Christ's Continuing Passion: 50,000 Christians Imprisoned in North Korea

As Christians relive the passion and death of our Lord during this Holy Week, it is good to remember that those who walk with Christ also walk the road to Calvary, and that the sufferings of Christ continue through time for His Mystical Body, the Church.  

In addition to torture and martyrdom occurring in most Islamic countries, the FIDES news agency reported this week that more than 50,000 of North Korea's 400,000 Christians are being held in prison camps.  During these solemn, holy days, let us remember all of our Korean Christian brothers and sisters in prayer, and thank God that the enemy can never extinguish from their hearts "the burning flame of faith."

Powerful Testimony from a North Korean Student

An inspiring and emotional testimony from a young North Korean student, live from the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelism in Cape Town.

Are Churches 'Willfully Blind' to North Korea's Repression

"For many Western church elites, there will always be harsh criticism of America, and endless excuses for tyrannies like North Korea."

Mark Tooley, IRD President

Despite a high level of engagement with North Korea, including the 2009 visit of an official delegation to the isolated country, the Geneva-based World Council of Churches (WCC) has said little about North Korea following the release of a report implicating the Communist nation in the sinking of a South Korean ship.

While the WCC has previously admonished South Korea for policies "hindering the efforts for peace and reunification on the Korean Peninsula," the WCC has not and will not criticize North Korea's tyranny, one of the world's most oppressive. In a 2008 letter to the South Korean President, the WCC urged him "to take all possible measures to avoid any deterioration of inter-Korean relations." The WCC has 349 member denominations in 120 countries, and its next General Assembly will be in South Korea, in 2013.

Unfortunately, many other Western church groups share the WCC's moral blindness towards North Korea. A recent Presbyterian Church (USA) delegation to North Korea found no human rights problems. The National Council of Churches similarly has dispatched envoys to North Korea with nary a word of criticism, preferring to aim its fire at preferred targets like the United States or Israel.

Institute on Religion and Democracy President Mark Tooley commented:

"Seemingly, Western church groups, especially, the WCC, always view South Korea or the U.S. as responsible for 'provoking' North Korean aggression.

"These church groups not only have been silent about North Korea's various aggressions, including the recent torpedo attack. Even more egregiously, they are silent or even make absurd excuses for North Korea's inhuman persecution of Christians. Western church groups often naively visit North Korea's handful of government-run show churches in Pyongyang.

"During the Cold War, international ecumenical elites heaped scorn upon the West while carefully avoiding critique of the totalitarian Soviet Bloc, betraying Christians and other victims of communism. Few lessons were learned, and those same church groups, despite their supposed 'prophetic witness,' withhold any criticism of repressive communist and Islamist regimes.

"Church members in the U.S. and around the world should demand more integrity from their church officials."

New Radio Broadcast Delivers Christian Leadership Training to Persecuted North Korean Christians

Two ministries have launched a radio broadcast to provide Biblically-based leadership training to North Korean Christians and others in the country experts call the "worst place in the world to be a Christian."

The 30-minute daily broadcast is a partnership between Dr. John C. Maxwell's EQUIP organization and The Voice of the Martyrs -- Korea (VOM-Korea). The broadcast consists of a version of EQUIP's leadership training material, called PREQUIP, modified to provide the basic concepts of leadership not learned under totalitarian regimes.

The broadcast is produced and engineered in VOM-Korea's facilities in Seoul, South Korea and airs in the overnight hours. According to VOM-Korea Vice President Choi Young Hun, this is "when the most North Koreans are able to safely listen to their illegal radios."

The Voice of the Martyrs and Open Doors organizations both rank North Korea as the worst persecutor of Christians in the world. According to VOM's Persecuted Church Global Report 2010, "Christians must practice their faith in deep secrecy and are in constant danger" of kidnap, arrest, imprisonment or execution.

