The David Knight Show - Fri Episode #2374: Two Communist Dictatorships, One Terrifying Warning for America

Episode Date: October 16, 2026

────────────────────────────────────────[00:02:07]Sinaloa Cartel Fighters Train in Ukraine as Pentagon Retools EV Plants for DronesKnight says the drug war failed, and warns the drone tactics will come home.────────────────────────────────────────[00:06:27]Knight Warns Against Dictators on Both Sides and the Left-Right TrapKnight says the Hegelian dialectic pushes Gen Z toward Sharia or socialism, and personal stories can counter it.── Interview 1: Elida Decolley — Beneath the Silence ──────────────────────────────────────────[00:13:35]A Coca-Cola Bottle and a Popeye Cartoon Nearly Doomed an Albanian FamilyDecolley says anything Western meant prison, so a grandmother ordered the bottle returned.────────────────────────────────────────[00:20:30]Great-Grandfather Assassinated in 1943; the Family Home SeizedDecolley says communists targeted elites, and an ancestor chose “one day as a rooster.”────────────────────────────────────────[00:33:35]Practicing Piano on a Paper Keyboard Under a “Bad Biography”Decolley says classmates sabotaged her practice room lights, and her family’s file shaped her future.────────────────────────────────────────[00:58:53]The Coworker Who Admitted He Was a Government SpyDecolley says her grandfather never ate in restaurants again, and Knight links it to modern surveillance.── Interview 2: Dan Chung — A Hard Freedom ──────────────────────────────────────────[01:08:50]North Korea: No Movement, No Speech, Prison Camps for “Wrong Thinking”Chung says China is tightening on Christians, while North Korea runs an extreme version.────────────────────────────────────────[01:16:36]Pyongyang’s Christian Past and “Margaret,” Sold Into Slavery in ChinaChung tells of a famine survivor, her broken back, and her forgiveness of those who sold her.────────────────────────────────────────[01:33:41]North Korean Underground Church: Hidden Bibles and Scripture Memorized to SurviveChung says children are told to report parents, and songbun class brands families for life.────────────────────────────────────────[01:44:04]Chung’s Uncle Was Waterboarded in Pyongyang as His Family Was KilledChung says he learned of it after the uncle’s 1998 death, and closes with a call for gratitude. ──────────────────────────────────────── Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to https://davidknight.gold/ for great deals on physical gold/silver For 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to https://trendsjournal.com/ and enter the code “KNIGHT” For high quality made in America products go to HomeSteadProducts.shop and use promo code “Knight” for 10% off your purchases Find out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.com If you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-show Or you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @[e-mail] App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.

in a world of deceit. Telling the truth is a revolutionary act. It's the David Knight Show. As the clock strikes 13, it's Friday the 16th of October, Your of Our Lord, 2006. Well, today we have two excellent interviews, I think. These are important stories to hear. It was Stalin himself, who said a million people's deaths are a statistic,

and yet one person's death is a tragedy. and we're going to give you some tragic stories, but also look at this from the perspective of how blessed we are in this country to have this kind of freedom. We have a story of a concert pianist who grew up in Albania and how her family was persecuted because they had been involved in politics against the communists as well on one side of the family and in business on the other side of the family. People called Albania, the North Korea of Europe. And we're going to talk to someone who has helped people to escape from North Korea. And what it is like there, especially for Christians in North Korea, the worst place in the world for Christians in terms of persecution. But it is a horrible place in so many different ways. So we're going to take a look at the North Korea of Europe and the North Korea.

And personal stories that will show you what it is really like to live under communist dictatorship. We'll be right back. Well, as we look at what has been done to people in some of the worst regimes, keep in mind that we have our government, as well as many governments around the world, are hell-bent on dragging us into a war. Good example of this is what is happening in Ukraine. People in Mexico are very concerned about social media portraits that they're seeing from the Sinaloa drug cartel. You've got people who work for that cartel are actually training on the front lines of the Ukraine-Russian.

war. They're learning drone warfare and many other of the new tactics that are being learned there. It is an experimental field for these guys. There's one of the reasons they like to keep these wars going on and on and on because they test out new weapons and new techniques. And the people in Mexico are saying, so this stuff is going to be coming back, the attacks by drones and these fiber optic drones. And of course, we have found some of these at the border. The thing that concerns me is, as we've looked at this failed war on drugs, and again, it's gone for 55 years. It is a UN agenda to start with, and it has absolutely done nothing to help with drug use, absolutely useless. But it does have a lot of other aspects that the

government really does like. If you want to take a look at the real problem of drug abuse, which, of course, is a spiritual problem. I think the appropriate analogy would be to say the war on drugs is essentially what the government did during the so-called pandemic with the hospitals. The hospitals, the institutions that were involved in it loved the ventilators and they loved the remdesivir. They loved the money and the power and the personnel that it gave them to do that. And the same thing is true of our law enforcement. They love this stuff.

And it has corrupted law enforcement. It has corrupted the courts. And it has done nothing in terms of drug addiction, nothing at all. and it's given us more concentrated forms of it, which is what always happens with Prohibition. But they have been spoiling for a real war. And you can go back and take a look at clear and present danger, for example. Tom Clancy pushing that narrative out there.

They made a movie out of the novel. And Trump and War Pete have been pushing towards engaging these cartels. Of course, they're going to use these military weapons. I suspect that after the election, it's going to be to Trump's advantage to try to create some kind of conflict that is going to involve us, whether it's going to be attacks on our infrastructure or literal attacks with narco-terrorist soldiers that have been trained on the front lines of Ukraine. We're paying for this. It's being done with our money, and it's going to be our lives that they're going to be coming after when they bring this stuff

here. And we can see throughout Europe, similar things are happening as well. They are shutting down car factories left and right. It's just the opposite of what we saw happen after World War II. After World War II, all the factories that have been making bombs started retooling to make automobiles and consumer goods. Now we're seeing the companies that were making automobiles and consumer goods being repurposed to make weapons of war. A company called Amprius Technologies has just gotten a $75 million U.S. Department of War grant to convert an EV battery production line into an advanced batteries for Group 1, 2, and 3 military drones. and they're partnering with a South Korean company to do this. The grant itself will see the conversion of existing U.S.-based electric vehicle battery production, a line that is operated by a major South Korean manufacturer

to be repurposed for military hardware. As they point out, War Pete revealed earlier this month the creation of what he calls the autonomous warfare command. I thought we already had that. that's basically what I think the Defense Department ought to be called, the autonomous warfare command. They don't take any instructions from us, the people, do they? They do whatever the hell they want to do, and they bring hell on earth to everyone. They are autonomous from the people.

They're unaccountable to the people or anyone, and it is a warfare command that they're accelerating. Accelerating the Department of Wars purchases across all categories of drones, robotics, and AI to prepare the military. for warfare. We have to keep an eye on this, just as we have to keep an eye on what the government is doing in terms of trying to move us away from freedom and dignity, away from the Constitution, and enact a system of dictatorship and slavery like we have seen in communist countries. This is a real danger. I mean, we have so many different angles that they're coming at us with. We have the communist socialist angle that is coming at us, the Sharia angle that's coming, the Noahide angle that is coming. And so we have all these different factions that want to have a dictatorship.

I just played for you yesterday. The people at the Maga rally saying, yeah, I think we need a dictatorship. And I want Trump to be the dictator. Well, what are you going to do when you don't get the dictator you want? Well, half the country is going to try to fight the other half of the country. And we really don't want any dictators. None of them are benevolent dictators. They are going to be horrible to live under. That is the nature of human nature. That power does that to people. And that's one of the reasons why they are taking us to war because they want to do the great reset. We are rushing to the end of the fourth turning, and they're accelerating everything that they can. And so it is something we cannot fall asleep. We have to keep aware of this.

And one of the key things that we have to do is to make sure that they don't divide us into this left and right paradigm. They want to divide and to conquer. They want us divided at home, as well as abroad. Everything that Trump has been doing is really to create enemies domestically and enemies foreign. He wants to have, as they do, their professional wrestling nonsense,

he wants to have a situation where there is real conflict abroad as well as at home. That allows them to destroy everything just as we're seeing in Gaza. They destroy everything. And then they build it back the way they want it. And they will build back

a totalitarian infrastructure like the people we're going to be listening to today if we're not careful. So we need to understand what this is. We need to not be pushed in one direction or the other, just like Gen Z that doesn't know history, is now looking because they don't like what is happening with the Zionists. They're pushing towards Sharia law or because they don't like the Republicans and the corruption that they perceive as being capitalism and it's not really capitalism. Because of that, they're being pushed towards socialism.

So we have to be careful that we don't just immediately jump into, and of course, people on the right do this as well. They will look at, well, that's this other group over there that's involved in that. So I'm dead set against that. I'm going to jump in on the other side. We have to avoid that kind of reactionary Hegelian dialectic. They know exactly what they're doing. We have to be onto that game as well and try to educate as many people as we can. Well, I've talked long enough here.

I want to get to these interviews because I think you'll find them to be very useful. It is the personal stories more than it is an argument about economic efficiency or constitutional structure or anything else. That's going to win the day. It's going to be people understanding what it is like to live under these horrific authoritarian systems. We'll be right back. My name is Elida Dada Kole. I'm a classical pianist. I was born in communist Albania.

