Since the 1950s, North Korea has been the site of the world’s most persecuted church. Since 1995, it has also been the site of the world’s quietest humanitarian disaster — a famine that has cost more than 2 million lives.
Yet in the collision of these two terrible events, a spark of new hope for the church in North Korea has been ignited. Or, in the intriguing equation of a 72-year-old North Korean evangelist: “Persecution plus famine equals growth.”
His equation is by no means self-explanatory or — at the moment — widely demonstrable. But enough evidence has emerged to give it credence. It runs like this:
One, North Koreans are so repressed in their own country that it is virtually impossible to encounter the gospel.
Two, North Koreans get so desperate from the famine that they risk all to flee to neighboring China in search of food.
Three, some of these refugees find a welcome among the Christian Korean/Chinese communities, who do not always obey their government’s call to ensure the refugees are instantly deported. Many of these refugees — astonished at the risks these strangers are taking on their behalf — become Christians.
Four, a number of these new converts seek training in the Bible and in evangelism and feel called to return to North Korea and spread the gospel, even if it means death in a labor camp.
Five, in such a way the famine — dreadful though it is in extent — can be partly seen in a positive light. It has resulted in a small but growing cadre of North Korean evangelists who would never have found Christ if they had stayed cocooned in the atheistic propaganda of their native country.
In the words of an elderly North Korean evangelist interviewed in March, “The famine in God’s providence may well be a key instrument to rebuild the North Korean church, because the old pre-1950s Christians are mostly dead. But now God has apparently made a way for many of the younger people to hear about Christ in another country.”
‘Small ray of hope’
Western visitors touring the Chinese border with North Korea in March, met 10 people who were heading back into North Korea after not only converting to Christ as refugees, but also receiving training in Bible instruction from Korean-Chinese house churches.
This small ray of hope contrasts with the current news that illustrates the madness of modern North Korea. As the famine bites hard, again driving refugee numbers up, Pyongyang’s leaders spent millions on lavish ceremonies marking the 90th anniversary of the birth of the regime’s founder, Kim Il Sung.
The ‘hermit kingdom’
In April, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) submitted 13 recommendations to the U.S. government on how to respond to the religious repression in the country. Among its recommendations to the government were calls to fund better reporting on human rights violations in North Korea, a challenge to the president to speak out personally on the lack of freedom, urging the European Union to include religious freedom concerns in its dealing with North Korea and asking the U.S. State Department to monitor foreign aid contributions to ensure aid actually reaches the starving.
However, a Washington insider said, “North Korea is not nicknamed ‘the hermit kingdom’ for nothing. Its leaders are almost impossible to influence by diplomatic means, and the Commission would never dare to actually support house church movements in the Chinese border area, but those are probably the groups having the most influence.”
How did the 21 million people of North Korea get into such a state that a famine is interpreted as a blessing?
North Koreans have since 1946 lived in a Stalinist-type state. The governing party is communist. The ideology is standard Marxism-Leninism. All this would be a hard enough environment for the Christian, but there is an additional ingredient unique to North Korea — the religion of Kim Il Sung-ism.
Visitors to North Korea are always struck by the religious feel of the place, and this is because its founder, Kim Il Sung, established a pseudo-religious cult with himself as the god to be worshiped. Despite adhering to the tenets of materialist ideology, North Korea is run along religious lines.
“Having been raised in a Christian environment,” writes Bahn-Suk Lee, “Kim Il Sung copied and twisted the Christian Trinity, imposing an ungodly trinity on the people of North Korea. In his warped vision, Kim Il Sung was the almighty, eternal father; Kim Jong Il was the active word, the son; and Juche ideology was the very spirit of the revolution, the spirit ruling the nations, the life-giving breath of their god.”
Ironically, when Kim Il Sung came to power in 1946, Korea had 400,000 Christian believers, including 50,000 in Pyongyang alone, earning it the rubric, “Asia’s Jerusalem.”
