visa-free

— It begins, as so many Chinese legal dramas do, with a perfectly ordinary act. A pastor buys a plane ticket, passes through customs, and takes his friends to South Korea’s Jeju Island—a visa‑free paradise better known for honeymooners than dissidents. They return home, suntanned and unscathed. Months later, the pastor is in shackles, accused of “organizing others to cross the national border illegally.”