Living in communism is just hard to describe. He takes away everything. Right of speech, right of thinking, right of family life. Here I am with my family as well as my father, Echeron Dekoli. Under the communist regime, we were considered with a bad biography or a second-class citizen. that was with biography, not the mere, communism, bendacemots that these

people are nother from other so, so much are families. Albania is located between eastern and western in the northern

side of the Balkan Peninsula. We are from Duras. Immediately following the Second World War in 1944, the Communists come into power. Their first priority was eliminate the elite of the country. Unfortunately, this time

targeted both sides of my family. All right. Joining us now is the lady that you just saw in the video there. And I wanted to put that up there. So I was just telling her, since we're Americans, we don't have a sense of geography. So we're going to find out where Albania is. And we're also going to find out why so many people referred to Albania as the North Korea of Europe. And she had a very difficult childhood there growing up in that authoritarian regime.

She has written a book called Beneath the Silence. names that the regime tried to erase. And she talks about what it was like growing up there, her family that was there, and the fact that she became a pianist, and she has a very successful career as a pianist. As a matter of fact, she came to the United States in 2003, got a master's degree from Baylor University,

a doctorate from Louisiana State. She has performed in Carnegie Hall, which always reminds me of the joke. Person asked directions, how do I get to Carnegie Hall? And the guy said, practice, practice, practice. and she has an amazing story about what she went through to practice piano in Albania under the communist. And so she's also a Mason and Hamlin artist and a recording artist for piano disc.

She founded the DFW Institute of Musical Advancement and has testified before the Texas legislature for the state's victims of communism Memorial Day. And it is important for us to understand what life is like in a communist country. We are so pampered and take for granted so many things we have in this country. And it's not until you talk to people like Alida De Koli is her name, not until you talk to people like her, people like Shevan Fleet who talked about growing up in communist China and Mao's China, that we really understand the blessings that we have here and the danger that we face of losing them if we become complacent about it.

So joining us now is Alida DeKoli. Thank you so much for joining us. She's Albanian by birth, but American by choice, aren't you? Thank you for having me. I am very proud to be American and to call myself American and to raise my family in America. That's great. And you know your story, the hook that immediately got me was a story about your father as a child finding the Coca-Cola bottle. I'll let you tell it.

Oh, yes, it's a very interesting story. well, very unique here in the United States. Well, we were not allowed to have anything that came from the Western world, especially from the America. Americans were a revisionist country that wanted to take over Albania and they were our enemies. That's what we were taught at school. So Coca-Cola, yes, Coca-Cola was a symbol of revisionism. The revisionist Americans, the bad people. And somehow it made its way through Italy to Albania.

So my father found it in the, yes, believe it or not, the little bottle. My father found it in the sea while playing with his brother and a sister. And of course, he found something very unique, very beautiful. And he gave it to his mother that had lost her husband in communist prison. So the moment that she saw it, she did not. not want to touch it. Her face, my father explains that completely changed and said, you cannot use this, you cannot play with this, and you need to send it back. So my father's idea was, we'll find some flowers, put some water, and make it a vase because it's very unique.

So make it a vase as a vase in our dining table. But my grandmother said, we are not allowed to have this in our home because it represents America and you will not be able to see me anymore. actually they will take the mother in prison and communist prison and you grow up without parents. It's that amazing because anything that came from America, everything that was written in Western words, Italian, French was not allowed in our country. Wow, wow. And you point out that at a birthday party that you had or some kind of a party that you had as a child, there were Popeye, there was a Popeye movie that kids saw and that got you on a blacklist in it.

Well, my friends came over. I was sick that day, so we had a simple birthday party. My mother cooked. Everything had to be cooked from scratch and make some cookies for my little friends. I think I was third grade or so. And of course, the TV was on. So when my friends came over, we did not have telephone so they could not contact us. We were coming at this time. I just knew that my friends are coming over. And so the TV was on and we were watching. watching papaya. And please understand, when I say the TV, it's not a TV in color and everything looks perfect. It was a TV black and white where you could basically not watch more than be able to watch because the antenna was made by a cane that would keep in the balcony. The neighbors would not see that we had this antenna that we were trying to connect with international channels. So it's unbelievable when I shared these stories with my husband, my children. They're like, you're making this up. I promise you, I'm not. And yeah, so it was in a very blurry way I was watching papaya. But the moment that my friends came to the door, my brother

opened the door, all excited that people, friends were coming over. And my grandmother gave a look to my grandmother that has gone through so much, gave a look to my father, basically, and then she said the TV. And that second, my father turned off TV and said, said that we don't watch international channels in this house. And we made a point in front of the kids. And of course, no one said anything. But, you know, we had to make that point so the kids don't go home and tell their parents and someone spies on us.

Wow. Wow. So you did pull in some international television channels. What about Radio Free Europe, things like that? Were you able to get that? The only radio that I remember listening to, no. overall no, no radio, but the only radio that I remember listening, it was in around 1989, 1990, where the changes started happening and we were able to listen to Voice of America.

And to us, that was a big deal, a huge deal, you know, whatever America thought of news about Albania. And of course, the Voice of America was in Albanian at that time. So we're very careful my father would very careful listen to it. And so with my mother, but I have to share this that actually coming to the United States after a few years, Voice of America, I did,

well, did a segment about me and my performance and my career and so on. And actually, afterwards did a few segments, which I found it, you know, a circle that, and, you know, a circle that we, you know,

it was a radio that we would listen in silence, and I was just so impressed to hear the voice of the speakers and just dreamed of America and the place at this radio station was, you know, the speakers were at their desk that they were sitting and to be at their, you know, at the Voice of America studios and speak and be interviewed by that. Having Voice of America in concert was, to me, it was a drink and true. and very significant, even more significant,

the Carnegie Hall, I'd have to say. You played radio for Europe. How about that? Yeah, I remember I interviewed a guy, he's a Navy SEAL, very successful Navy SEAL, and he was from a communist country. If I remember correctly, I don't know, was it Poland or Romania.

But anyway, he talked about when he was younger, how they would try to listen to the radio and they would have to keep it under the pillows and all the rest of the stuff. and it really kind of inculcated in him a desire to be free, a desire to come to America. And I guess that's really what we're trying to tell people now in terms of your story. This is the other side of the story. This is what we take for granted in this country.

And there are people who want to take that away from us for a number of different reasons, from a number of different directions they want to take that away from us. And we have to be wise and vigilant about that or we wind up in that situation as well. You know, one of the things that your story reminded me of was you came from a family that had your grandfather and a great-grandfather had been successful in business. That was anathema. And so they had to have their property taken away from them. It kind of reminded me of Dr. Chavago that I saw when I was a child.

And all the love affair and the adultery stuff that was scandalous to my parents' generation or whatever, that just went over my head. I was the fact that they came in and took these people's home. but you had you lived through that. Tell us a little bit about that. Well, in Albania, when I was born, everything was owned by the government. And it's starting, it started again as a way of brainwashing people that socialism is this beautiful ideology where everyone is going to be happy. Everyone is going to be equal. Sounds like you'll own nothing and you'll be happy, doesn't it? Sounds like we are right now. Everyone, you know, those moving, changing top.

very quickly when I saw those free stores in New York. It reminded me of communism in Albania, full disclosure. I was shocked. But yeah, so everything was owned by the government. The way that they achieved this is by going back generations, my great-grandfather was one of the founders of the first Albanian Congress, mayor of my city, Duras, an attorney, very successful overall, And very big in charity.

My grandmother would talk about that, so that people just come and actually stop by the house and you just welcome them, you know, huge in charity, very, with an amazing heart. And sadly, he was assassinated while walking in the street with my grandfather. This is by my mother's. He was giving the opening speech

and the Albanian Congress in 19, in 1943 and you know the speech was about unifying the country fighting against you know dictatorships whether it is a Mussolini dictatorship whether it's a Nazi dictatorship all or the communism and then we need to build our country and be part of you know build capitalism and he was assassinated because of this he was assassinated from the partisans from the communist party right before they were trying to take over, they eliminated the elite of the country who they thought it would be a barrier for them to, you know, to take over and have a smooth transition into dictatorship. So that was our first, my family's introduction to communism, I'd say, and from that one generation suffered.

What Americans need to understand is that it doesn't end with just one generation. They eliminate and persecute every generation afterwards. not be able to speak to you today if I was not living in a free Albania or a capitalist country where pluralism is possible. I'm not able to be here. I have not be able to speak English. Because remember, my father and my mother grew up not being able to speak English. If they spoke English, they end up in prison. If they spoke Italian, end up in communist prison because the only language we were allowed to learn was Albanian and any language that the government would allow us, which would be Russian at that time. And so a lot has changed since then, but to me, as a lead end,

I tell this to my children and to my friends. What is important is that we protect our freedoms. We protect the freedom of speech, the freedom of religion. You were not allowed to believe in God during communism and I've written a chapter about this. And so much, so many more things. I mean, what you ate was dictated by the government. You know, you have to go through the lines that Toulon that we used to call. Basically, you'd go through certain lines where they tell you what food you can buy and what you're eating in your house.

The furniture was dictated by the dictatorship, everything. And, of course, could not keep anything that you owned previous to dictator. everything was taken from the government. In my family's case, they were kicked out of their home and thrown in the street while they imprisoned my paternal grandfather. And your great-grandfather, there was a story about that. He was warned that they were looking to kill him. And I love what he had to say. He said, it's better to live one day as a rooster than to die as a chicken. I like that. I thought it's very impressive to say something like that. That's great.

That's the kind of guy that they have to get rid of if they want to do what they want to do to people because he would stand up to them. But the story about when they took your home and what your grandmother or great-grandmother said to them when they were showing them out and she walked through all the rifles and the military that were there. What did she say to them? Well, here's a thing. So both sides of my family were persecuted.

