The Rev. Phillip Buck assists North Korean refugees in China and guides them to safety in South Korea.  

Responding to the humanitarian disaster created by conditions in North Korea and Eastern China, Rev. Buck has guided dozens of North Korean refugees to South Korea via an "underground railway.”

Born John Yoon in North Korea and raised in a South Korean orphanage, Buck is a pastor in Seattle, Washington. In 1994 he began to provide food and other basic necessities to North Koreans escaping oppression, torture, and starvation. They were mistreated in China and often repatriated.

Between 1997-2006 Rev. Buck built shelters in in China. Meanwhile, he helped North Korean refugees obtain asylum in South Korea once leading 32 people 10,000 miles by foot, vehicle, boat, and train through China and Laos to the South Korean embassy in Bangkok, Thailand.

In 2002, he narrowly escaped arrest in China when his organization was infiltrated by an informant. He adopted the name Phillip Buck to help prevent Chinese authorities from uncovering the expanding underground railway.

While traveling with refugees in 2005, Rev. Buck and most of his party were arrested. He spent 15 months in the notorious Yanji prison suffering malnutrition, intense interrogation, and sleep deprivation. Every day in prison he "thought about the refugees and prayed to God to help them."