He stopped at nothing, however, to purge the land of Christians. All the churches were closed; pastors executed; Bibles destroyed. Extensive tricks were played to find remaining Christians. One refugee recalls that while a child in the late 1950s, the teacher told the children to play a game and report their parents if they saw them concealing a book. She recalls, “I saw my mother push a small book deep into a tear in the sofa. I dug it out without her knowledge and took it to school. Later that day I was met at the school gates and reassigned to another family. I never saw my parents again. The book was a New Testament.”
With the vestiges of religion wiped out, Kim began to make outlandish claims for himself. The landscape became scarred by his slogans. Each town square boasted a huge golden statue of him. In the mornings, his speeches were blared out through loudspeakers, and soon religious language was being applied to him. It was said he was “infallible, incapable of error,” he could be “in more than one place at one time,” and could “bestow eternal life upon the Korean people.”
Said a Korea watcher, “It’s very important to understand that the population really does believe this stuff … the whole country has been brainwashed.”
According to reliable reports, ideological education has been strengthened, with everyone forced to spend two hours a day after work in classes studying the words of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.
Nevertheless, the church has not died in North Korea. Korea
watchers discount the official Korean churches as showpieces. There are only three churches in any case, supposedly with 10,000 members. But the suspicion is they only have services when foreigners request a visit.
House churches
More significantly, according to the information from refugees, a network of house churches remains in place, and the total membership may number upwards of 80,000, though no one is quite sure.
Christians among the refugee communities have been giving details of their churches. House churches are small, rarely more than 10 individuals, and normally more like five, often only within families for safety’s sake. There is no singing, and activities are conducted softly behind thick curtains.
The threat of extermination is ever present. Entire house churches have been known to simply disappear. One refugee told of how a house church of 20–30 people disappeared in 2000. No one knows what happened to them. In these conditions, it was almost impossible for the church to grow — until the famine hit.
Heart-wrenching stories
According to a well-placed North Korea watcher, “Over two million people are missing in North Korea.” This is thought to be due to a devastating famine that began in 1995.
Stories of malnourished children, bodies of old people lying in the streets and even of widespread cannibalism touched the hearts of the West, and much aid was sent in. But the North Korean government rarely allows aid workers free access to affected areas, and some of the agencies withdrew since there was no way they could check if their aid was reaching the starving.
Not surprisingly, literally hundreds of thousands fled into China in search of food. But the Chinese government sends all refugees back to North Korea and does not allow United Nations staff to examine the refugees as possible asylum cases.
Confided an official in the Beijing government, “Frankly, anyone coming from North Korea has a well-founded fear of persecution because they are bound to be in big trouble when they are sent back, but we cannot have everyone qualifying for asylum, so we just keep sending them back.” Many refugees complain of torture by Chinese police before being sent back. The USCIRF report urges China to allow U.N. access to the refugees.
Christian refugees interviewed in March said that anyone deported to North Korea faces labor camp, where approximately one in three perish from the appalling conditions. They also claim that the authorities ask, “Have you become a Christian since you left?” If they answer yes, they are either executed or placed in an Auschwitz-type labor camp where they are worked to death.
Sadly, most refugees encounter three unfriendly faces when they come into China: a frightened native who reports them to police; a policeman who deports them roughly to North Korea; or worst of all, racketeers and gangsters who prey on young female refugees, selling thousands of them into prostitution.
Amazingly, however, some receive a welcome from the many Christians among the two million Koreans living in China.
One man said, “We knew the population would just report us, so we tried to steal food, but we were amazed when one family saw us, took us inside and welcomed us by feeding us and housing us. We were shocked because we had been told in our society that Christians were evil, foolish and hated progress, yet there we were, receiving nothing but kindness from them.”
According to a house church pastor in Dandong, on the border with North Korea, “My congregation struggles with two questions: Why has God not opened up North Korea like He did with Eastern Europe and why has the North Korean church not revived like the Chinese church?”
The pastor teaches that the two are perhaps related. “I think the seeds that will bring revival are being scattered now at last. The new situation is the refugees. They cannot find Christ in the country — the propaganda is too all-pervasive. They cannot stay in the society — the famine is too extensive. So they come out and encounter Christians for the first time, and often experience real love for the first time. After they find this, they feel they have to go back and share their good news.” (CD)
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