Understanding Christian Faith and Freedom in North Korea
When Pyongyang was the “Jerusalem of the East”.
The Korean Revival of 1907 (also known as the Korean Pentecost) stands in history as one of the great transformative revivals of the 20th Century. Geopolitically, it was a tense time, and a spirit of fear and negativity pervaded the annual winter (January) Pyengyang Bible Class.
On the evening of Monday 8 January 1907, as some 1500 Korean Bible teachers, pastors and missionaries gathered together, the meeting was shaken by what Christians described as a powerful visitation of the Spirit of God. The result was an out-pouring of prayer, and a deep sorrow over sin.
The next day it continued as the Bible class was gripped by a spirit of repentance which culminated in confession, forgiveness and reconciliation.
From Pyengyang the movement spread so that the Korean capital, Pyengyang (Pyongyang) became known as “The Jerusalem of the East”.
Recommended:
1907 Revival (a 10:45 minute short film with archival footage)
But, in the mystery of God, the Korean Church would not be permitted to remain on the spiritual mountaintop for long.
War comes to the Korean peninsula.
Located as it is between China and Japan, Korea had long been the site of proxy wars as her powerful, imperialist neighbours fought for control over the strategic peninsula.
On 22 August 1910, imperialist Shinto nationalist Japan annexed Korea, ushering in a 35-year period of profound suffering and intense religious persecution.
In 1919, in the wake of World War I, Korean Christians led a movement for independence. Unfortunately, the hoped-for Western support did not eventuate. Instead, the pro-independence Christians were imprisoned, and the religious persecution intensified. One consequence of this terrible period was that Christianity came to be associated with courageous Korean nationalism, and the profile of the Church was raised.
In August 1945, in the final days of World War II, Soviet and US forces liberated the Korean Peninsula from Japanese occupation. The Peninsula was then divided along the 38th parallel with Soviets occupying the north and US forces occupying the south.
In the north, a Soviet-backed regime was installed, headed by a Red Army-trained guerrilla fighter named Kim Il-sung. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was proclaimed on 9 September 1948, with Kim Il-sung as the Soviet-designated Premier.
In 1950, North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel and invaded the South, triggering the Korean War.
An armistice was signed on 27 July 1953. Though the guns fell silent, the war was merely frozen, not ended, and a comprehensive peace remains elusive.
After the border closed, an estimated 2,300 churches with some 300,000 members disappeared from the north.
Recommended:
The Korean Pentecost and the Sufferings Which Followed
By William N. Blair and Bruce F. Hunt (Banner of Truth Trust, 2015; first published in 1977)
THE KIM DYNASTY
North Korea’s current Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un (born January 1984) is the son of Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, and grandson of Great Leader and Eternal President Kim Il-sung, whom the Soviets installed in December 1945.
As the illegitimate son of Kim Jong-il’s favourite mistress, Kim Jong-un was never meant to rule. Educated in Switzerland, Kim and his sister Kim Yo Chong, spent their childhood privileged, free and anonymous. They were, however, isolated, especially after their guardians abandoned them for the USA. Before being brought home to be groomed for leadership, Kim Jong-un developed a love of American basketball and popular culture. He is doubtless more interested in survival than ideology.
Under the rule of the Kim family, Christianity – like all political dissent – is prohibited. Dissent is punished with incarceration in a labour camp for the whole extended family to three generations. Public executions are also common.
Despite the persecution, the Church has survived and is believed to number between 300,000 and 500,000. Those who are not struggling to endure horrendous prison labour camps, endure prayerfully as secret believers.
The North Korean regime has two great fears:
1) REVOLUTION
Should North Koreans discover the truth – that: (a) they have been fed lies for some 70 years, (b) their situation is actually uniquely horrific, and (c) the only thing preventing them from enjoying the lifestyle of their fellow Koreans just over the southern border is the NK leadership – then mass anger and rebellion could be difficult to control.
To prevent this, the regime endeavours to keep its people cut off from the outside world in a permanent state of blackout. Under Kim Il-sung (1945-1994) the regime was motivated almost solely by Soviet Marxist-Leninism and the ideology of juche (self-reliance). However, under Kim Jong-il (1994 to 2011) the regime was forced to reassess the situation when, at the end of the Cold War, absent Soviet support, the hermit state entered a period of devastating famine. The Great North Korean Famine of 1994 to 1998 is estimated to have cost between 240,000 to 3.5 million lives; along with the myth of juche.
Today, under Kim Jong-un (installed 2011) the regime has worked to maintain isolation while raising living standards. The idea being that when the inevitable happens (as younger cadres know it will), and the blackout can no longer be sustained, then openness should lead inevitably to collapse and the end of the regime. Pyongyang is racing against the clock, for as soon as the regime permitted the operation of domestic markets, and opened to cross-border trade with China, a total blackout could no longer be maintained.
The reality is that black market radios, computers and mobile phones have been creeping into the blacked-out state for years; while American, South Korean and Christian content has long been smuggled in on contraband memory sticks.
As Daily NK reports (31 May 2021): “Recent surveys among defectors show a high percentage of them consumed foreign media while living in North Korea. According to a 2019 survey conducted by Unification Media Group, 91% of respondents said they had consumed South Korean and other foreign content while still living in North Korea. This is despite the fact that 75% of them had also witnessed someone being punished for engaging in this same behaviour.”
