Yahoo News Pastor Hailed a Hero for Rescuing Kids Is Jailed for Sex Abuse
A pastor famed for helping people escape North Korea was sentenced to five years in prison on Wednesday for sexually abusing teenage defectors in his care.
A Seoul court handed Chun Ki-won, 67, the sentence for molesting five students at his boarding school in South Korea between 2016 and 2023. His arrest in August shocked his homeland where he’d previously been revered as the “Asian Schindler” for his work aiding those attempting to flee Kim Jong Un’s regime.
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The pastor had denied the allegations of abusing six North Korean adolescents, including those sleeping at the school he founded through his Durihana organization—a prominent nonprofit that supports North Korean defectors fleeing via routes in China. A court ruled Wednesday that the evidence against him was overwhelming, convicting him in five of the six cases against him.
“The victims are making consistent statements and it includes content that cannot be stated without first-hand experience of the circumstances,” Judge Seung-jeong Kim of the Seoul Central District Court said, according to the BBC. The judge said that Chun had carried out his crimes while in a “position where he had absolute influence.”
Chun claims to have aided in the escapes of over 1,000 North Koreans over the last 25 years. Durihana says its “prime ministry” is “the safe rescue of North Koreans and the proclamation of the gospel to them.” “For the children that are rescued, we provide food, housing, and quality schooling according to God’s provision,” a website for the nonprofit reads. “We help assimilate the children and adults into society in South Korea, or the United States, wherever they choose to live.”
Pyongyang has repeatedly condemned Chun for his work and, in 2002, he spent eight months in a prison in China after he was arrested on an escape route near the Mongolian border, according to National Geographic.
He nevertheless continued helping North Koreans escape in recent years, though he told The New York Times in 2023 that helping defectors in China had become “all but impossible.” “I have been aiding North Koreans for 23 years,” Chun said. “I have never felt this sad and helpless.”
Chun had been likened in media reports to Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who saved over 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust whose life story was told in the 1993 Steven Spielberg film Schindler’s List.
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