Mississauga pastor loses contact after aid trip to N. Korea

A Korean-Canadian pastor has been missing for more than a month and may have been detained in North Korea during visit to Pyongyang at the end of January.

Rev. Hyeon Soo Lim, 60, entered North Korea via China on Jan. 31 and has not been in contact with friends and family since. The pastor went to the isolated nation on a humanitarian mission on behalf of his church, the Light Korean Presbyterian Church in Mississauga.

Lim was expected to leave North Korea on Feb. 4, but church officials were not immediately concerned because of North Korea’s policy to quarantine foreigners for three weeks as a measure to contain Ebola, said church spokesperson Lisa Pak.

Pak said the pastor has been to North Korea over 100 times, always on humanitarian aid missions.

“Every now and then (there has been) a delay here or there but never to this extent,” said Pak.

A missing-persons report was filed last week, after three weeks had passed and there was still no word from Lim; whom Pak described as a “family man” with a wife and adult son in Toronto.

“The family is grateful for all those praying for Hyeon Soo Lim. We are also very grateful to the Canadian government for their support,” read Pak from a statement prepared by Lim’s family on Sunday at the church.

She added that she wanted to avoid “hysteria,” characterizing the issue as a lack of information that the Canadian government was working on resolving. But Lim’s friend, Toronto city councillor Raymond Cho, believes the pastor may have been detained by the Communist regime there.

“I’m worried about Reverend Lim . . . If he is detained, I really hope the North Korean leadership let him go,” said Cho. “If they keep detaining him, it hurts the image of North Korea.”

Cho said he thinks Lim may have been detained based on what he read in a recent Korea Times article on his disappearance, in addition to the fact that no one has been able to get in touch with Lim for over a month. Foreign Affairs did not respond on Sunday evening to confirm whether or not Lim was thought to be detained.

Cho has known Lim for over 20 years, describing him as a “good Samaritan” who has spent a lot of time fundraising for North Koreans. Cho added although he isn’t a member of Lim’s congregation, he admires his work.

“He is an excellent preacher,” said Cho. “I went to his church on and off and his sermon is outstanding.”

Lim emigrated from South Korea in 1986 and has been with the church for 28 years, helping it grow from five families to a congregation over 3,000. He was key to his church embarking on humanitarian missions to North Korea in the mid-1990s, during the famine that the UN has reported killed at least hundreds of thousands of North Koreans.

Pak said the church’s work in the country since has never been political.

“You can imagine that, being ethnically Korean, there is a personal investment in the people of Korea,” she said.

The last the church heard from Lim was on Jan. 31, when he spoke with a member of his church based in China. Pak said a member from China always accompanies missions into North Korea. She added it isn’t clear why or how they became separated.

Agencies/Canadajournal