epic faith...

is what marks this man, James Kim. For several years now, my pastor has been telling me the story of his remarkable friend and today I found him on CNN Money. He's founding Pyongyang University of Science & Technology...the first private university in the communist country, North Korea. This is remarkable. In a country that has always portrayed the outside world as dangerous and a threat, this humble man of gargantuan faith is doing what anyone else would not dare to do. You can read the CNN article that goes into great detail of the incredible story here. The crazy thing about this man is that he would typically be considered a great threat to all North Korean principles. He's a South Korean immigrant that came to the States and found success as a businessman that chased after and abided by the ideals of American Capitalism. He's also an evangelical Christian. That's why in 1998, the secret police actually imprisoned Kim. He suffered for 40 days in the prison, being told he would die there. Now, more than ten years later...he will be founding the country's first private university that will make giant strides in opening up the rest of the world to a country that's hid itself away for decades.


Here's a brief excerpt describing the greatness of this success: "The school will have an international faculty educating, eventually, around 600 graduate students. Kim dreams ultimately of hosting an industrial park around the PUST campus, drawing firms from around the world -- a North Korean version, as bizarre as it sounds, of Palo Alto or Boston's Route 128.
There will be Internet access for all, connecting the students to an outside world that they've heretofore been instructed is a hostile and dangerous place. And among the six departments will be a school of industrial management."

What strikes me even more though....is not even the success of this University, but the testimony of this man. It's crazy.

"When James was 15 years old, he tried to enlist in the army as the Korean War broke out, but a recruiter first turned him away as too young. "I cut my finger and wrote in blood, 'I love my country,'" so the recruiter changed his mind and accepted him. He joined an army unit of 800, and by 1952 only 17 remained. The rest had been killed.

Until that point, Kim had not himself been particularly religious. He had watched his grandfather "persecute" his father for his conversion to Christianity. But on the battlefield one night, Kim read from the Gospel of St. John, which had been passed out by a U.S. Army chaplain to the troops who remained. Having watched so much of his unit get wiped out, it was verse 3:16 that spoke to him: "That whosoever shall believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

Then and there, says Kim, "I vowed to God to work with the Chinese and the North Koreans -- then our enemies. I would devote my life to it, if I survived the war." "

Epic faith....57 years later...Pyongyang University of Science & Technology begins. James Kim & North Korea=David & Goliath version 2009.
photos & quote from: CNN MONEY.com; article by: Bill Powell