University and her M.A. from Seoul National University. She came to the United States in 1979 and earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in Asian studies at the University of California. She is the author of many books, taught in different universities, and consulted with a number of reputable organizations.

Ralph Hassig has a B.A. in psychology a graduate of Albion College in Michigan) and a Ph.D. from UCLA in social psychology. He has taught at a number of universities and his research focus is North Korea. He and Katy are married.

Oh and Hassig write in ten chapters:

Geography and History: A Troubled Land
Leadership: The Kim Dynasty
The Government: Of the Party, by the Party, for the Leader
Human Rights: An Alien Concept
The Military: Pillar of Society
Foreign Relations: Of a Hermit Kingdom
The Economy: From Socialism to Capitalism
Transportation and Communication: Necessary for the New Economy
Culture and Lifestyle: trying to Live a Normal Life
Conclusion (v-vi)

These chapters are preceded by a preface and followed by notes, an index, and a brief biography.

Geography and History

Oh and Hassig describe NK in terms that touch on my background as an economist and interest in economic development. Only sixty two percent of the population live in cities (4), which would place NK development at a point reached by the United States late in the nineteenth century. The capital, Pyongyang, is the only NK city with a population over one million and the country itself only has twenty-five million residents, less than the population of Texas or California.

The NK preoccupation with military and defense stems from a long history of foreign invasion and rule. However, before the early twentieth century seizure by Imperial Japan, the Chosun dynasty ruled Korea for about five hundred years (12).

North Korean leaders since independence from the Japanese, the Kim Dynasty describe themselves as the legitimate descendants of the Chosun kingdom, even though the official name for NK is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (13). Because the Kim family–Kim Il Song (1945-1994), Kim Jong Il (1994-2011), and Kim Jong Un (2011 +)—exerts dynastic rule over NK, the country cannot be considered communist in the usual sense of the word (14).

Economy

The reason to consult a country book is the scrounge for details that would not be otherwise available comprehensible. Today Wikipedia fulfills that basic need. Reading through such details, Oh and Hassig proved to be most surprising to me as an economist in unpacking details about the NK economy.

Oh and Hassig write:

“In 2020 the estimated gross domestic product (GDP) of North Korea was probably somewhere in the $40 billion range, with per capita GDP at just over $1,000. This compares with South Korea’s GDP of $1.6 trillion and per capita GDP of $30,000.” (155).

Let these numbers sink in a bit. NK earnings are about one-thirtieth of SK. Food waste in SK amounts to more than food production in NK (208-209). NK illnesses include cancers, AIDS, hepatitis B, syphilis, parasitic infections, and tuberculosis (215-216). Just getting enough to eat is a major concern for those living in NK (203).  North Koreans are easily distinguished from Chinese or South Koreas because they are typically shorter, thinner, and their hair is dull from malnutrition. While most Americans are shaped like a pear, North Koreans look like a banana, thin and bent over.

Because North Korean men often have been assigned jobs that they cannot avoid, the failures of the NK economy fall on women who can work small jobs and run micro-businesses to earn money to buy food. While this fact of life has advanced the role of women in a highly male dominated culture, it has destabilized the NK family (232). Women make up most of that escape NK into China, but the majority end up trafficked to brothels or sold as brides in Northern China.

Assessment

Kongdan Oh and Ralph Hassig’s North Korea in a Nutshell: A Contemporary Overview is a fascinating and well-documented book that documents life in contemporary North Korea. Many of the hard-to-document details originate from surveys in South Korea of refugees from North Korea and supplement the occasional reports that have surfaced over the years. The book presents a mosaic that dispels the more typical characterizations that we see in media accounts of the Hermit Kingdom.

Footnotes

https://ohhassig.wordpress.com/kongda....

https://ohhassig.wordpress.com/ralph-....

