Inside Story: Attacked by Drunken Men

Inside Story for Friday 24th of January 2025

By Andrew McChesney

A drunken man accosted the 21-year-old missionary woman on a public bus and tried to hug and kiss her. As she struggled against his advances, the other passengers looked the other way until an elderly woman yelled something to the bus driver. The bus stopped, then under the guidance of the elderly woman, several passengers threw the man off. She came over to the sobbing missionary, patted her arm, and said something that the missionary couldn’t understand.

This was the nightmare that Joanne (Park) Kim seemed to face nearly every week in Mongolia. It was the early 1990s, and she was a single American woman serving as one of the first Seventh-day Adventist missionaries in impoverished, post-Communist Mongolia.

Image © Pacific Press

On another occasion, a drunken neighbor mistook Joanne’s apartment for his own. He kicked down her flimsy wooden door with his steel-toe boots and started to beat her. Joanne grabbed a broom and, screaming, fought back. It was a losing battle until Joanne used the broom to bang on the ceiling and her fellow missionaries, a married American couple, heard from their apartment above, and rushed down to rescue her.

The last straw for Joanne came when she and a fellow missionary were waiting at a bus stop on the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s capital. A mother had invited them to her child’s first haircut, which called for a big celebration in Mongolia. Joanne was instructed to wait at the bus stop because she would never be able to find the ger home on the unmarked streets, so she and the other missionary sat on the curb and waited for the mother to arrive.

Then four drunken men sat beside them and tried to hug and kiss Joanne.

Joanne and the other missionary moved away, but the men followed. Everyone at the crowded bus stop looked away. The men dragged the women to a deserted alley. Joanne screamed and kicked and fought back, but she was no match for the four men. Then the men threw the women onto the ground. Joanne thought it was the end.

Suddenly, the men’s faces turned pale. They turned and ran away.

Joanne looked around to see who had come to save them. No one was there. At that moment, Joanne knew that the men must have seen an angel.

This mission story offers an inside look at American missionary Joanne (Park) Kim, who helped start the Seventh-day Adventist work in post-Communist Mongolia and continues to serve as a missionary there. You also can participate in the mission work through this quarter’s Thirteenth Sabbath Offering, part of which will help open a recreation center where children can grow spiritually, mentally, socially, and physically in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Read more about Joanne next week.