My great-grandfather on my mother's side was assassinated, and my grandfather, my father's side, died in communist prison. So both sides. My grandmother, paternal grandmother, once that she was taken out of her home, and jewelry that she had, including the wedding ring, was taken from. her. Her children were not allowed to even put the shoes on to come outside. And when her brother

came to pick her up, she pretty much the guards that she had, you know, that came to take her away from her own house, she knew them. I mean, it's a small city. And she told that we're not the children of these parents that, you know, I, I, you came to my store, to our stores and we fed you, you were our friends and now you are turning against us. So, I mean, she stood very strong and she said that they're not allowed to touch their children. And she's going to walk away with her children. And they can take it all as long as she has their family. That's all it matters to her.

But that was what we grew up with. As long as we have each other and we stay united and love and protect each other, everything will be okay. That's great. Yeah, that's why I said it reminded me a Dr. Chavago. I mean, I'll never forget seeing that as a child. And yet I hear this story over and over again from people who lived under these communist totalitarian regimes. Talk to us a little bit about, so what was the strength that brought you through your very close-knit family? But you talk about the fact they also had to get rid of God in society.

And we see this all the time in totalitarian societies. They want to be God. And so they don't want any competition. We still see that in China and other places today. You know, they have to dictate that. I thought one of the funny things in China was the fact that they dictated even in these compromised churches where they would allow people to meet. They said, if you're going to put up a cross, you've got to put up Mao on one side and she on the other side. And I said, it's perfect.

The two thieves right there on either side of him. But talk a little bit about what they did with the persecution of Christians. So they destroyed Moscow's churches. Anything religious was destroyed. The Christians, including also. Muslims were imprisoned and they died in communist prison. Today, we are allowed to believe in Albania to believe in God. I do believe that deep down people still believed in God,

even though they did not share about that, didn't talk about that, but everything was destroyed. Everything in the name of the party, in the name of the people, it was destroyed. And religious people were imprisoned. And I have to share a small story that I've actually written in the book about. We used to be in a two-bedroom apartment, two-bedroom one-bedroom, two-bedroom-one-bedroom-one-bathroom-a-to-bedroom-one-bathroom-a-bedroom-with-my-grandmother. And she would wait, thinking that I was asleep, and she'd start talking to herself, if it makes any sense. And she was actually praying.

Oftentimes I was able to hear a little bit what she was saying. And the next morning, I asked her, I said, Grandmother, what was it? What were you talking? We called her, yeah, yeah. What were you talking about? At sleep the last night. She was like, I was not talking to anything, to anyone.

I'm like, yes, I heard you speak. And then I had run to my father. Daddy, she was Bobby. My dad. Nana was talking to someone. I don't know who she was talking to. And of course, my father, like, she talks to herself. all the time, just ignore her.

And my grandmother was like, probably I talked into sleep. But I knew that she was now, she was praying and asking for God to protect her children and her family and support them. And of course, they have to kind of protect themselves and protect you because as a child, if you, to learn that, you might tell that to somebody, right? That's what they would say afterwards. I would say, please don't share this, that the grandfather is talking to herself, to any friends. or it was a religious holidays and she would give us money.

And we had asked, what is this for? And she'd say, it's my birthday. Like, your birthday was four months ago. And I don't remember. Just take it. And my parents are, but don't tell your friends. It's grandmother's birthday again. So it was always.

Well, you know, when you look at this, one of the things that you say is that they would have it out for a particular families. You know, once you've got a family and they were successful as entrepreneurs or they were politicians that they thought might be a threat to them. They now have a black mark on them, and that passes down to you. They called it, what was it, bad biography, I think is what you said they called it. Yeah, and so they had it in for you, and you wanted to attend music school. Tell us a little bit about that, that, you know, your first choice was piano, but what did they do to,

and what was it that caused you not to be able to get your first choice right away? Well, just so we put into a perspective of the listeners, you are not allowed to have cars in Albania. You are not allowed to take private lessons in Albania in communist country. You are not allowed to, I don't know, you even had a TV when the government said that you can have it. Just having to control everything about your life. And we're starting to see that come in, aren't we, in America? I mean, there is this desire to control everything about our life and to own everything in our lives. And so that is one of the hallmarks of totalitarianism, isn't it?

So I had to apply, get into a, had an audition that was pretty, I'd say pretty strict for not having a piano where I could practice. But my mother would take me to the music school so I can hear the sound, the sound of music, I would say. And at some point, I was able to touch a piano for just a tad. I went to this audition that I had no idea if I did well. No one smiled. They asked questions and ask what songs I knew. And if I knew any song about our leader, Uncle Enver, that's what you called him, Uncle, Uncle, Uncle, and...

Big Uncle. Yeah. Everyone's Uncle. And yes, so once that I finished, and of course I had to sing the song, I have to, you know, play the chords in the piano. I had to sing the chords in the piano. So basically they saw how much I can remember, how was my memory, how was my ear. So it was about a 30-minute audition.

Then I was accepted as a violin student. So they said, yes, you are accepted to be at the music school. But as a violin student, of course, I did not like violin at all. I was, I was the instrument. I don't know. You know, when you don't like something. It's difficult when you're first learning violin, isn't it? It gets really screechy, doesn't it?

I had no desire to try the strings, to hold the violin. I had no desire at all. And then I remember sitting, not wanting to go to the violin lesson, sitting outside at the hallway in the school, and the piano teacher said, when do you come upstairs with me? And so she sent me at the piano, and I guess they had an internal talk with the leadership of the school,

and then they reached out to my family. I said, well, let's have her start piano lessons. So that's how it all happened after about a semester studying violin. I literally never touched the violin, but yes. You looked at it a lot, right? Professor Harold Hill in the think system. Just think violin. Well, that's a great story.

And so then that was just kind of the beginning of it, wasn't it? Because you would have to go there, of course, to practice. you don't have a piano at home. And what happened when you go to practice? Well, I was assigned now as a piano student, but they told me we don't have a room for you to practice. Again, I could not have a piano at home. So my parents drew a paper keyboard,

and I was practicing on the paper keyboard, no sounds. In that silence, I truly imagined the sounds. I truly imagined the concert hall. Of course, I didn't know anything about Carnegie Hall, But I imagine that that would perform the biggest stage in Albania. And that was, you know, I have goosebumps now that I speak about it because I did perform in all of those stages and more. And to bring it in full circle, I do have, I do own a music school, as you mentioned. And I do have a nonprofit to help children that need help in musical lessons.

But our students this year are performing at Carnegie Hall, January. 17 at 1 p.m. So it's a it comes in full closure. My music school students, if we have over 500 students, so selected students are performing there. That's great. That's great. And so the title of your book, Beneath the Silence, that has a real significance there. You had to practice on a just a drawn keyboard, which is truly amazing. I go back in how I got into playing piano. We had an old piano. It had ivory keys. It was so old. And they were broken. You had to be about some of them because they were sharp on the edge. But I would just sit there and I would just, you know, go up and down the piano keyboard, just listening to the sounds. I was fascinated by it.

That's when I was a toddler. So they started giving me lessons after that. But you went the other direction. I mean, you love the piano. How did you get to know the piano? I mean, did you hear recordings of it? I did watch, you know, people sing in, singers singing on TV and the pianist playing. And I was fascinated by all that. But my grandmother, my father's side, had a brother that actually his daughter was a pianist. And he would always say that Elida is going to become a pianist one day. Elida will study piano. So he kept repeating that.

And so my parents said, okay, I guess let's place her at this music school and see what she does and where she goes from there. But also what you need to understand coming back to all that is that they placed me into a music. school, but they thought, okay, she can take piano for 40 years and then she'll go to a general school. Because if you went school as a piano student, so then applying to college, only about four students could get accepted from the whole country to study piano three or four in university. And again, university at that time was owned by the government, and the chances that I would get accepted would be zero. I mean, the head of the police station, their daughter was in the my class in piano lessons.

And so my parents are like, she's not going to make it there. So they tried to take me off actually from being a piano student. But then communism fell down, democracy came and more universities were available in Albania and more choices. Of course, still it's just one music university. But I partner with several programs with, but yes, they wanted to me off now because they knew I didn't have much future in music. Wow. Well, it is an amazing story. And tell us a little bit about what happened. Was it the daughter of the police chief there that was playing the games on you with the

practice sessions that you had with the lights and things like that? There were several. One, it was a student that would have the time before me because they wanted to step for a longer time. What they would do is they take the light bulb or the light fixture and they would say there's no electricity so we would go back home and then one time I went with my father somewhere else and we were coming back and the school had actually light the room that we were had light and and so and then we found this family there you know the student that actually was taking was practicing before me my father said why are you here they said well we stayed around. Now it was fixed. The electricity was fixed. But keep in mind, it's just that

room that did not have electricity. The rest of the school did, but there was no kind of problem with my room. And after that, my father brought a light bulb, light fixture and all kinds of stuff that he had to bring with him to our practice time. It's interesting, all in that little bike that he had to carry everything, including my music books, and including sometimes a little heater that you had to brink because it was cold in the practice room. So you had to even bring your own light bulb so you'd be able to practice because they're playing those kinds of games on your end. And it was because your family was marked because you had a bad biography, right?

Yeah. We had bad biography. And we are not. If we complain, we'll be in trouble because we're complaining against the people, the communist people that are actually the student. Those before me, she was very much loved by the party. So we'd be complaining about but actually

are doing so much for the government and for the party that, you know, that would put us in big trouble. So we'd not say anything at all. Would not speak. Now that's one aspect of it that I've talked many times about an amazing story, American who went to East Germany.