Oh and Hassig Paint North Korea in Living Color
Also see:
The Who Question
Preface to a Life in Tension
Other ways to engage online:

Author site: http://www.StephenWHiemstra.net
Publisher site: http://www.T2Pneuma.com


Newsletter at: https://bit.ly/Enter_22, Signup






 

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Indirect Speech: Monday Monologues (podcast), October 3, 2022

 By Stephen W. Hiemstra

This morning I will share a prayer and reflect on the Indirect Speech. After listening, please click here to take a brief listener survey (10 questions).

To listen, click on this link.

Hear the words; Walk the steps; Experience the joy!

Indirect Speech: Monday Monologues (podcast), October 3, 2022
Also see:
The Face of God in the Parables
The Who Question
Preface to a Life in Tension
Other ways to engage online:



Author site: http://www.StephenWHiemstra.net
Publisher site: http://www.T2Pneuma.com




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Direct Prayer

By Stephen W. Hiemstra

Lord of the Sabbath,

All praise and honor, power and dominion, truth and justice are yours, because you speak to us plainly in the language of faith, veiled to those unable to believe.

Forgive us when we refuse to listen, close our eyes, and pay no attention to fragrance of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Thank you for deliverance from the evil around us, for the guidance of your image, and the healing that comes from accepting your grace.

In the power of the Holy Spirit, draw us closer to yourself. Open our hearts, illumine our minds, and strength our hands in your service, now and always.

In the name of Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Direct Prayer
Also see:
The Face of God in the Parables
The Who Question
Preface to a Life in Tension
Other ways to engage online:

Author site: http://www.StephenWHiemstra.net
Publisher site: http://www.T2Pneuma.com


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Indirect Speech

For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house 

who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.

After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day,

he sent them into his vineyard. 

(Matt 20:1-2)

By Stephen W. Hiemstra

At one point in graduate school before the Berlin Wall came down in the early 1980s, a Russian friend of mine invited me to a vodka party. My friend’s Russian, ex-pat friends affectionally referred to him as Boris the spy because of his strong family ties to the KGB. At this party, an inebriated Russian friend of his came up to me and began translating an article from Pravda, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the USSR.

He started saying: How could Pravada be so openly critical of the government? The article read: How could the government of Beethoven, Brahms, and Goethe so opening lie about the murder of so many innocent civilians in concentration camps by Adolf Hitler? The professor immediately substituted: How could the government of Tchaikovsky, Rimsy Korsakov, and Dostoevsky opening lie about the murder of so many innocent civilians in Ukraine by Comrade Stalin? He said that for Russians used to lying and doublespeak, the allegorical implications of this article were as transparent as they were astounding.

Under the threat of death for offering comments critical of the power structure of his day (e.g. Mark 6:27), Jesus spoke in parables. Indirect speech—circumlocution, similes, metaphors, poetry, proverbs, and allegory—are common genres in the New Testament. The most extreme form of indirect speech is seen in the apocalyptic literature of the Book of Revelation. It is no secret why the countries with the most repressive governments often generate the best poetry—indirect speech is the language of repressed people.

Circumlocutions

Explicit in some parables and implicit in others are the words: The kingdom of God is like… Because the covenantal name of God, YHWH, is sacred in Jewish thought, the Bible uses numerous circumlocutions—indirect references—for God’s name. The most common circumlocution is Lord, which in Hebrew is Adoni. Another common circumlocution is The Name, which in Hebrew is Shema. Deuteronomy 6:4-9, which begins the Jewish daily prayer, is also called: The Shema.

Jesus began speaking in parables after the Pharisees began to plot against him (Matt 12-13). In this sense, a parable is an elegant form of circumlocution.

New Testament references to the Kingdom of God (Mark, Luke) or the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew) are circumlocutions for the name of God. Its like modern media reporting informed sources is the White House— everyone assumes that directly or indirectly such references come from the President. Almost all of Jesus’ parables refer to the kingdom of God, while rabbinic parables typically elucidate a passage of scripture (Blomberg 2012, 77). What was unique about Jesus’ parables was their focus on God.

