Placards and posters of the starvation, persecution, and harsh living conditions of the North Korean people lined the halls of Glory Church of Jesus Christ on Sunday evening, leading to the entrance of a gathering of some 2,000 people praying for the people in North Korea and for peaceful reunification in the Korean Peninsula.
"The freedom of the North Korean people is a freedom from slavery," said Reverend Paul I. Kim, the lead pastor of West Hills Presbyterian Church and one of the organizers and speakers of the event, called "The Wailing Prayer Meeting". "That's why we need to ask the Lord for this with tears. And it will happen in God's way. His ways and thoughts are higher than ours."
Sunday's meeting was the 49th "Wailing Prayer Meeting," a Korean prayer gathering hosted by the Korean Church Coalition and Until the Day Mission. It was started in 2004 with some 1,500 pastors in the first meeting in Los Angeles, and has continued each year since, taking place in various regions this year including Dallas, Detroit, Washington, D.C., and Denver.
The thought that reunification cannot come by human means or methods, but in God's way, was one that was shared and repeated by all of the ten pastors that spoke or led prayer during the evening. Many of them referred to the prayer meetings that took place in St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig that led up to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, saying that just as reunification in Germany came in an "unexpected way," God would bring reunification to Korea in His own way.
Six refugees were also present at the meeting and shared brief testimonies of how they escaped and how they came to the Christian faith. Accounts of crossing the Tumen River, of families that have been tortured and killed, of wanting to die because of excruciating hunger were shared. Many shared that they were led to pray and met the Lord during their most difficult and painful situations while trying to escape from the regime.
"I know that this story is similar to so many people in North Korea," shared one refugee who was sex trafficked upon escaping to China and whose family members left in North Korea were tortured and killed. "Please continue to pray for those in North Korea, the refugees, and the families of the refugees."
This year in particular, the organizers focused on praying for peaceful reunification in Korea, placing significance on the fact that Korea has been divided for 70 years now -- the same amount of years during which Israel was exiled before returning to Jerusalem in the Bible.
"For 70 years these people have been suffering," said Reverend Peter I. Sohn, the president of Korean Church Coalition. "We need to ask that God would not delay in bringing peaceful reunification to Korea."
"Our brothers and sisters are naked, beaten, starving, and living like animals," said a joint statement by the organizers of the meeting. "We believe in God's power. Just as Israel was restored, and just as Germany was reunified, we believe God will bring reunification in His own way for Korea. This is why we come and pray, and until that day, we will continue to pray."