And she just loved the idea of communism and she went there and she liked it. And she married a guy who was there. And the Stasi was following her all the time and it turned all of her neighbors into informants. And she didn't realize it until after the East German government fell

and they had the release of all this information, she realized all of her neighbors that she thought were friends were informing on her. One of the things she talked about was how people would change when they'd get into a situation and say running the butcher shop. If you go in there and you line up

to get your merchandise, now they've got a little bit of power over you. And because everybody is being repressed by this kind of government, and kicked, you wind up. Once you get a little bit of power over somebody, you really kind of, you know, run it over that. Is that something that you saw as well?

As a child, I did not understand any of that. I would say that, for example, I would not be invited into certain things. I would not be invited to certain performances. Or the best students will get certain achievements and it was not given to me. And I'd ask my parents why, why this person has it and I don't have it.

Little achievements or why this person went to this competition and I did not. And my parents would say, you need to study more. You need to study harder. That was their answer. And I always thought, okay, I guess I'm not good enough. I need to work. Which on one side I'd say that made me work more, work harder. But on the other side, I was always disappointed in myself.

They could not tell me that you have a bad biography. Once, only once my mother, I was studying for a certain test to be part of a competition. It was the only competition in Albania that members, classmates were invited to go to, but the leadership of the school would choose who would go. So there was kind of, we had to do a certain test, and I had to prepare myself for that test. And my mom said, Elida, sit down, study really hard because you have no future. you have a bad biography and if you are not the best of the best, you have no future at all. And with you have no future at all, basically you are just going to be cleaning around.

And so basically pretty, no matter how much you study it and you'll have a very bad job that actually will not make me happy. Or will not bring much to the family and of course nothing with piano. So that's the first time that I understood that I had a bad biography, even though I still did not know what that means. I did not know that my grandfather was a businessman, or I had no idea who my great-grandfather was because their names were, his name was never mentioned. And so there were so many things. I did not know that my paternal grandfather was killed in communist prison. And I knew that he just died at a young age and left my grandmother alone. So I didn't know because it's also that part that we didn't know who was spying on us.

If there was some kind of back place in our homes that they were listening, everything that we were saying. And they were not shared anything with the children or with family members because you never know who was listening or who we could trust. Of course, we did trust our family much very much. but still it was that fear that something will happen and my parents will end up in communist prison. Yeah, so interesting. You know, I want to talk to Shev Van Fleet, she talked about the fact that they would have their struggle sessions. And she said it's very much like the anti-racism sessions that people have today.

It's not enough to not be racist. You have to denounce yourself as being somehow tainted by this. Because, you know, you've got a bad biography, you know, based on where you come from, based on your family, based on your ethnicity. We're starting to see elements of that kind of punishment, if you will, in DEI and things like that. And right now, you know, DEI has kind of gone silent, but I think it's going to come back with a roaring thing, and we're going to have to continue to fight that.

It is a continuing Bolshevik tactic that we see all the time. But talk a little bit about how Albania has changed. I mean, we had Albania in the news this last summer because you had Jersey. Cushner is going to put in like a one-and-a-half-billion-dollar resort in a protected area, lots of flamingos, other things like that and a wetlands area. There was massive protests against massive protests that were there. They called the Flamingo Revolution. What is going on in Albania?

Have the people discovered their independence and gotten a taste of it? So they pushed back, or they worried that Cushner is a neo-Bolshevik or something? What is happening there? What is the attitude of the people? I don't think that it's as much as to do with Kushner and, you know, the resort. It's more, it has to do more with the Albanian government. That's what I've been. And no one has asked me this until now.

And I'm, you know, I live here so I can share my opinion freely. I believe, I personally believe that this was the Trump family and Kushner was, I'd not call him a victim, but it was a certain, you know, the country is all about building Albania, all about bringing beautiful things. I think this resort has been something amazing for the country. The only problem was that there was no transparency from the government. And so people were suspicious of the government and corruption. Is that what you're saying? Absolutely.

It's all about the corruption. It's all about the government taking advantage and doing everything behind. behind the scenes. We didn't know. For example, yes, you can take that island, but what is the contract? Are you donating this island to the Kushners or to whoever is in charge of, you know, is building this beautiful resort? Or is there a certain 30-year, 100-year lease? What are the water rights? But basically, we didn't know anything and still the government does not share any information regarding that. Of course, they say that we have not made any arrangements or, you know what I mean, it's always something that comes that they're not being truthful.

And I believe, and I'm very sure that this is the frustration that people have with the government. I would just share it for example. It's the Albania, it's now a beautiful country. Tourism is booming in Albania. And I love going there. My children love going there. My American husband loves going there. However, the problem is.

is that the level of corruption is still very high. And it's still like post-communism. It has not fully transitioned to full democracy. Just a few months ago, I had lunch. Just, you know, my son plays soccer. And one of his teammates said, oh, why don't we go and have lunch, the parents? So we sat down and had lunch between games.

And he said, you know, I've been to Albania. And actually, we started the business, oil business. with Albania and other Eastern European countries. But we went bankrupt, he said, because for the symbolism that we just kept receiving bills. You have to pay this bill. You have to pay this bill. You've got to pay this politician and that politician, right? I know.

And he said at some point it came several million, seven point something million dollar bill, and we didn't know what that was for. And at that stage, he said that we declared bankruptcy. But he said it was very, very hard to work there. because still government has power. That's really always an issue. That's why I ask what the attitude of the people there. It's difficult to get your, to get out of that hole once you're in that authoritarian hole,

especially because it draws in the wrong kind of people. And it's very easy to just replace one gangster family with another gangster family, isn't it? Very true. Very true. I could not have said it better. Yeah, it's a pattern we see everywhere, unfortunately. But it is wonderful that you're able to escape that. And I really appreciate you telling people about this.

It is very important to understand these stories, folks, and to tell these stories to your children to make sure they value freedom. Fortunately, we haven't experienced this stuff, but we're starting to see the edges of it, especially when we talk about things like bad biography. And it looks like DEI in so many different respects. So we understand human nature. We understand a lot of these things will look very similar. They'll not exactly repeat, but they will rhyme, and they come from the same kind of heart that wants to impose this kind of totalitarianism on us.

And so I think it's very important that people see this book. Again, the title is, beneath the silence, the names, the regime tried to erase. And let me just before we stop, there was another story that was in there, and that was a stadium was going to be built. Tell us a little bit about that. It was going to be built in an area where a lot of people had been buried. Tell us a little bit about that story in your family's involvement. Well, my great-grandfather, my maternal great-grandfather, was buried there. And, of course, all the loved ones had to take their parents or grandparents' remains in order for the stadium to be built. And my paternal grandfather went with his son.

that actually carried the name of his grandfather. And I believe it was one that was persecuted the mosque from the family because they did not like that, you know, the new Hussein now it's coming and it's alive. And it very much looks like his grandfather. So actually, the young Hussein, I believe he was less than 10 years old, went there with his father to pick up the remains of his grandfather. and he started, you know, he held the, I'd call the head, and that he could see the bullets, where the bullet came from.

And in his mind, he shared this story with me. In his mind, he's starting to imagine his grandfather and, you know, how he died and the whole, you know, the whole experience and, you know, putting the, connecting, you know, the bones to the body. And it's just so traumatic. I can't imagine having my child go through that experience. And, you know, to me, it was a shocking experience that I did not know until actually he shared it with me when I was writing this book. So, yeah.

Yeah, it's important to pass those stories on. And, of course, it is their desire to control and to own everything. We see that happening a lot right now as well. And it has. It has to be, you know, we have to understand what this is at. I'm sorry, go ahead. Yes. I just want to share, right now it does not happen anymore through that kind of violence,

but there are other ways. It's social media. It's bullying. It's trying to keep people under control and not speak about a certain thing. Or, you know, you said, I believe that if you send a child to school, you need to know what they're studying about, what they're learning at school. To me, that's extremely important. I want to educate my child the way that I want to.

And I sent my son to school or my daughter. And they have to follow certain curriculum that actually it's being shared with us, not to give anything extra to be at it. And sadly, it was happening. And to me, that was frightening and devastating at the same time. Yeah, it is always, they always target the kids, don't they? Because I want to get them at an early impressionable age. Absolutely.

Absolutely. They have brainwashed them at the effort. So they continue thinking that way. Someone told me a few days ago, actually, I did not know. I did not think of it this way. But what happened is that in post-communist or in communist countries, their leadership when they failed, when the communist countries failed in 1990s, their leadership, the people that actually knew what was happening in the Western world that had these connections left the country one way or another. and we're able to get positions in the Western Europe, including America as professors or, you know, leadership. And so that it's on. And of course, they have for the longest time schemed about marching through the institutions and taking institutions over from the top. I mean, you can have a revolution in the streets or they can march through the institutions and take it over from the top. There's a lot of different ways that they can come after you.

But it's always the same tactics that they use in every country, isn't it? Oh, absolutely. It's the same way. I'm talking here about Albania, but most of Eastern Europe is the same. And, I mean, the fear is Western Europe. We want to make sure that the Western Europe stays Western and civilized. Capitalism is in charge, I would say. I mean, raising taxes as high as these countries are in Western countries are doing its control.

The government is in control over. When we're another, they're not able to function the way that they would like to. I'm a big believer in donating. I'm a big believer in giving. But I choose who I want to give. I choose who I want to donate. Where I believe that my money, my heart earned money goes. I came to this country, to America.

I do like to share. I shared this with my children a lot, and I'm sure you have heard it, but I did not have much. I came here as an international student. I was given the opportunity to work at the university, and everything went from there. I was able to have a managing company and have this life that I built it all on my own, all by myself, and I work a lot. I'd say there are days that I sleep three hours, and I change to donate to people that actually do not have the opportunity to succeed because they don't have, their parents are very, you know, from poor income families

and don't have the opportunity to give everything that is possible to their children. And I'm okay with donating there. I actually am a big believer in donating in things that I believe. However, I don't want to give my money to someone that does not work. And here I am working 18 hours a day or 20 hours a day at times. And just, I'd say, giving it to the government or throwing it all. all the way. So I'm a big believer that you need what belongs to you and share the way that you believe it's the best way to the best use of your, your heart earned money or.

