An 81-year-old missionary who rescued hundreds of North Koreans and told them the Good News of Christ retired this year – and wishes he was healthy enough to go back.
“I want to help them more,” Pastor John Yoon told KNKX during a retirement ceremony at New Vision Church in Lynnwood, Wash.
Yoon was born in the area that is now North Korea and was 12 when the Korean War broke out in the 1950s. He fled to the south but got separated from his parents and never saw them again.
His life was forever changed one night after the war when he visited a prayer house to see if God was real, KNKX reported.
“As I was praying one night, from heaven this big fire fell upon my back,” Yoon said. “The spirit of fire was upon me, it was burning me. At that moment I really knew that God was alive.”
Yoon became a missionary, serving first in Russia and China before hearing about the needs in North Korean, where Christianity is illegal. He returned to the region and organized an underground railroad. The goal was to ferry North Korean defectors to places deep into China, and then to Thailand or Mongolia, where they’d be safe. Such an action was dangerous for him – he could be jailed – and for the defectors, who could be executed.
Once, he was nearly arrested and had to flee to the United States, where he changed his name and passport before returning to the…
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