Betrayed by business partner

Eom Myong-Heui of North Korea was a loyal communist in the Workers' Party of Korea before she became a Christian under the influence of her business partner – a missionary who was later arrested and tortured into revealing that Eom was a believer.

Authorities placed Eom into a detention centre in her hometown of Moosan and tortured her into denying her faith, but her incarceration continued under appalling conditions. Officials eventually released her due to her previous national loyalty. Now an assistant pastor at a church in Seoul, South Korea after a harrowing escape from her home country, Eom relates a journey that is part of a growing body of evidence of a strong – and severely persecuted – church in North Korea.

"It's very hard to live in North Korea, so if you don't secretly do business, you can't survive," Eom said in sharing her story with members of another large church in Seoul. "So for a few days I just kept being polite and agreeing with whatever he said about God, even though I knew he was wrong... but then God started to change my heart."

Eventually the missionary gave her a small New Testament.

"I enjoyed it," she said. "The teaching to love your enemy, give him food if he's hungry, give him water if he's thirsty. I also took to heart the words about loving each other." Eom asked a superior why North Korea didn't have a religion other than worship of the Kim family. His eyes got big and he told me that religion was poison," she said, "and that if I tried to learn about Christianity I would automatically become a traitor."

As a teacher, Eom knew what happened to children of traitors and immediately began to worry about her two daughters. When police arrested the missionary and someone warned her that she could be next, Eom packed a small bag and assured her youngest daughter that she would return in three days. "At the time didn't realize that this trip would bar me from ever entering the country again," she said.

Detained by police, she could not understand why the authorities were so concerned about whether she was a Christian instead of asking about her business activities. After her release and unable to rescue her daughters, she escaped to China, where she was arrested twice and told, "If we arrest you again, we will kill you."

From China, Eom made a dangerous journey via Myanmar to Thailand, where she spent six months in a detention centre before being granted asylum in South Korea in 2002.

Open Doors UK & Ireland estimates that of the 200,000 people incarcerated in political prison camps, at least 40,000 to 60,000 are Christians. Under North Korea's policy of juche, or self-reliance, citizens may worship only President Kim Jong Il and his late father, former ruler Kim Il Sung.