Allegory

Allegory can be thought of as a pattern where the context has been switched. In the parable of the vineyard, a landowner recruits workers at different times during the day of the harvest but pays them all the same wage. For any business, this would be odd. Here, a vineyard or garden is a frequent metaphor for the nation of Israel and the landowner in the parable is a reference to God, which is obvious because of the circumlocution: “For the kingdom of heaven is like.” (Matt 20:1) The hard part in interpreting the parable is to see that the denarius, a Roman coin, is a symbol of eternal life (Kissenger 1979, 2-3).

Interpreting the denarius as a symbol of eternal life gives spiritual meaning to the parable. As a unit of monetary value, the denarius makes the landowner out to be extremely generous, but the missional interpretation of the parable is hidden. Thus, a believer is likely to understand the inference immediately, while a nonbeliever might only engage in a bit of head scratching. For the believer, the gift of eternal life is something of infinite value that is not easily divided, not something likely to evoke jealousy on the part of laborers hired early in the day as described in the story. This caveat  suggests a limit on the allegory, even though the primary message is clear.

Indirect Speech
Also see:
The Face of God in the Parables
The Who Question
Preface to a Life in Tension
Other ways to engage online:

Author site: http://www.StephenWHiemstra.net
Publisher site: http://www.T2Pneuma.com


Newsletter at: https://bit.ly/Enter_22, Signup

 

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Kirkpatrick Documents NK Suffering

 

Melanie Kirkpatrick. 2012. Escape from North Korea: The Untold Story of Asia’s Underground Railroad. New York: Encounter Books.

Review by Stephen W. Hiemstra

Most of what Americans know of North Korea arises from conflicts, past and present. My father served in Korea shortly after the Armistice in the early 1950s. Other servicemen have been stationed there. More recently North Korea has been in the news because of rocket launches, failed peace attempts, nuclear tests, and economic sanctions. Seldom, however, do you hear much about the people of North Korea.

Introduction

In Escape from North Korea author Melanie Kirkpatrick begins:

”This is a book about personal courage and the quest for liberty. These qualities are embodied in the North Koreas who dare to escape from their slave-state of a nation to the neighboring, but unwelcoming, country of China.” (vii)

When I was growing up, the negative attributes of North Korea might have been described as saying that they have a communist government, but most Americans today don’t know what that implies. They cannot tell you much about the millions who died in Stalin’s gulags or Mao Zedong’s labor camps that make the holocaust look like amateur hour. The evils of communism are forgotten or dismissed primarily for the sake of open trade, peaceful relations, and progressive governance here that drinks from the same fountain. North Korea is criticized for its authoritarian government, not the politics behind it, and it is characterized as an anachronism.

Kirkpatrick writes:

“The new underground railroad is operated by humanitarian workers, largely Christians, from the United States and South Korea, and it is supported by thousands of ordinary men and women in China…Helping a North Korean—even so much as giving him a meal—is a crime in China.” (viii)

Most refugees from North Korea are women and most of them are trafficked into brothels in Northern China or sold as brides to Chinese men, who have had trouble finding wives. The human trafficking problem is a mirror image of the Chinese one-child policy, now discontinued, which combined with abortion lead to a disproportionate number of men, especially in rural China. Because these women and their children are largely undocumented, they are subject to abuse, discrimination, and repatriation to North Korea, where they may be imprisoned or killed. The sadness here goes on and on.

Background and Organization

Melanie Kirkpatrick is a graduate of Princeton University and holds a master’s degree in English from the University of Toronto. She worked as a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, is a fellow of the Hudson Institute, and has written a number of books.

Kirkpatrick writes in seventeen chapters, divided into seven parts:

Introduction

PART I: ESCAPE

Crossing the River
Looking for a Building with a Cross on it
Defectors

PART II: IN HIDING

Brides for Sale
Half and Half Children
Siberia’s Last Gulag
Old Soldiers
Hunted

PART III: HUNTED

Jesus on the Border
The Journey out of China

PART IV STOCKHOLDERS

Let My People Go
Be the Voice

PART V: LEARNING TO BE FREE

Almost Safe
Unification Dumplings
Left Behind

PART VI: THE FUTURE

Invading North Korea
Conclusion: One Free Korea (v-vi)

These chapters are preceded by an author note and followed by acknowledgments, contacts, notes, and an index. All throughout, Kirkpatrick draws parallels between the North Korean experience and the experience of African Americans fleeing slavery in the nineteenth century.