And that's exactly what Alexis de Tocqueville saw when he came to the U.S. from socialist France. He said, you know, we need something in France. We always turn the government for it. He said, here in America, people will come together voluntarily and support people. And when you do that, you can tell who really needs it and who's just a slacker, who's just a slacker, who's just just kind of gaming the system. If you have the charity at the interpersonal level, at the lowest level, there is a check against that kind of fraud and abuse and waste and things like that. But once it becomes institutionalized, that's not there.

And it's really the government's purpose and all this stuff is not really to help people anyway. The government's purpose is to make people dependent on it. Just take a look at what's happening with the universal basic income and the push for doing that. that's coming from the technocrats. They want people just to own nothing and to be dependent on them for everything

and to get their permission for everything. It is a system of totalitarianism, if ever there was one. And so you can have totalitarianism can come to you with a variety of different political philosophies that can come at you from a variety of different angles. But the key thing is to go back and to look at someone's life like yours.

And that cuts down to the essence of it. And so we get really, bit of the different justifications, economic or political, for these different systems, and you look at how it actually operates and what it does to people and where it comes from, the human heart that produces this type of thing. And once you see that human heart, I think, and once you see the results of how that looks in a particular country like you see in your life story, then it is something that you can spot, I think.

The people who have grown up and lived in a communist society, they can spot it, mile away. That's why these biographies like yours are so important, I think. It's very interesting because not very many people from Albania have been able to write a biography about, you know, about the communist or to write about the country's communism. Most of it has been from international voices writing about Albania and communism and, you know, the dictatorship and, you know, socialism. Because that's what we call ourselves. We call the people socialist, uh, uh, for a public. And so it's, it's very, they always use that word, don't they? I mean, the Nazis used it. The, uh, the Soviets used it. The, uh, the communists used it

everywhere, socialist, uh, because they always come to you and say, you know, this is all about supporting the community, you know, communism is about the community. We're all going to come together and help each other. It's not like that at all, is it? Inreal, that's just the, the way that they come to you with it, isn't it? Absolutely not. They come to you in the name of the people, in the name of wanting to have everyone, basically not being unique, but everyone needs to fit in, and it's all about the community, and it's very far from that. So actually, such a common in some, it's all about divisive, very divisive, I'd say. The classes are very, very divisive. If you are the class of the people that support the party that are their, I'd call them their puppies, do whatever the government tells them.

And then there is the people that actually do not believe in it, but they cannot say much. They cannot do much because they're being watched at all times. And that and my families were watched at all times 24-7. And you said an example that the friends were not, you know, you don't have friends because I remember my family. had friends, had people that actually loved them, but, and they spoke with them. But what is extremely important that I wrote that in the book, I did not know about that until my mother shared it, but I always was shocked that my grandfather, by my mother's side, would never sit at a restaurant for coffee, for lunch, for dinner.

They always ate at home. And they went to the grocery store. They never spoke of anything other than the weather. And that was it. One story that my grandfather, my maternal grandfather, because I did not meet the paternal one, my maternal grandfather would have jobs, very random jobs from every three to six months.

The government would move him because they were scared that he might create relationships and might start a clan against communist. So one, one person, and I've changed the name in the book, and he's still alive today. One day went to my grandfather and told him that it has been three months that we have been working together. I have goosebumps while I speak. It has been three months that we have been working together. You have been just such an amazing person, so positive, so kind. I do have to

share with you that I have worked with you so closely. I am trying to be your friend, but I the government actually, I'm a spy from the government. He was straightforward. Spy from the government and I'm supposed to share every single step that you take, every single conversation that you share. And my grandfather didn't say a word. He said, then this ex-person, the spy, told to my grandfather, just one piece of advice.

Do not sit at a restaurant. don't go to a restaurant or don't go for a coffee anywhere because something might happen that a result will be you being imprisoned. My guess is that perhaps someone might attack him, might not take him. So they will take him. They could not find one thing to imprison my family. And so to that point, none of my family members ever said at a restaurant or at a coffee shop or anywhere that it might endanger them, you know, their life.

And so where do we see that today? I mean, that's what we should think about when we see surveillance out there, isn't it? We should look at that and say, well, if somebody has authoritarian designs on things and, you know, they're looking to monitor people that disagree with them politically or that they might find to be enemies of the state, however they define that at a given moment, they will with the listening devices that we've got now. Your refrigerator is listening to you. In this kind of technological environment, they wouldn't be safe eating at home because

the refrigerators are spying on you. Your appliances are spying on you. Your Samsung phone is taking down everything. You've got an Apple Watch is going to record all your conversations for the day. But we're supposed to believe that those are not available to anybody who has a government or somebody who wants to look into our lives. But that's the reality that is being set up there. And it's going to be a very, very difficult situation if we don't go back and recover the foundations of this country, the Constitution of the Bill of Rights that were there to keep that type of thing from happening.

I think that is the key thing. And people just, again, they don't think twice about it. They don't really value it as we see free speech being proscribed and punished in various ways for various agendas, especially in the UK. even the home of George Orwell. They're doing everything that he talked about. And I think that's a very concerning thing. But when we look at the life that they lived, again, they had to rely in Albania and in Eastern Germany,

they had to rely on individual human spies. Now they have apps for that and they have devices for that. And they can single us out. And we don't even know why we're being singled out. And we're never able to confront our accusers. One of the first, as a reporter, one of the first stories I covered was a guy who got on a number, no-fly list and he couldn't find out why he was on the no-fly list and he couldn't find out how to

get off of it. You know, they weren't going to confront him with what they had against him. And apparently they didn't have anything at all because eventually as he got it ought of press out of it, they removed that. But that's the kind of world that we are so close to in this country. It could very easily flip in a moment just as it did for your family. And I have to share that I'm a big believer that this is the country that we can actually still live free and be ourselves. There's nowhere to go from here. So we need to make sure that we protect, that we need to make sure that we raise our voice

and for what we believe. And brainwashing, it's so true nowadays, especially with the younger generation. That's my biggest fear. We need to educate them about the values of freedom, the values of hard work, ethics, and build a strong, strong, strong, next generation of leaders of this world.

I agree. And all of these biographical stories of people lived under totalitarianism, yours especially, I think are real warning to people. This is what happens when human nature is given uncontrolled power. This is what they will do every single time. It doesn't matter what country it is. It doesn't matter. You can split Germany, east and west,

and you can split Korea, North and South, but it's going to be the people who live under that political system and what it's going to do to them. It's going to turn them into monsters. It's going to make the country poor, oppressed, and all the rest of this. And we see this happening over and over again. And it really is your personal story and others like it

that I think are the key for people to really understand this. You can talk to people about economic theory. You can talk to people about political theory. But the thing that gets it across to people is to see a life story that is there. they can relate to that. Very well. Yeah.

And so again, the book is beneath the silence. The names, a regime tried to erase. This is by Alida DeCole. Do I pronounce your name correctly? And thank you so much for joining us. And thank you so much for taking the time to do this book. I know that you spent a lot of time talking to family members to get these stories. And it is a story that honors your family, but it also a warning to the rest of us.

Thank you so much, Alita. Appreciate it. Thank you. It has been the honor of my life of writing this book. I've been very fortunate, and I do believe that I have to give back. And this is one of my ways of giving back and educating the next generation. Thank you so much for having your show. Thank you. It's a wonderful way to give back. And I guess everybody can find this wherever books are sold, or do you have a special website that people can get it directly from you? they're more than welcome to go to the Simon & Schuster website or on Amazon or directly on my website,

elida da cully.com. And we have that under your name there on the screen so people can see that as well. That's great. Book lunch. The book is available November 3rd, anywhere where books are sold. Okay, great. So we're about a month out from it, not even a month. I guess we're about two weeks out from it releasing.

So be on the lookout. Again, the name of the book is, Beneath the Silence, the names a regime tried to erase. Beneath the Silence. Thank you so much, Alita. The book is still available, although at this time, the book is available for pre-sale. Oh, okay. Great, great.

So people will be able to find it. Good. Absolutely. Well, thank you very much for joining us. And thank you for the book. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Joining us today is Dan Chung. He is a co-founder, executive director of an organization called Crossing Borders. He works with people, and I guess we could say North Korea is the gold medalist in terms of tyranny, certainly in terms of Christian persecution. I was just talking earlier to someone who grew up in Albania, Dan, and people referred to Albania as the North Korea of Europe. And so I guess that kind of sets a standard. Thank you so much for joining us. And he is, his organization, crossing borders, he is the co-founder and the executive director of that. And you've been doing that for 20 years or is it more than 20 years that you've got there?

23. 23 years, wow. And so we want to talk to him. He's written a book about this, about his experiences of people trying to get out of North Korea, what happens in North Korea, especially to Christians. You know, as we were talking to Alita from Albania, she was talking about the fact that they would single out people whose family had family line had included people who were successful in business or in politics. They could perceive them as a threat. And they would focus on those people. Well, if you want to be seen as a threat to the totalitarian government, just choose to join the family of Christ.

And you'll find out what persecution is really about. and Dan has seen some amazing stories. I've been going through some of the accounts here in his book as we were waiting to connect. And you began with some stories out of China. So many people think about China when they think of home churches and communist government persecution. How is North Korea different from China? North Korea is a lot more restrictive or has been. but that's beginning to change in China.

