When the Reverend Kim Dong-shik went missing along the North Korea-China border, not many people knew his name. Save for the community of Korean Americans back in his adopted hometown of Chicago, he wasn’t famous or wealthy enough to be well-known in any meaningful way.

But it was this relative anonymity that allowed him to spend his last months as a free man working with the refugees and drifters that live on the frontier between the DPRK and its most significant remaining ally.

Reverend Kim lived, at least for a while, in Yanji. The city sits about 10 kilometers, give