Giving warmth and raising awareness through charitable knitting.

Awareness, Respect, Compassion

Life Funds For North Korean Refugees

LFNKR offers protection and assistance to North Korea’s impoverished defectors, giving them food, medical aid, and educational opportunities. Volunteers prepare refugees for resettlement; they have successfully helped many families and individuals secure new lives. As well, LFNKR lobbies for defectors’ global recognition as refugees, and contributes to U.S. Congressional Reports. LFNKR is a recipient of the Tokyo Bar Association’s Human Rights Award and participates in international human rights conferences around the world.

ARC is proud to help support the humanitarian efforts of LFNKR.

“If you don’t help us, we will kill ourselves because we don’t want to go to North Korea. Because, if we go to North Korea, we will be imprisoned for the rest of our lives…Please rescue us. If you rescue us, I will repay it later. Really, really, I want to be free. Please help us.” - Excerpt from a letter from Choi Hyok, aged 12, written from a Laotian prison cell in 2007. Pictured here with his sister and another girl, today he is free, and lives in South Korea.

LFNKR fiercely advocated for their lives, and won the freedom of all three children. Mr. Kato Hiroshi (L) of LFNKR sits with two of the three freed children and Kim Sang-hun, a South Korean humanitarian worker.

Photos of knitted items property of ARC. All other photos courtesy of Life Funds for North Korean Refugees.

For more information, please visit : www.NorthKoreanRefugees.com

These North Korean orphans escaped into China after their parents died. Caught and imprisoned in Laos, they were going to be repatriated. The Laotian government demanded US$3,000 for their lives.

 

Recipients: North Korea

ARC continues to send knitted goods to North Korean orphans and families through LFNKR. While knitted goods may not seem like much to those of us whose needs are met, the impact of a new, useful gift can be immense. Knits can remind refugees of their humanity, identity, and value. From the perspective of North Korean refugees, knitted items are a link to the outside world that betokens the possibility of a peaceful, healthy life.

The family pictured above spent seven years hiding and fleeing from Chinese authorities after their harrowing escape from North Korea. When his parents were arrested and repatriated, Lee Chol-hun and his sister worked in a fishing village to feed themselves. Their parents escaped a second time to recover the children, though the mother later disappeared during a police raid.

 

1998

2000

2004

The story of a brave little boy: Lee Chol-hun.

“Don’t worry, I promise to get you out of here soon.” - Mr. Kato Hiroshi

The boy seen here as a small child and teenager was shot to death by Chinese guards in 2004 while he and other refugees tried to cross out of China and into Mongolia. He was 17 years old and nearly free. Today, his father recalls Chol-hun’s jubilance upon being told they would soon be in South Korea. Chinese authorities reported him to be aged 20, and maintain that their actions were justified.