China is beginning to tighten the screws on its Christian population there, limiting, you know, freedom of gathering. And North Korea is an extreme version of that, and it sounds a lot like Albania, how you describe it. North Korea has no freedom of speech, obviously. There's no freedom of movement. You can't go from one town to the next without getting multiple permissions from the government. They've already got there 15-minute cities, right? Yeah. You see these same tactics happening everywhere, don't we?

Yeah. It's crazy. And you can be jailed for something called wrong thinking in North Korea. Korea, where if you express a thought that is against the regime, you can be sent to a prison camp that's akin to Nazi Germany. Wow. Tell us a little bit about how you got into this. You had some family that were involved there, of course.

How did you get involved in terms of helping people? Yeah, so my best friend from college, Mike Kim, took a short-term missions trip in 2001 to the China-North Korea border. He was just following, tagging along with a pastor that he knew. And at one of the underground churches that he visited, he found, he met some North Koreans who had just escaped the famine in North Korea. North Korea went through a famine between 1995 and 1998, where about 11% of its population starved to death in three years. And so he was telling me just some extraordinary stories of suffering after that.

And, you know, us, we were right out of college. We had no idea what was going on at the time. And so it was a huge shock to both of us. And we knew we had to do something. Talk to us a little bit about, you know, one of the themes in your book, faithfulness over heroism. In other words, we always look at, especially when we go through the Bible, we see these punctuated events where something very heroic, significant happens there.

But it really is in the daily grind of living, isn't it? It is. Yeah, you know, a lot of people in this space, you know, in the nonprofit space, like to say the words, save lives. And that is often appropriate for the context that people are in. But I feel like it's often overused. And we like to make a difference here in America. As Christians, we like to save lives, of course.

But, you know, my job is pretty mundane. I call our donors to check in on them and see how they're doing. I, you know, have to file accounting paperwork. And the, yeah, and I'm sure you do as well. You're laughing. Yeah, that is the mundane stuff that we really hate, isn't it? Yeah, but that needs to be done for an orderly organization to be run, these very mundane tasks. And, you know, we have a board of directors who oversee me, and we make sure that I,

I, as the top person in the organization, have accountability. And people don't like to really hear about things like that. The mundane things that we have to do in order to have a a legitimate operation here. And in my book, I just encourage people to grind it out. Because that in itself is heroism. You know, I look to the book of Ruth in the Bible. Ruth, she was in a devastating famine. And all she really did was show faithfulness to her mother-in-law,

her former mother-in-law, her husband had died. but she was faithful to her mother-in-law. She wanted to help her. She wanted to do whatever. So she started gleaning from the fields. And through that, God really used it for his glory. He threw her line. King David was born and the Messiah, right?

Yes. And they're very simple acts of obedience that we could all do. You know, I was in an extraordinary position to help people directly, but most of us aren't going to be called to that. And I think it's more heroic to quietly be faithful in your work every day and help out where you can. That's a great message. Now, one of the things that you talk about in your book, you say people were not argued into becoming followers of Christ in North Korea of all places. I mean, what kind of an argument do you make?

There's not really any kind of practical argument that you can make for that. It's a very impractical thing to do, isn't it? So what happens? How do they get Christian converts in an area where, and the first time I heard about this, we were playing a trivial pursuit game, and they were talking about where the persecution of Christians was the worst. And they said, North Korea, I mean, you can't even get a Bible, and they've got to drop them in by parachute or whatever.

You find a Bible. That can be a life sentence or a death sentence, right, in prison. And so is that true? I looked it up, and it's like, yeah, you know, you don't hear that much about it. I guess perhaps it's because North Korea isn't even more closed. society than China is. So it's even harder, I guess, for the information to get out of there. But what is it? How does the gospel spread in an area like North Korea? What can we learn about that as Christians in Western society?

North Korea, believe it or not, has a very rich Christian heritage. For example, there was a great revival on the Korean Peninsula in 1908. And it's so. centered around North Korea's capital city, Pyongyang. It was a very Christian city, unlike today, North Korea was, where even the founder Kim Il-sung of North Korea, as we know it today, his mother was a devout Presbyterian minister in North Korea. He grew up in the church. and it was said that, you know, you could not find someone on the street on Sunday morning

because everyone in that city was at church. And so North Korea, and another example of this is Billy Graham's wife, Ruth Bell Graham, went to a Christian boarding school in Pyongyang, the capital city of North Korea today. And so North Korea has always had a very real. rich Christian heritage. My uncle, who was my family's pastor growing up, was trained in Pyongyang as well and escaped during the Korean War. So because of that, the church had to go underground. When the Russian influence government took over in 1945 in the wake of World War II, they started targeting Christian ministers and then Christians, and they tried to blot out the

church, but they never were able to fully destroy it. And we hear echoes of the church, you know, in helping the refugees, people who escape. We hear echoes, little stories of, hey, my grandfather sang me this Christian song, or, yes, I was a Christian in North Korea, but we had to be very quiet about it. So you hear little things. It's very rare, but you hear little things about the church happening in North Korea. In fact, Voice of the Martyrs today, says that Christianity is spreading like wildfire in North Korea today. And I, we, we tend to believe as Americans that we need political freedom for the gospel to spread. But in fact, if you look at our church history, we were born in one of the most repressive governments ever, the Roman Empire,

where they did very cruel things to Christians as well. And yet, under those circumstances, our faith flourished. And so I feel like one of my duties as an American today with this book out is to remind people that we don't need political freedom. Of course, it's a luxury and a blessing that we'd like to hold on to, of course. But that is not akin to the church doing well. And in fact, if you look at the health of the church in America today, compared to the North Korean church, many would point to a more healthy church in North Korea.

Oh, yeah, yeah. I would agree. I see some of the things. As a matter of I just had an article about this megachurch, and, you know, these churches grow to enormous sizes, and he openly talks about how he wants to entertain people. And he, this is crazy. He said, yeah, Jesus promised that wherever two or three are gathered in his name, he'll show. And he goes, so we put on a show.

show. No, no, no. It's not about a tap dancing Jesus, but that's almost where we are with the prosperity gospel, with the entertainment gospel, but you're right. It is under persecution that the church has always flourished. It is a refiner's fire, isn't it, that we see with that. And when you talk about people who've lived under persecution, you've got a great story about a woman who was a slave on a Chinese farm. Tell us a little bit about that, the lady who has been over to 90 degree. Yeah. I call her Margaret in my book. She is literally the greatest person I've ever met.

She often told a story to people that she first met that she lived during the famine. She had three children and her husband, and she slowly lost each of her family members. And in fact, her last child, her last living family member was wasting away in her arm. her son and he asked her mom before I die would you please get me a bowl of rice that's my dream before I die one bowl of white rice wow and she said she had nothing I mean during the famine and it's very common in many famines that when there's a lack of food real estate prices plummet and the reason for that is people are selling everything they could just to eat including their housing and so with nothing left except the shirt on her back she said okay son i will

with my shirt go to the market and get you your bowl of rice and he smiled and he played with the button on her shirt and he died that was the last family living family member she had and with nothing left she went into china hearing that there was food there but But unfortunately, because of China's policy towards North Koreans, they are not given any human rights. In fact, it is legal, according to my sources on the ground, it is absolutely legal to murder a North Korean in China. Really? There's not even a ticket for that. Wow.

And because of that situation, there is a human trafficking problem with North Koreans. North Koreans have been trafficked for the past 20 years. in China. And so Margaret was unfortunately caught in that, and she was sold to a pig farm where she worked back breaking out, literally back breaking hour. She was carrying troughs of water from a river to the pigs. And because of that, her back after a year broke or went out. And she told the farmers, look, I'm no good for you anymore. I can't work this. job, please release me. And then they sold her to another man as a forced bride. And that's actually how we met Margaret. She happened to be located near a church that we supported. And that's how she

heard the gospel. And I just want, just to tell you, she had no resentment in her heart. She, after she received the love of Christ, she was active in her church. And in our network, she called the other women supporting them, encouraging them, resolving disputes. The money that we gave to her, she often gave to other missions projects. And unfortunately, in 2018, she died in China. And to China, it was as if nothing happened. right she was not on the books at all uh and yet she had everything in the world she of course to the

chinese government it was as if nothing happened but she had a kingdom far greater than herself and you're talking about the fact that she was on a permanent bow i mean she her back was bent at a 90 degree angle from that for the rest of her life yes and we sent doctors to treat her uh physical therapist, they could not help her. And from your account of this in Chapter 3, you talk about her attitude toward the person who sold her into slavery. What did she call that person? I believe she called this person God's grace in her life.

Yeah, exactly. To that effect, yeah. It's amazing to see that, isn't it? You know, that kind of reminded me when I saw that of Corey Tim Boone's sister when they were in the German prison camp and there was a prison guard who was severely beating another woman. And Corey said, oh, that poor woman. And she realized that, or actually her sister said that. And as she was talking, Corey realized that her sister was talking about the guard who was

inflicting the beating. She had pity on her more so than on the person who was getting beaten because she saw just the anger of the hatred that was and the wrath that was being stored up in her. Yeah. It is interesting to see people's attitudes about this. Let's talk a little bit about the human trafficking that is happening there. And you pointed out that they're selling a lot of people into China. China doesn't even consider them to be human, right?

And so there's all kinds of trafficking that is going on there. There's an underground railroad of a sort to get people out of North Korea. Tell us a little bit about that and some of your involvement in that as an organization. So in order to escape North Korea, the path of least resistance has been traditionally to escape north into China. To the south, you know, Korea is a peninsula. So to run south is running through a field of landmines, missiles pointed at, you know, north and South Korea are technically, the DMZ, correct. North and South Korea are technically still at war. So it is literally a war zone. So to, To escape, it is most likely for success in China, through China.

