Twenty years ago, I had the unexpected opportunity to travel to North Korea with my father and a group of Korean American pastors. They were meeting with government officials, trying to negotiate the delivery of food aid. They generously allowed me to tag along.

I was excited, but uneasy. I had young children at home, and I felt nervous about visiting a closed country and being out of touch for an entire week. It didn’t help that when we arrived at the airport in Pyeongyang, we had to hand over our passports and our cell phones.

If I was wary and nervous, my father was comfortable, with the air of someone totally at ease with the situation and what—at least to me—felt like a fraught and complicated circumstance. We spent almost all our time with government minders who constantly touted the greatness of Kim Il-sun, the visionary leadership of his son, Kim Jong-il, and other annoying, patently false propaganda. 

We politely listened to our minders, but whenever the opportunity arose, my father wasn’t shy about taking the conversation in unexpected directions. He talked about democracy, South Korea, and what he didn’t like about American culture. At one point, he recounted the Gospel story of the fishes and the loaves. 

He also told jokes. 

One went like this: a man was assigned to drive the Pope on a trip that would take all night. As the hours passed, the driver started to feel sleepy. Noticing this, the pontiff offered to take a turn driving. Feeling sheepish but wanting to be safe, the driver agreed, and the two switched places. 

Two highway patrol officers were sitting on the side of the road when they saw the car go by, well over the speed limit. They pulled the car over, and one officer approached, leaned down, and spoke to the driver. A moment later, he returned without having issued a citation. 

“What happened?” his partner asked him.

“I let him go because he was a very important person,” he said. “Extremely important.”

“Oh yeah? Who was he?”

“I don’t know,” the officer admitted. “But his driver was the Pope!”

The Korean Americans laughed at the punch line, but our minders looked puzzled. “What’s a pope?” they asked. So my father started to explain. “There’s this organization called the Catholic church…” he began.

“So the Pope is very important,” my father concluded. “That’s why it’s funny that he was the driver.” 

“Is the Pope more powerful than the President of the United States?” one of our minders asked.

“It depends,” my father said. “In some circumstances, yes.”

Indeed.

Life, lately

I’m in Atlanta for the book launch of my buddy and fellow LitUp writer, Tolani Akinola. More on this next time. For now, order Leave Your Mess At Home wherever you get your books!

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