Voice of Freedom

A young stranger walks into Whit's End and asks for John Whittaker by name. Introducing himself as Ji-ho, he tells Whit that although they have never met, he knows about him, and he has come with a question he needs help answering: "Did you save my life or destroy it?" Over cups of Whit's special hot tea, Ji-ho begins telling his story.

Until six months ago, Ji-ho had never left his country, because its leaders forbade anyone to leave. His father, Colonel Kim Sung-Hoon, is a high-ranking army officer, and Ji-ho served as a soldier too, guarding a twenty-foot wall that separates his country from the enemy nation beside it. He had never seen the gate open and never laid eyes on the other side; he only knew the enemy as a terrible, faceless entity he was never supposed to ask about. But his close friend Kwan, who often shared his guard shifts, kept asking the questions Ji-ho was too afraid to voice: Is it warmer over there? Is it monsters, or weapons, or a wasteland? Ji-ho insists that thinking differently from his father would betray his country, but when Kwan presses him to be honest about whether he ever dreams of what lies beyond the wall, Ji-ho finally admits that he does.

At home, life seems comfortable. Ji-ho's younger sister Ara spends her days at a new indoor water park and complains about the cook's bulgogi, a dish their late mother used to love. But at dinner their father describes his work leading midnight raids against his own citizens, people he calls snakes and enemies of the state, and warns his children that the enemy uses brainwashing and could look like anyone.

One evening, while Ji-ho and Ara fiddle with the radio in his room, a broadcast comes through on a frequency that has always been silent. A host named Bill Bentley begins talking about true freedom and how people can stop being slaves to sin. Ara, frightened that it is enemy brainwashing, demands he turn it off and threatens to tell their father. Ji-ho pretends to obey, but after she leaves, he turns the radio back on low and listens to the whole program. It speaks of someone he has never heard of, a leader named Jesus, who talks not only of duty but of a strange kind of love that reaches even to enemies. One verse in particular, Galatians 5:1, sticks with him. Then his father catches him listening, declares the broadcast illegal, and warns that if Ji-ho ever defies him again, he will not be allowed to stay in the house. Whit recognizes the program as a Trans World Radio broadcast, likely from Guam, and gently observes that Ji-ho's father was reacting to the gospel.

When Ji-ho searches for the station the next night, it is gone, and he chooses to believe his father that the words were brainwashing. His father keeps him busy with a surprising honor: a promotion off the wall and onto the colonel's own raid team. Ji-ho proudly joins the midnight raids, bursting into shabby apartments in poor neighborhoods three or four times a week and holding people at gunpoint. Yet the prisoners never resist, never carry weapons, and never possess any plans for a revolution. Then one night the team seizes a book his father calls the rebels' manifesto and orders burned. When Ji-ho asks whether they should read it to learn the enemy's plans, his father angrily commands him to close it. But curiosity outweighs fear. Ji-ho rushes to the truck ahead of the team, opens the book, and spots a familiar heading: Galatians. Turning to chapter five, verse one, he finds the very verse he heard on the radio. On the long ride home, a question he has never dared to think before troubles him most of all: is he beginning to doubt his father?

Weeks later, the faceless enemy suddenly has a face. During a raid, Ji-ho discovers his friend Kwan among the people lined up against the wall. Stunned, Ji-ho insists it must be a mistake, but Kwan calmly explains that he is a Christian and therefore an enemy of the people. Ji-ho begs him to renounce his faith so he can ask his father for a lighter sentence, but Kwan refuses: "It would be a lie. And this country has enough of those already."

Haunted, Ji-ho asks at dinner where the trucks take the people they arrest, and learns of the reeducation camps. He volunteers to work at one, claiming he wants to be well-rounded in serving his country, even though it means a demotion and living among the prisoners for a year. As Ji-ho tells Whit, the camp offers no education at all unless daily torture counts; the place reeks of pain, and prisoners are packed so tightly they must sleep sitting up. Whit guesses the truth: Ji-ho went there to find Kwan. Among thousands of prisoners it seems as impossible as finding a needle in a haystack, but one day Ji-ho spots him in the courtyard, where prisoners are allowed a single hour each week. Kwan warns that any conversation longer than twenty seconds will land them both in solitary confinement, so every Tuesday at three o'clock, Ji-ho receives about twenty seconds of teaching. Bit by bit, Kwan tells him about Jesus, God's Son, sent to save people from sin and make them part of His family, about grace, and about Jeremiah 29:11. Kwan even tells Ji-ho he believes God has a higher purpose for him, one that reaches beyond the camp walls and beyond their country.

Then a guard notices the weekly talks and punishes Kwan by taking away his courtyard privileges. Devastated at losing the teaching he has come to depend on, Ji-ho acts on impulse when he sees Kwan in a prisoner line: he grabs his friend and pushes him into a closet. Kwan is alarmed, reminding Ji-ho of the nightly screams from beatings, but then makes a costly decision to trust him. He tells Ji-ho about a group of believers who meet in secret upstairs near a market on Baesong Street, where he must knock and give the password: "Your word is a lamp unto my feet." Kwan makes Ji-ho promise to stay away from him from now on. Suddenly a guard approaches, and Kwan urgently whispers for Ji-ho to beat him with his stick so it will look like a capture. The ruse works, and the guard praises Ji-ho and leads Kwan away, leaving Kwan's fate, and the rest of Ji-ho's story, for next time.