Today, more North Koreans than ever before are aware of what life is like outside North Korea.
2) US-ENGINEERED REGIME CHANGE
The regime saw what happened in 2003 to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, a former US ally who did not have a nuclear deterrent. It also saw what happened in 2011 to Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, who had relinquished all his nuclear weapons so he might ally with the West in its “War on Terror”. Saddam was executed by US-backed Shi’ite forces, whilst Gaddafi was lynched by al-Qaeda-aligned, US-backed Sunni jihadists. Convinced the USA is not to be trusted, North Korea will not willingly disarm, but will retain its weapons program for the purpose of deterrence.
THE ROAD TO PEACE AND LIBERTY
The regime’s well-founded fear of US-engineered regime change mean any talks that make disarmament a precondition will never get off the ground.
Despite this, the US continues to demand “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation” (CVID).
Meanwhile, South Korea, China and Russia (North Korea’s neighbours) are lobbying for a series of smaller steps or interim accords with more modest achievements, such as a freeze on missile tests and a suspension of missile production in exchange for an end to international sanctions. After all, the existence of nuclear weapons was not a stumbling block in the Reagan-Gorbachev US-Russia rapprochement of 1987.
Similarly, “reunification” – as in a borderless Korean Peninsula – is more likely to involve a series of smaller steps of rapprochement involving diplomacy, trade, and tourism, with openness carefully managed – probably for decades – as NK’s economy takes shape and catches up with the South’s. Indeed, the most probable scenario for “reunification” is a federation; but even that is a long way off.
Ultimately, the prospects are good for, with peace, NK could “become plugged into one of the globe’s most dynamic economic regions”.
People opposed to this path of peace – that includes ideologues and “hawks” in the NK Peoples’ Army (KPA) and the US government – are working hard to undermine and even derail the rapprochement process.
Meanwhile, sanctions have never worked, for as Russia’s President Putin explains, “Sanctions of any kind are useless and ineffective in this case ... [The North Koreans] will eat grass, but they will not abandon this [nuclear] program unless they feel safe.”
If sanctions are not the solution and war is out of the question, that leaves us with the possibility of returning to six-party talks (North Korea, South Korea, Japan, China, Russia and the USA).
Ultimately, what the Kim regime wants is a bi-lateral treaty with the USA; one that recognises North Korea as a nuclear power, taking regime change off the table. North Korea wants to be recognised as a sovereign independent state, taking reunification off the table (at least for the foreseeable future).
Should a resolution be reached, South Korea, China and Russia (North Korea’s neighbours) are ready to invest in such a way as to facilitate North Korea’s economic development. This is critical, for North Korea cannot truly open to the world until it has radically improved the living standards of its people.
Until then, the endless balancing act will remain:
· when risk is perceived to be high, repression and belligerence is extreme;
· when risk is perceived to be low, engagement and reform inch tentatively forward.
There really is no alternative to returning to the days of inching forward.
South Korea is keen to re-engage with the North, in particular to reopen the Kaesong Industrial Park and resume family reunions. The phone call which took place between North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un and South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in on Tuesday 27 July 2021 – i.e. on the 68th anniversary of the 27 July 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War – was their first in more than a year. Kim and Moon had been exchanging personal letters since April; it was in those communications that the two leaders agreed to take steps to recover trust and improve ties.
Russia, whose Far East shares a border with North Korea, is also keen to engage, particularly to connect the Trans-Korean railway to the Trans-Siberian railway. Not only would this be huge for north-east Asian trade, but it would also serve as competition to China’s Belt Road Initiative (BRI). Russia is also eager to construct a Trans-Korean pipeline to supply natural gas to the peninsula.
Enabled by peace and security, these measures could facilitate the North’s slow but sure transformation. Most critically, these measures would draw North Korea out of Communist Party-ruled China’s sphere of influence and into that of predominantly Christian South Korea, Russia, the US and the West.
This would be good news indeed for the Church in North Korea.
Recommended:
Out of Breathe (30 minute documentary, screened by the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent, 19 February 2019)
excerpts:
If ever there was a project to build bridges between North Korea and the rest of us, this is it.
Every six months, without fanfare, medics and volunteers from the US, South Korea and other countries head to the North Korean countryside where they link up with local doctors and nurses to treat patients suffering from the deadly multi-drug resistant TB (MDRTB). . .
NARRATION: These three people, an American, a South Korean and a North Korean, are from countries that are technically at war, yet they aren’t just working together towards a common goal, but enjoying the friendship that has lasted many years. . .
DR STEPHEN LINTON: “Going there over an extended period of time – and I can’t count how many times I’ve been there over more than thirty years – and being involved in many programs and probably having argued more with North Koreans than the next 10 people in the world, after all this experience I’d have to say that North Korea is neither this nor that. It is its own self and it’s just a shame that more people don’t take time to figure it out”.
For more background on the peace process see:
Talks the Only Option
By Elizabeth Kendal, 13 September 2017
A Step in the Right Direction
Inter-Korean Summit of April 2018
By Elizabeth Kendal, 14 March 2018
US-NK Summit
US-NK Summit, Singapore, June 2018
By Elizabeth Kendal, 6 June 2018
A Stalemate in Need of a Solution
By Elizabeth Kendal, 5 September 2018
NK-US Summit
NK-US Summit, Hanoi, Vietnam, February 2019
By Elizabeth Kendal, 20 February 2019