Franklin Graham arrived in North Korea on Thursday for a historic four-day visit to meet with high-level government officials, visit relief projects and preach at a newly constructed church in the capital city of Pyongyang.
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(Photo: AP Images / APTN)In this image from television, U.S. Evangelist Franklin Graham, left, shakes hands with Kang Yong Sop, chairman of the central committee of the Korean Christian Federation, upon his arrive to Pyongyang, North Korea, Thursday, July 31, 2008.
"I do not come to you today as a politician or diplomat," Graham said after arriving in Pyongyang, according to the relief agency Samaritan’s Purse. "I come to you instead as a minister of Jesus Christ with a message of peace – peace with God, peace in our hearts and peace with each other."
Graham is the president of Samaritan’s Purse as well as the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
This is Graham’s second visit to North Korea – a country where he recalls his late mother, Ruth Bell Graham, had attended a mission school in the 1930s. His father, famed evangelist Billy Graham, had also visited the country in 1992 and 1994 and had met with then North Korean leader Kim Il-sung.
“In many ways, I feel like I’m coming home,” Franklin Graham said. “North Korea was so close to my mother’s heart, and she often told us about growing up in Pyongyang.”
In addition to Graham’s family ties with North Korea, the organization he heads, Samaritan’s Purse, has also been working on aid projects in the country for the past year in response to devastating floods last August.
Samaritan’s Purse chartered a 747 cargo jet last fall to deliver $8.3 million worth of medicine and other emergency supplies. The cargo jet was the first private flight directly from the United States to North Korea since the Korean War. The organization has been working in North Korea since the 1990s, providing mainly medical and dental care.
The Christian relief organization is also one of five non-governmental organizations that has been invited to help distribute food provided by the U.S. government to hungry North Koreans. The first shipment of grain arrived earlier this month.
North Korea is experiencing the worst level of hunger in nearly a decade, the U.N. Food Program alerted this week, according to Reuters. Millions of people, especially those in the northeast, are in danger of starvation as a result of crop failure from the flooding and high food prices.
"What is critical for us right now is to be able to address the immediate needs, the needs of average Koreans between now and the end of the lean season," Jean-Pierre de Margerie, WFP country director for North Korea, told reporters in Beijing. "This is the period when people are hurting."
During Graham’s visit, he will visit a local hospital where Samaritan’s Purse installed an intensive care unit, as well as the People’s Provincial Hospital in Sariwon. He is also scheduled to meet with religious leaders in the capital city.
On Sunday, he will preach at the newly-constructed Bongsu Protestant Church in Pyongyang to conclude his visit to North Korea. Bongsu is one of two Protestant churches in the city.
Graham said he believes it is a historic time for North Korea-U.S. relations as peace talks are in progress to formally end the Korean War.
“My prayer is that this relationship will grow even stronger, and I pledge to do everything I can to make this happen,” Graham said.
North Korea has arguably the worst human rights record in the world with the rogue government arresting and torturing political dissenters, those that attempt to flee the country and Christians. There is absolutely no religious freedom in the country as all citizens are forced to worship current leader Kim Jong-il and his deceased father, Kim Il-sung. Being a Christian is the worst crime in North Korea.
Critics of North Korea have voiced skepticism about the outreach to prominent American Christian leaders, such as Graham and Rick Warren, saying that officials are only manipulating the Christian figures to improve its global image.
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thanks to whomever flagged that last post for proving my point. Truth hurts.
mikeymike-i respect your opinion, however I'm sick of the continuous optimism regarding everything Billy of Franklin Graham does. Franklin isn't God, he isn't the Holy Spirit incarnate, and quite frankly he needs to start showing that he isn't helping the antichrist. "I tell you verily that the antichrist is coming and even now many antichrists have come" Kim Jong Il and any who persecute the church are antichrists. Franklin isn't the Moses of our time. The term "Man of God" is quite laudatory. I think its time for grass roots Christians to realize that televangelists don't always act according to the will of God. Theres a cult surrounding the Grahams that makes them immune from criticism from many within the church. They are not Men of God, rather men who rely on the mercy of God, just like the rest of us.
