Christmas may be banned in North Korea, but that hasn't stopped groups of Cindy Lou Who's in trying to make Chinese dictator Kim Jong Un's heart grow twice as large this year.
Numerous activists have sent the people suffering under the dictator's rule flash drives containing messages of hope and faith, bible readings, and food. The North Korean Freedom Coalition members put their gifts into bottles and sent them down the Yellow Sea in hopes they would make it to the North Korean Peninsula.
Nine of the people in the group were North Korean escapees who wanted to help those still stuck living under a Communist Party hope for their future. "Operation Truth" launched 17 bottles into the sea, each containing enough rice to feed a family of four for a week. North Koreans will receive a Bible on a flash drive and a U.S. $1 bill. Recorded messages from Senators Jim Risch and Tim Kaine and Congressmen Michael McCaul and Gregory Meeks can also be found in the bottles.
"We should be doing everything we can to get information into North Korea by land, by sea, and by air," Suzanne Scholte— chair of the Washington, D.C.-based North Korean Freedom Coalition, said.
"Operation Truth" was based on the Berlin Aircraft, which helped get critical care to the starving people of North Korea.
The bottles share messages that say, "Christmas, which is celebrated all over the world on December 25, marks the day when Jesus was born… Many of your ancestors also believed in Jesus. In fact, in 1907, there were so many Christians who believed in Jesus in Pyongyang that Pyongyang became known as a Holy City. But when Kim II Sung came to power, he wanted North Koreans to worship him as a god and not the one true God. So, he killed many Christian leaders, sent others to political prison camps, or banished them. He did all he could to kill the followers of Jesus Christ."
Kim Jong Un is so hell-bent on banning Christmas that he lashed out in 2014 when he found out that South Korea planned to erect a giant Christmas tree along the border. Amid threats of war, the tree was never put up.
Human rights groups in the country estimate that between 50,000 and 70,000 Christians are locked up in prisons and are being compared to concentration camps simply for their faith.
"North Koreans are brainwashed from childhood to hate Americans as their enemy and believe that America occupies South Korea, making them live in misery while North Korea prospers as a paradise under the Kim dictatorship," Scholte continued. "Those in leadership positions in the DPRK regime wake up in the morning with only two choices in their lives: being slaves devoted to Kim Jong Un or death and their families' deaths. That is why so many began escaping -not just for food, but for freedom, for a better life."