According to Choi, "Being a Christian is considered a capital crime in North Korea and Hebrews 13:3 reminds us that every Christian shares the responsibility to encourage and train their fellow believers being persecuted in North Korea."

"That's why this partnership is important," says John D. Hull, president of EQUIP. "Our mission is to raise up Christian leaders in every country around the world and that must include North Korea. This partnership enables us to support our Christian brothers and sisters there."

This broadcast is an extension of a partnership that began by jointly developing the PREQUIP curriculum that is also taught in Underground University, a Seoul-based training program for North Korean exiles who are preparing to serve and grow the North Korean church in North Korea, China, South Korea and around the world (Underground University is a joint venture between The Voice of The Martyrs organizations in Korea, Canada, Australia and the United States).

EQUIP is a Georgia-based non-profit organization, founded by Dr. John C. Maxwell in 1996, specializing in the development of effective Christian leaders internationally.

North Korean Woman Publicly Executed for Distributing Bible

From Taragana
By Kwang-tae Kim

A Christian woman accused of distributing the Bible, a book banned in communist North Korea, was publicly executed last month for the crime, South Korean activists said Friday.

The 33-year-old mother of three, Ri Hyon Ok, also was accused of spying for South Korea and the United States, and of organizing dissidents, a rights group said in Seoul, citing documents obtained from the North.

The Investigative Commission on Crime Against Humanity report included a copy of Ri’s government-issued photo ID and said her husband, children and parents were sent to a political prison the day after her June 16 execution.

The claim could not be independently verified Friday, and there has been no mention by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency of her case.

But it would mark a harsh turn in the crackdown on religion in North Korea, a country where Christianity once flourished and where the capital, Pyongyang, was known as the “Jerusalem of the East” for the predominance of the Christian faith.

According to its constitution, North Korea guarantees freedom of religion. But in reality, the regime severely restricts religious observance, with the cult of personality created by national founder Kim Il Sung and enjoyed by his son, current leader Kim Jong Il, serving as a virtual state religion. Those who violate religious restrictions are often accused of crimes such as spying or anti-government activities.

The government has authorized four state churches: one Catholic, two Protestant and one Russian Orthodox. However, they cater to foreigners only, and ordinary North Koreans cannot attend the services.

Still, more than 30,000 North Koreans are believed to practice Christianity in hiding — at great personal risk, defectors and activists say.

The U.S. State Department said in a report last year that “genuine religious freedom does not exist” in North Korea.

“What religious practice or venues exist … (are) tightly controlled and used to advance the government’s political or diplomatic agenda,” the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said in a May report. “Other public and private religious activity is prohibited and anyone discovered engaging in clandestine religious practice faces official discrimination, arrest, imprisonment, and possibly execution.”

The report cited indications that the North Korean government had taken “new steps” to stop the clandestine spread of Christianity, particularly in areas near the border with China, including infiltrating underground churches and setting up fake prayer meetings as a trap for Christian converts.

Ri, the North Korean Christian, reportedly was executed in the northwestern city of Ryongchon — near the border with China.

“North Korea appears to have judged that Christian forces could pose a threat to its regime,” Do Hee-youn, a leading activist, told reporters Friday in Seoul.

The South Korean rights report also said North Korean security agents arrested and tortured another Christian, Seo Kum Ok, 30, near Ryongchon. She was accused of trying to spy on a nuclear site and hand the information over to South Korea and the United States.

It was unclear whether she survived, the report said. Her husband also was arrested and their two children have since disappeared, it said.

The U.S. government commission report cited defectors as saying an estimated 6,000 Christians are jailed in “Prison No. 15″ in the north of the country, with religious prisoners facing worse treatment than other inmates.

In Seoul, the rights group said it would try to take North Korean leader Kim to the International Criminal Court over alleged crimes against humanity.

Activists say such alleged crimes — murder, kidnap, rape, extermination of individuals in prison camps — can’t take place in North Korea without Kim’s knowledge or direction since he wields absolute power over the population of 24 million.