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North KoreaNorth Korea tops the World Watch List yet again as the worst country in the world in which to live as a Christian. Defiantly Communist in the Stalinist style, a bizarre quasi-religion was built around the founder of the country, Kim Il Sung. Anyone with "another god" is automatically persecuted, which is why the 200-400,000 Christians in this country must remain deeply underground. If one takes the lower number as the total, then a staggering 25% at least are believed to languish in labor camps for their refusal to worship Kim Il Sung's cult. So thorough is the anti-Christian campaign that even North Koreans born today whose grandparents were Christian are earmarked for low level jobs, which is highly ironic as Kim Il Sung's mother was a Presbyterian deaconess. The cult of Kim Il Sung has become unsustainable. Visitors to the capital Pyongyang this year saw banners declaring, "The Eternal Father is always with us." In April 2012 the government is promising a celebration of "epic proportions" for the 100th anniversary of Kim Il Sung's birth - a celebration this impoverished nation cannot afford. The UN estimates that roughly half of its 20 plus million inhabitants are malnourished, and famine is stalking the country again, with credible reports of thousandsexisting on diets of grass and tree bark. Kim Il Sung died in 1994, and his son - Kim Jong Il - has been in charge since then. In the Fall of 2010 a successor was designatedwhen one of his sons, Kim Jong Un, in his late twenties, was unveiled and then was made a four-star general at the conclave of the Korean Worker's Party in the Spring of 2011. Credible reports suggest this young man is effectively leading the country, and that this is likely to be even worse news for Christians. He has been quoted as saying that he only needs about 30% of the population to survive, and he is believed to have been behind the sending of a hundred extra spies to China to infiltrate Christian networks that seek to help refugees. A South Korean Christian missionary in Dangdong, China, was reportedly assassinated by these spies in August. North Korea has severe economic woes. Everyone needs some kind of black market trade to survive. For this reason, the regime seeks to court foreign aid and will often indulge in window dressing measures to securing it. As part of this strategy, four churcheshave been opened in Pyongyang; two are Protestant, one Catholic and one Russian Orthodox. However, there is no compelling evidence that they are anything more than sightseeing spots for foreigners. Nevertheless, the North Korean regime is so desperate for aid that various Christian NGOs are allowed to operate in the country. Half the population lives in the northern two-fifths of the country, adjacent to China, where the nation's natural resources, such as coal, oil, tungsten, are concentrated. It is here that family-based networks of house churches exist in significant numbers, and many families are allowed to visit China to get food from relatives. This results in a pipeline of support, which is constantly harassed by officials. There were reports of many arrests in the period surveyed, but due to the secrecy that Christians must preserve to protect their activities, it is impossible or unwise to report the true extent of the statistics. As if it needed saying, conditions did not improve in the reporting period for Christians, and North Korea remains the most hostile state in which to practice the Christian faith. The situation is unlikely to change in 2012 as Kim Jong Un consolidates power. Christianity will remain a deeply underground yet vibrant faith for the foreseeable future. |
