Oppression of Christians in the DPRK

While the LA Times endeavors to put a friendly face on the most murderous regime in the world, the Dear Murderer has not changed. The Christian Post reported on March 25^th, Christianity Rigorously Repressed in North Korea, Says Federal Agency.

North Korea represses religion and has an official ideology that is a form of secular humanism, a bipartisan federal agency said on Thursday.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which was created by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 to monitor religious freedom in other countries, said interviews with North Korean refugees showed a pattern of arrest, imprisonment, torture and execution for public expressions of religion.

"Any reappearance of Christianity, possibly permeating from northern China to where many thousands of North Koreans fled from famine in the 1990s, is rigorously repressed," USCIRF North Korean researcher David Hawk said at a news conference, as reported by Reuters.

And Kim is not satisfied with killing only the Christians in his own country;

In recent years Pyongyang has reportedly grown worried about “spiritual pollution” of North Koreans and has attempted to persecute such “corrupt” citizens living abroad. In China, for example, where there are 100,000-300,000 North Korean refugees, Pyongyang has obtained support from Beijing to hunt the “fugitives” down.

A Japanese human rights activist reported that the North Korean government built a fake church in China (in Yanji, Jilin province), just 20 km from the border. There, Chinese police arrested many North Korean refugees and had them sent back to North Korea, the activist claimed. During long interrogations, North Korean government authorities reportedly ask the repatriated refugees what kind of contact they've had with South Korean missionaries working in China, if they read the Bible or attend church services. Those who admit to having contact with missionaries or any other religious affiliations and activities are reportedly imprisoned and condemned to death.

So there is blood on China's hands too. This does not come as a big surprise to Orthodox Christians.