But China, again, like you said, has a hard road for these North Koreans. About 80% of North Korean refugees are, sorry, 70% of North Korean refugees have been women, and 80% of those women have been sold. China has a gender disparity unlike the world has ever seen. Oh, yeah, that's right. One child policy. One child, exactly, since the 1970s. And that has resulted in 35 million more men than women in China.

And so because families wanted to make their one child a boy, that is how wealth is passed down in that nation largely. And so China wanted to ensure that. And so what has happened is this horrific situation where these men have no wonder. marry now and so that is what is driving the human trafficking situation and now to escape that you have to go through a network of brokers for-profit brokers we refer to it as the underground railroad but unlike the underground railroad that we saw during the civil war in america

it is run by people for profit and those people A lot of them have good intentions or just want money, but a lot of these people also have bad intentions, and they know they could take advantage of these women while they're under their care. And you basically have to go from near North Korea to Thailand through China. And that is about the distance from Maine to Arizona.

And China has all kinds of security. 30 stops. It is a very complicated route. And once you get to the border to get out of China, Thailand and China don't actually touch. They don't share a border. So you have to run through Vietnam or Laos about 100 miles in very rugged, rugged terrain to finally reach freedom. And that is the road that many, tens of thousands of North Koreans were brave enough to endure. Wow. Now, you talk about in your book, the power of the gospel. And we talk to people who have lived under totalitarianism. There are different things that people will use to try to get through. But as you point out, the things that are going to change people's lives, the things that are going to help them to get over these horrific experiences that they've had, it's not going to be money. It's not going to be a political system that we see in South Korea. And, of course, I've talked about this many times. it said, you know, look at what happens when you take a country like Germany and split it in two,

and you have two different political and economic systems. Look at the same thing happening with North and South Korea. And so we can look at that system and make arguments about that. But the real thing that gives people meaning in their life and sustainability in their life has really been the gospel, hasn't it? Yes, absolutely. So we help people in China, but we also help people. these people in South Korea. And in South Korea, we see the ugly head of trauma really come through.

In China, these people are still fighting for their lives and fighting for survival. And so they are functioning on a lot of times on stress and adrenaline. But once they get to South Korea, that's when you see significant mental health issues. in this population that we don't see in China. So, you know, for example, North Koreans often say that they cannot sleep in South Korea. If you talk to experts in South Korea, they say that 10 out of 10 North Koreans that they see have to medicate themselves just to sleep. I met this woman in South Korea. I referred to her as Becky in my book.

and she told me that the only way she could sleep was number one to medicate herself and number two to sleep with her shoes next to her and this was an adaptation that she made in china where if the police were to come through barge through the door to arrest her the only way she felt safe was to have her shoes so she could make a run for it obviously she probably wouldn't have been able to run far but that was her only hope well in south korea there was no threat of the police taking her away back to North Korea. And yet she had to do this. And she told me that she woke up in the middle of the night screaming from her time.

She spent time in a prison camp in North Korea. She has all these nightmares that she now has to deal with. South Korea takes care of these people very well. They are given about $20,000. family when when you arrive in south korea as a north korean refugee free medical care job training all kinds of things to help them get on their feet and yet they are struggling as a whole as a population because of the trauma that has happened to them being sold living through the famine all kinds of horrific things happen to them and they they have to deal with that and yes i believe

I believe that a relationship with Christ will fix that, but I also believe that they need psychotherapy. They need mental health help as well. Yeah, that's amazing. What is South Carolina, but what is South Korea like? You said there was a great Christian revival in North Korea. That also go down to South Korea? What is that country like today? South Korea has been a hub for missions activity. So South Korea up till recently was the number one sending nation of missionaries throughout the world. So it is a very Christian nation. That is changing. After the pandemic, a lot has changed as it has here in America. But it is a very Christian country, and it is very Christian country. And it is very,

advanced. I would say in many ways more advanced than the U.S. technologically. I am often amazed at how fast the internet is in South Korea. It is blazing fast. They have the state of the art chips that are there in Taiwan, you know, the places where the sounders are. So yeah, definitely technologically advanced. But yeah, it's, yeah, tell us a little bit about, um, you know, the places about, again, you know, the Christian aspects, though, you say that still is there, they're still sending out missionaries that are there. Yeah. And how does it compare in terms of America?

Are the churches there a bit more serious or, because I look at the churches there and they're kind of a self-parody almost that I look at them? I would say it's very similar to the United States, the state of the church. there are some healthy churches, of course, but there are churches that are running on tradition as well. The Christian population in South Korea, much like the United States, is getting older, meaning it has problems attracting young congregants.

But overall, the South Korean church has been very strong in South Korea, that culture has been very strong permeating the culture. And then obviously because of that, there has been a backlash to that. And so very similar dynamics to the United States. Talk a little about the underground church in South Korea. It's estimated that has 200,000 members that are there. What is it like to have a church service in South Korea? I'm assuming that there's not loud music and fog machines. No fog machines, no light show, no tap dancing. Yeah, people have to send their children away to worship. And that is because the North Korean government from a very early age takes all of the children into its education system.

And one of the first things they are instructed is if your parents say anything about Jesus Christ, you are to report them immediately. And all of them, including the child, will be sent to a prison camp for the rest of their lives or executed. Wow. So the first thing is the children have to be sent away. The second thing is they have to hide any evidence of Bibles anywhere. And so I've heard of people having to just memorize scripture. We do it because it's good for us here in the U.S., but it is a matter of survival. Bible in North Korea, that they have to memorize scripture.

It's like a Christian version of Fahrenheit 451, right? Exactly. I'm the book of Ecclesiastes, sir. Exactly. I'm actually reading through that book right now. But I will say this. I think that there is a great appeal for Jesus Christ amongst North Koreans, and it is because of this. North Korea is, a totalitarian state and it is also a religion right the founder Kim Il-sung is considered a god right

there is a cult of personality around him there supposedly he could do magical things and same as today's leader Kim Jong-un there is a cult of personality around him as well and unlike Jesus Christ there is no grace They have this social class system that if you mess up, if you do anything wrong, your social class or songbun, as they call it, will be penalized. And there's no way for you or any of your descendants to get back, gain that back. It is a punitive system. If you, again, wrong thinking, if you even think the wrong thoughts and make those

thought's public, obviously, then you'll be sent away to a prison camp. It is an extreme lack of grace. And here we have this faith, this man, Jesus Christ, who gave himself up for the church, who did not seek his own self gain, unlike the leadership in North Korea. It is a stark contrast to the leadership there. And that is what our hearts inside or outside of North Korea want and need, isn't it? It's the gentleness and grace of Jesus Christ. And so there's a great appeal for Christianity and specifically the person of Christ amongst this population. So how does someone go about making a connection with other people, to even have a home church, when you have a situation that if you just mention Jesus Christ,

carted off to a prison camp, how do they, I know that would be very, very careful, but, you know, what do you hear in terms of how people manage that? I have actually never met anyone who was connected

to the underground church in North Korea. So I don't know how that happens. I met a woman who became Christian in North Korea, Korea through a merchant coming back and forth from China. But her and her father practiced their faith in private. They could not find a church in their neighborhood, obviously. So that is a mystery to many of us in this North Korea aid community. There are very few people who know about that, about how this church actually operates. I would like to know as well.

Yeah, you know, we have stories coming out of the Arab world where there's a very repressive Islamic country, and a lot of people there will say they have a dream, you know, where Jesus comes to them across them because they ban the Bible. God will find a way to do things. I really do believe that. And it's kind of interesting, as I was talking to the lady from Albania

who grew up under the communists there in the North Korea of Europe. see so many things that are similar to that, even to the extent that in her own family, she said she was falling asleep and she heard her grandmother, she thought she was praying, but they would deny that that was what was happening. Because if the child knew that,

they basically could get the entire family in trouble. So you have to try to even keep your Christianity and your faith hidden from your child. So it's a very difficult thing. And how do you pass that along from generation to generation when you have to hide it that way? It's kind of crazy. And the other similarity, listening to you talk about this, is that, you know, in the system where there is absolutely no forgiveness, no grace, and you get a black mark for yourself and for your family for generations, they did exactly the same thing in Albania.

You know, if you're coming from a family that has, that they didn't like what your family did because they were politicians or in business or whatever the reason was, they get a black mark against the family. Now, that's a black mark that follows generation after generation. Same thing in North Korea. It's interesting to see how the totalitarian systems bring out the darkness in people's hearts, isn't it? And it's always the same darkness. It is. It is. And we're seeing it now in China where, you know, at churches in China as pastors are being arrested in such,

much like North Korea in the 1940s, they are replacing the cross. at churches with pictures of Xi Jinping. I know, I've talked about that. They mandated that if you got to cross up at one point, maybe they're just getting rid of the crosses, but they mandated that you put a picture of Xi Jinping on one side or the other, and I said, yeah, there's the two thieves, right? Exactly, exactly.

It is like a dictators in our genetics that something, some sort of paranoia awakens in every dictator, right? Where you would think absolute power would make someone feel absolutely secure, but it's actually the opposite. It is this insecurity that comes out when no one around you will tell you the truth. Everyone, you know, and it makes people crazy, doesn't it? Yeah, that's right. We can see that in some American politicians.