Information Gap

All aspects of life in North Korea are controlled by the government which restricts access to media and all forms of communication. All forms of religion are banned and even possessing a Bible can get one imprisoned. The official religion is the personality cult surrounding the Kim family.

Ironically, the capital of North Korea, Pyongyang, was known before the communist takeover as the Jerusalem of the East. For this reason, perhaps, Ruth Graham, whose parents were missionaries in China, was educated in Pyongyang, one reason that Billy Graham visited the city in 1994 at the invitation of Kim Il Sung, the founding leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea who himself attended church as a young man.

Because information is difficult to acquire and government propaganda makes people suspicious of outsiders, it is hard for North Koreans interested in leaving to learn how to depart. Everything is learned by word of mouth. The obvious destination for refugees is to travel to South Korea, but that route is cut off by the demilitarized zone (DMZ) at the thirty-eighth parallel.

The DMZ is two and a half miles wide, heavily mined, and constantly patrolled by the armed forces of both nations. The DMZ makes it virtually impossible for North Koreans to leave and directly enter South Korea. In fact, it is so dangerous to enter the DMZ that it has become a de facto nature preserve and home to many otherwise endangered species. Consequently, most North Korea who leave escape northward across the Tumen River into China.

 Famine

North Koreans who escape into China are easily identified. Because of periodic famines, food shortages, and rationing, North Koreans are generally shorter and thinner than the Chinese. Protein deficiencies leave their hair lackluster with many split ends. Their clothing is plain and often in rages. Since Chinese economic reforms, the typical Chinese citizen is also substantially wealthier than most North Koreans. North Koreans are also ethically distinguished from Han Chinese and discrimination is a problem when Norths Koreans try to blend into Chinese society outside of North China, where many people share a common Korean heritage.

The existence of periodic famines provides an economic incentive for North Koreans to immigrate to China and accept the deprivations implied. Even since Kirkpatrick published her book, starvation has been a theme in North Korea life and estimates of those dying from starvation run into the millions over the past decade. While international sanctions have exacerbated the situation, famine in North Korea was a problem before sanctions were imposed.

Assessment

Melanie Kirkpatrick’s Escape from North Korea: The Untold Story of Asia’s Underground Railroad is a captivating read. Kirkpatrick writes like a journalist interspersing her themes with personal accounts of the events discussed taken from interviews with eyewitnesses. It is hard to read this book without shedding tears and asking how such deprivations continue to exist in our shrinking world.

Footnotes

https://www.melaniekirkpatrick.com

Kirkpatrick Documents NK Suffering
Also see:
The Who Question
Preface to a Life in Tension
Other ways to engage online:

Author site: http://www.StephenWHiemstra.net
Publisher site: http://www.T2Pneuma.com


Newsletter at: https://bit.ly/Enter_22, Signup






 

The post Kirkpatrick Documents NK Suffering appeared first on T2Pneuma.net.

Shepherds: Monday Monologues (podcast), September 26, 2022

 By Stephen W. Hiemstra

This morning I will share a prayer and reflect on the Good Shepherd. After listening, please click here to take a brief listener survey (10 questions).

To listen, click on this link.

Hear the words; Walk the steps; Experience the joy!

Shepherds: Monday Monologues (podcast), September 26, 2022
Also see:
The Face of God in the Parables
The Who Question
Preface to a Life in Tension
Other ways to engage online:



Author site: http://www.StephenWHiemstra.net
Publisher site: http://www.T2Pneuma.com




Newsletter at: https://bit.ly/Enter_22, Signup



 

The post Shepherds: Monday Monologues (podcast), September 26, 2022 appeared first on T2Pneuma.net.