As people around the world celebrated Christmas with gifts, warm meals and video calls with loved ones, Kim Jong-sam knelt in prayer with family and thought of the one who could not join — his brother locked away in a cold North Korean jail cell nine winters ago.

Christmas marked exactly 3,000 days since DPRK authorities arrested the missionary Kim Jong-uk after he crossed the China-North Korea border. His family spent yet another holiday, when temperatures in the Koreas dipped to the single digits Farenheight, unsure whether he is still alive.

“During the first few years since