We're not over again. Well, you know, we look at this and we talk about these harsh conditions that people go through. You talk about the difference between meaning in your life and just merely surviving. And even though the Christians are going through this much more dangerous situation, they have meaning in their situation and not just merely survival, don't they? Talk a little bit about that, which you have seen. You've got a chapter about that. Chapter 9, when we talk about that.

and meaning versus survival. Yeah, I think it's very important. And, you know, we see it over and over again where you can provide for someone's needs. But if they don't have an underlying meaning in their life, then it'll be very difficult for them to just live, right? So, you know, we recently helped someone in South Korea, this is not in my book because this has happened after the book,

a woman who had two sons in North Korea that she could never see again, right? And for years and years, she saved up her money to perhaps send it over. There is a system where you can send money over, but that is also being degraded right now. And so she finally, realize that it will be impossible to see her children again. And she devolved into dementia. It was very difficult for her to get a grasp on reality because her whole life's purpose was to either reunite with her sons or help them somehow. But between North and South Korea, there is a great chasm that she cannot breach and realizing that made her world completely crumble. And I think that is why it is so

important that we share, at least share the gospel with North Koreans. Now, you know, they're not required to believe what we believe in order to receive help, but at least give them an opportunity so that they can find purpose and meaning in their life. Yes. After such trauma, after so much of their world being turned upside down, it is very jarring. And the only thing that I have seen really help people plant their feet on the ground is this faith that we share with them that is unbreakable and is durable through such an incredible transition. Well, just take a look at the story that you had about Margaret.

I mean, she had been through so many different horrible experiences, and her back was broken, bent at a 90-degree angle, and yet she found purpose and meaning in her life that sustained her through all that. Talk a little bit about your uncle. You have your uncle tortured by communists. You talk about that in chapter 2. Tell us the story of your uncle.

I was born in South Korea in 1977, and I emigrated to the United States that same year with my parents. And we came to Chicago where I live today where my uncle had a church. He was, you know, we see Korean churches all over America. We were very good at planting churches and splitting off from churches after fights. But my uncle was one of the first Korean-American pastors in the Chicago area. And I grew up with him. He was a man of very few words.

And I did not know about his past. He, like I said, was trained as a pastor in Pyongyang, North Korea. And in the 1940s, he, as he was training, he experienced. a ton of persecution from the communists who took over there. They basically waterboarded him repeatedly. Oh, wow. And eventually he had to hide under the floorboards of his family's house because they wanted to find him and kill him.

And according to my cousins, they told me that as he was hiding under the floorboards of his house, the army was looking for, the Red Army was looking for him. They could not find him. So while he was hiding, they killed his family. So he had a family in North Korea of three children and a wife. And after that, he made a run forward to South Korea to start a new life. And my whole life, I had no idea he was very, from North Korea. And I don't think growing up in the United States, I would have even known what that even meant.

Yes, yes. And my parents actually did not know about his past in North Korea until after he died in 1998. And it was shortly after that where I became interested in North Korea and I became involved with crossing borders help North Korean. And so I see it kind of as like closing the circle or making another end to the

circle to bring the gospel that was so faithfully shared to my family back to at least North Korean refugees, hopefully into North Korea as well one day. Yeah, you know, when we look at these books, and again, I talk to a lady from Albania. As Americans, we really can't really understand this, unless we have stories like that about people's lives. And that makes it come alive. We can talk all we want to about economics and political systems. We can talk about what is pragmatic and what works and what doesn't. But it really is the personal stories that make the difference.

And we look at what it's like to live under totalitarian government. We look at what that kind of power does to a person, how it just basically turns them into monsters that we can't even recognize. that truly is a characteristic of human nature. We're not basically good. We understand that as Christians. And in the sense, like the Lord of the Rings, you know, you give the ring of power to somebody.

Like Boromir, it turns them into monsters. It really does. And we see this in one culture after the other. It doesn't matter what the culture was originally. Once you put that kind of power in the hands of people, it's a real warning to us. And we see this encroaching in America. multiple fronts in many different ways.

It comes in a lot of different disguises and guises and different arguments about why, you know, this is going to be a better way. But we always, we understand how this ends up. And it's because of the nature of humans. It's because of the spiritual issue that is there. When these people have looked at this and say, I'll become like God.

And we can see that even happening with the technology people in this country. You know, when they're looking at this, God-like power, what it starts to do to twist them. And it truly is a remarkable story. But that's why your story needs to be heard, especially for Christians, because we have the anecdote to this type of abuse of power. And at the core of the Christian message is God's love for each and every one of us and how we are all God's creatures and he treats us equally. We don't have one of people that is above another group of people. And once we start to look at each other as fellow

humans in need of God's mercy and forgiveness, that changes our perspective in a tremendous way. Yeah, it does. I would not be able to do what I have done for the past 23 years, had it not been my relationship with Christ. I, on a very regular basis, I hear her. horrific stories. And, you know, in my community of aid workers for North Koreans, it is very common for people to be traumatized. It's called secondary trauma, and it's very common for people to burn out. But I believe that, you know, I encourage my staff to be overly involved at church. And that's what I am as well. I'm not trying to. to brag, but that is the only thing that is keeping me sane, right? You hear about all this torture and all

this trauma, and the only thing that helps is to be connected to the people of God, to the church. Yes. And as flawed as the church is in America, and there's a lot of people here in America who say it's so flawed that it won't do them any good. I would say, God still calls us to this body of believers, knowing that we are flawed. And so the only way that I can continue this work, the only way that I could start this work, the only way that will keep me in the future is my relationship with Jesus Christ. and I hope and I pray that I will be able to maintain this level of activity in my professional life. And it can only come from that, the strength that God can grant me.

And let's talk a little bit about your book here. Again, it is a hard freedom is the title of the book. And stories about what people have gone through in terms of, of persecution as Christians. And you close your book, I think, with something that is very important. And that is, you know, what really is the attitude that we should have? You talk about gratitude. Talk a little bit about that.

What does an attitude of gratitude do for us? Yeah. I mean, you know, I have to confess that I am, you know, often not grateful for what I have. I have many complaints in my life. I often complain. Even as I've built a career on learning about what a famine and starvation does to people, I admit that I often complain that there's not enough restaurants in my neighborhood. You know, I'm a spoiled American, just like the rest of us.

And what brings me back are these stories, right? because you realize what can happen in this world and what is happening in this world, right? And, you know, people say, you know, one party has the answer over the other, that we have, it's a power, you know, here in America, we're obsessed now with power. Yeah, I agree.

But what the message at the end of my book is, we should be obsessed with the power of grader. gratitude, right? We should be thankful for what we have. There is so, we have this culture that loves to complain and to gripe about the things that are not right. And believe me, I understand that there, we do not have a perfect union here in America. But compared to what can happen in this world, we live in paradise. Yes. We do.

I agree. We do. And even compared to South Korea, right? This wealthy and advanced nation, believe me, when I say, we are the envy of even South Korea. Their per capita growth GDP is higher than the U.S. but people look to America because of the blessings that we have here, of the blessings that we have here, we have to realize that as a country and as a world. We have so much, there is so much good happening.

Just look at the statistics. The world has advanced in great ways. Of course it's not perfect. But I would suggest look at what we have and look at what is possible in a state like North Korea or Albania, as you shared. In many situations, things can go sideways, but they haven't yet in America. That's right. And they haven't yet in many countries in the West. And it's important for us to start in a place where we're grateful for what we have.

I agree. I agree. And that's really well said. But when I look at it in my life, if I'm going through a difficult period and I've had some of those in the past, I think the thing that really keeps me sane is to start counting your blessings. You know, it's kind of a corny song from a Christmas show. But it really is true. And if you look at it, and I've been in situations, I mean, it's a year and a half ago, I had a stroke and I couldn't talk. I couldn't walk.

I couldn't even really eat without choking. And so now, you know, even if I have a simple meal, I'm grateful. Yes. And that is the attitude. And Paul tells the church in Philippians 4, right? Whatever is good, whatever is trust, whatever is honorable, whatever is praiseworthy. Think about those things. That's right.

Right? That's right. That's right. I think it's so important for us to do that. And as part of that blessing, we need to understand, as you point out, you know, just how bad things can get. We look at places like North Korea and we look at places like Albania. And we need to understand as we start to see these things encroach on us. We need to, you know, that is the difficult part of my job, you know, where I have to look at the abyss and have to say, well, this is a dangerous trend that is coming in this direction.

I think it's important for us to keep our eyes open and to look at that, but also to keep in perspective of the bigger picture and to understand the blessings that God has given to us and understand that things are really in his hand. Amen. Yes. And so your organization, again, people can find that at crossing borders nk.org. They can join in the work that you have there in terms of helping people.

They can find out more about these personal stories. And again, it's always about the personal stories. I can't emphasize that enough. These are amazing stories, and they're encouraging stories to hear what has happened to people, how they have persevered and why they persevered through these kinds of hardships. A Hard Freedom is the name of the book by Dan Chung. And again, you can go to Crossing Borders NK for North Korea.org and find out more about their work and support them there.

Thank you so much, Dan. Thank you for what you do, and thank you for getting this message of hope and meaning, really, out to people. It's very, very much needed at this point in time, I think. Thank you for having me. I was very encouraged by our talk. Thank you, Dan. Thank you. The common man.

They created common core to dumb down our children. They created common past to track and control us. Their commons project to make sure the commoners. own nothing and the communist future. They see the common man is simple, unsophisticated, ordinary, but each of us has worth and dignity created in the image of God. That is what we have in common. That is what they want to take away. Their most powerful weapons are isolation, deception, intimidation. They desire to know everything about us while they hide everything from us. It's time to turn that around and expose what they want to hide.

Please share the information and links you'll find at the Davidnightshow.com. Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing. If you can't support us financially, please keep us in your prayers. TheDavidnightshow.com.