You who admire Graham's courting of Kim Jong Il have a great ignorance of your own faith. Christ demands that we call a spade a spade. Christ would have had harsh words for Nero and harsher ones still for Kim Jong Il. Don't forget that John the Baptist was beheaded for preaching against their ruler's elicit love affair. I don't see Graham making much personal sacrifice for Christ's message of truth when hes flying around on his own Gulfstream jet. Your contributions are going towards fueling up his multimillion dollar subsonic jet with millions of dollars of Saudi fuel so he can cavort with the world's foremost persecutor of Christians in a nice armani suit. Jesus said that his followers would be persecuted for their beliefs, that a sinful world would reject their message. If you preach the truth to a ruler like Kim Jong Il you end up dead or worse, not flying home with nice photo momentos. He is a charlatan. The Grahams have alarmed me for years with their ability to pander to any audience, and to water down their message so they are now revered even by Atheists. Something is very very wrong here. Quite poignant that an innocent woman was shot for stepping over the wrong line on a beach the same day Graham was visiting his buddy in Pyongyang. "IT is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven". I am worried that the riches and accolades of this world are corrupting his judgement.
mikeymike885, I don't understand your tithing analogy. Putting money in the collection plate is one thing, but it would be a very different thing if you knew there was a good chance the pastor was putting some of it in his own bank account while giving the rest to a team of armed guards who run around beating up Christians and breaking up home churches.
See? It's so unapplicable that I couldn't even put a workable analogy together! :P
i'm sick of your negativity and pessimism, very Christ-like. Just like we bring our tithe and offering into the church and where 100% of it goes we really dont know, but we are giving because thats what we are supposed to do, the same with franklin, and i am thankful for the man of God extending the love of Jesus.
There is a documentary named "Children of the Secret State" which you can view for free on Google Video. I wish Franklin Graham had watched this before going on this "historic" trip.
The North Korean government loves to give heavily-guided tours to foreigners. They take them through all of the richest and most stable parts of the country (even though not even the worst cities in America are as decrepit and impoverished as Pyongyang) to convince them that North Korea is freer and more stable than it really is. "Children of the Secret State" is notable for actually contacting North Korean dissidents who supply the film crew with footage of what life is like in the regions they won't allow foreigners into. It's heartbreaking.
North Korea is one of the most impoverished nations in the world, yet they have the fifth largest military in the world. This is no coincidence. To keep such a large force going, they have to take every bit of food and supplies that naive foreigners send to them.
I believe Graham had only the best of intentions, but I can't help but feel that history is going to remember him the same way it will remember Sean Penn when he took a trip to Iraq in 2002 and declared it "nice enough".
I think that Christ would have done anything to win Caesar Nero's heart to God. After all Chrit died on the cross for his sins as well.
And one last point. Graham claims his behavior is christ-like. Do you think Jesus would have had afternoon tea with Caesar Nero? Graham has lost all respect in my mind by dining with Satan himself and betraying his country by spreading communist propaganda that Christians are allowed to go to church in Pyongyang
you know i think its great that Graham can spread heartwarming disinformation about Kim il Sung being a nice guy. I'm glad that Sung and his father got to be such good friends while 200,000 people a year were killed or tortured in the North Korean goulag. There are horrific accounts of entire families being put into gas chambers together and the parents perfoming mouth to mouth resuscitation to keep their children alive as they choke on their own vomit. Kim Jong Il is responsible for running over Christians with steamrollers as punishment for their beliefs. And nomatter what Graham says, these attrocities are continuing today.As Shakespeare wrote "Tis time to fear when tyrants seem to kiss". As soon as his plane leaves, they will haul off the occupants of these so called "churches" and execute them. Graham will be regarded as a well intentioned traitor by history. The United States and North Korea are still technically at war and he has no business cavorting with the enemy.
I have no doubt Graham's heart is in the right place but there are problems:
1) Will Graham's organization oversee the distribution of the 8 million dollars worth of supplies? Answer: No
2) Does Graham's organization know for sure that the supplies will reach their intended target? Answer: No
3) Does North Korea have a "Military First Policy" where the food, medicine etc. in the country is prioritized so the military gets relief supplies first? Answer: Yes
4) Has the UN & World Food Program and other relief organizations complained (and still do) about reflief supplies being diverted to the military and not going to the populace? Answer: Yes
5) Will the supplies feed and take care of organizations that are responsible for the repression and oppression of Christians in North Korea? Answer: Yes.
6) Is it probable that not one North Korean child will receive any of the supplies? Answer: Yes.
I would feel a whole lot better about this story if it included anything about the supplies being distributed to the populace by Graham's organization. As it reads all I can think is that Christmas came early for the North Korean military and politicians. Sadly, for the regular citizen in North Korea it is just another day.