Jefferson Award: ‘Hero’ helps North Koreans find new lives
Jefferson Award: ‘Hero’ helps North Koreans find new lives
ICC Note:
Reverend Philip Jun Buck, a devoted Christian and native North Korean who became an American citizen in 1989, has been awarded the Jefferson Award, the country’s highest honor for volunteer service. Buck has helped more than 100 North Koreans flee their brutal country since 1994 at the risk of his own life, even spending 15 months in a Chinese prison for “human smuggling” when he was 67 years old.
___________________
3/24/08 North Korea (SeattlePi) When the Rev. Phillip Jun Buck became an ordained minister, he didn’t expect his spiritual path to include imprisonment by the Communist Chinese, or testimony before the U.S. Congress and the United Nations.
But Buck’s Christian faith and belief in human rights led him to follow his conscience. He has risked his life for 14 years to help people from his native North Korea escape starvation and oppression under that country’s Communist regime. He has aided refugees via an “underground railroad” from North Korea through China, despite becoming a political target in both countries.
For his dedication and selflessness, Buck, 70, of Lynnwood, has been named one of five winners of the prestigious Jefferson Award. It is the country’s highest honor for volunteer service.
…
Buck, who became a U.S. citizen in 1989, has helped more than 100 North Koreans flee Kim Jong Il’s brutal regime since 1994. Buck has built shelters in Chinese cities, and provided food and other humanitarian assistance for about 1,000 refugees.
His harrowing adventures include leading 32 North Koreans through 10,000 miles in China, Terry said, “going by foot, boat, vehicles and train, zigzagging around the country, until he was able to take them through the jungles of Thailand and deposit them at the door of the Embassy of South Korea in Bangkok,” where they sought asylum.
“While improvements have been made in other (Communist) countries, communist North Korea is continuing to kill its own people … during the food crisis that struck North Korea for three years, 1 million North Koreans each year starved to death,” Buck said in a speech in New York City last year, after winning the Civil Courage Prize. The award was presented by the nonprofit Train Foundation for “steadfast resistance to evil at great personal risk.”
Buck was 67 years old when he was captured by the Chinese in 2005, accused of “human smuggling” and imprisoned for 15 months. In his Civil Courage Prize speech, he said seven of the 10 refugees captured with him “were returned to North Korea, and either executed or thrown in a political concentration camp where they will most likely die from long and horrendous torture and mistreatment.”
…
Buck was born John Yoon in what is now North Korea, said his youngest daughter, Grace Yoon Yi, who translates for him. As a child during the Korean War, he escaped with his brothers to what became non-Communist South Korea. His mother and father also planned to join their sons.
But Buck never saw his parents again. He grew up in an orphanage in South Korea. He seesawed between believing in God and doubting, Yi said, but one day he had a spiritual experience he called his “personal meeting with God.”
“He felt he received his calling, to be a servant of God, to help his own people — North Koreans — and to provide to people the love and kindness he had received from others,” Yi said.