North Korea is notorious for its hostility toward religion and people of faith. Recent reports cite as many as 120,000 people who are being kept in the North Korean jails, imprisoned for their faith. Christians in the country, facing horrific persecution, often try to escape to the South Korean border.
Earlier this week, the U.S. State Department released their 2017 congressionally mandated International Religious Freedom report, which states that between 80,000 and 120,000 North Korean Christians are currently imprisoned in the country.
The report documents violations of religious freedom around the world, focusing largely on countries with intense persecution. In addition to the statistics regarding North Korean Christians, the report also details ethnic cleansing taking place in Burma, amid the Rohingya refugee crisis.
The persecution taking place in North Korea is nothing new. Over the years, Christians who have been able to escape and live to tell their stories have recalled the torture they faced simply because of their faith.
When Christians in North Korea are found out to be believers, they are sent to what the government calls “re-education camps,” The Christian Post reported. Individuals can be sent to these camps for doing anything related to Christianity, whether it’s something like praying or worshipping.
Survivors have recalled the forced labor, inhumane abuse and torture they’ve faced inside of the North Korean prison camps.
“The government continued to deal harshly with those who engaged in almost any religious practices through executions, torture, beatings, and arrests,” the report states. “An estimated 80,000 to 120,000 political prisoners, some imprisoned for religious reasons, were believed to be held in the political prison camp system in remote areas under horrific conditions.”
One NGO that contributed to the report, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, noted that “a policy of guilt by association was often applied in cases of detentions of Christians, meaning that the relatives of Christians were also detained regardless of their beliefs.”
“Religious and human rights groups outside the country continued to provide numerous reports that members of underground churches were arrested, beaten, tortured, and killed because of their religious beliefs,” the report continues. “According to the [Database Center for North Korean Human Rights], there was a report in 2016 of disappearances of persons who were found to be practicing religion within detention facilities. International NGOs and North Korean defectors reported any religious activities conducted outside of those that were state-sanctioned, including praying, singing hymns, and reading the Bible, could lead to severe punishment, including imprisonment in political prison camps.”
One Christian cited in the report stated that she was not just charged with “practicing Christianity” but also for studying its “disgraceful nature.” She had spent eight years in North Korean prisons because government officials had learned that she attended church while in China.
“During her imprisonment, authorities told her up to a dozen times a day to repent of her past and try to ‘wash’ her mind,” the report reads. “She reported six other women who were in prison for attending church were either beaten to death or died from diarrhea because they did not have access to medicine.”
The report also claims that Christians are “restricted to the lowest class rungs of the songun system” and are classified as “means of foreign, Western encroachment.”
The songun system is North Korea’s way of classifying their people by social hierarchy. They take into consideration the following: one’s social class, presumed support of the Kim regime, religious views, family background and other identifiers.
The latest report is no surprise, as Open Doors has ranked North Korea number one for Christian persecution for the past 16 years straight.
North Korea does not just target Christians, however. Buddhists living in the country have faced similar persecution.
On Tuesday, Sam Brownback, the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, held a press conference to discuss the prison system and persecution in North Korea in light of the report.
“[W]hat we know is that you’ve got a gulag system operating in North Korea, and it’s been a terrible situation for many years,” Brownback said. “You can go on satellite, open-source satellite, and see some of these camps and the situation. You have people that have gotten out and have written about the situation in North Korea.”
Recently, President Donald Trump canceled a summit with North Korea, after Kim Jong Un released a hostile letter threatening the United States with nuclear weapons. Officials from both North Korea and the United States are working toward trying to reach an agreement that will allow President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un to meet.
In his press conference, Brownback was asked if the U.S. and North Korea would address religious issues if a meeting did take place.
“Well, in a sense it already has with the three people that were released that [Secretary of State Mike Pompeo] brought back, and I do expect the president is right on point on North Korea,” Brownback said, touching on the release of three American prisoners earlier this month.
“He’s very engaged on this, as you know. The secretary is very engaged on this. And I think they’re raising all of these issues. But the first three people they brought out were people that had been imprisoned in North Korea, and so this is a matter of discussion,” he added.
Brownback is both the former governor of Kansas and a former U.S. senator and has closely followed the conflict with North Korea over the past few decades.
“I remember when I was back in the Senate, I was raising the issue of North Korea at that time, but you couldn’t get anybody to act,” he said. “Well, this president is acting and he’s taking this issue on even though it’s threatened us for years, if not decades.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also spoke at the press conference, announcing that the State Department would be hosting the first Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom in July.
The event would host “counterparts from like-minded governments” as well as feature “representatives from international organizations and religious communities.”
Overall, Pompeo said he hopes the meeting works to “reaffirm our commitment to religious freedom as a universal human right.”
“This ministerial, we expect, will break new ground. It will not just be a discussion group,” Pompeo said. “It will be about action. We look forward to identifying concrete ways to push back against persecution and ensure greater respect for religious freedom for all.”
Brownback also chimed in about the July meeting, stating that they would be including countries that currently “working towards a greater religious freedom now in their nation.” He did not clarify which countries are invited to participate.
“We’ll work to get some actionable items coming forward out of it and also follow-on meetings,” he said. “The intent is really to drive the issue of religious freedom more aggressively globally, and the outcomes are really twofold that we intend to get out of it: less terrorism, more economic growth.”
While the government takes action, you can too. Take time to pray each day for those 120,000 imprisoned Christians in North Korea. Pray that their faith will sustain them, and pray for the government, that they would become open to the idea of religious freedom for North Korean citizens.
(H/T: The Christian Post)