Mountain-based Christian relief group helps poor, needy in North Korea | WLOS

Mountain-based Christian relief group helps poor, needy in North Korea | WLOS




Mountain-based Christian relief group helps poor, needy in North Korea



by Frank Kracher





A group called Christian Friends of Korea has returned from its latest trip overseas. The Black Mountain-based relief organization crosses the border into the Communist North to help people there survive. (Photo credit: WLOS staff)




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BLACK MOUNTAIN, N.C. (WLOS) —

A group called Christian Friends of Korea has returned from its latest trip overseas. The Black Mountain-based relief organization crosses the border into the Communist North to help people there survive.

A 22-year relationship based on trust -- that relief workers are there for humanitarian reasons only -- makes the group's work in North Korea possible.

But, at a time when two world leaders are talking tough about not backing down, that is sometimes easier said than done.

"Certainly, this year has been very extreme, in terms of just the ratcheting up of tension," CFK's Executive Director Heidi Linton said.

Inside a small building in a quiet Black Mountain neighborhood, there's only that brief mention of world politics.

"The fact is there are more than 25 million people there who are simply trying to live their everyday lives under extraordinarily difficult circumstances," said Linton, who just returned from her 55th trip to North Korea.

She said the relief effort focuses on the many who live in rural areas, where's no clean water and high rates of tuberculosis and hepatitis. Medical testing labs need to be built and hospitals renovated.

"Certainly, what we do is a drop in the bucket”, said Rob Robinson, the CFK technical team director who uses first-world expertise to solve third-world problems.

"We are able to supply the places where we work with clean water, safe operating rooms and now these laboratories," he said.

Still, CFK volunteers find evidence of institutional hatred toward America.

"All these missiles going up in the air and the target is the U.S. mainland," Robinson said. "That's the official statement, but the real statement is the relationships that develop over and over again."

There's also the issue of Christians coming to a Communist country. But for CFK volunteers, actions speak louder than words.

"There is no law against loving people in meaningful ways, in ways that change their lives and bring health and healing to them, and it's our prayer, that in that, they will see Jesus," Robinson said.

The gratitude is already there -- a handshake from someone helped -- a sign of hope.

"There's no doubt he was very thankful for what we've done," Robinson said.

Christian Friends of Korea makes four trips a year to North Korea. The next is schedule for March 2018.