In-Depth: Religious Freedom in the Hermit State

Whether or not you believe in god, everyone has a right to religion and a right to be able to manifest it. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, a self-proclaimed “atheist state”, is a hermit pseudo-communist Dictatorship that clearly does not believe in these principles. After the Second World War, North Korea was entrusted to the USSR, and was eventually handed over to Kim Il-Sung in 1948, and so the story of continued religious persecution begins. Accepted religion in the State only occurs in the form of ‘Kim Il-Sungism’ in which the Eternal President, along with his son, Kim Jong-il and grandson, Kim Jong-Un, are deified in a form of imperial cult propped up by the National Security Agency, the ‘bowibu’. Any other forms of religion are seen as political and have the potential to undermine the North Korean Juche system of self-reliance and the god-like statuses of the dear leaders.

North Korea has been awarded the prestigious title of Number One out of 50 countries on the list of worst offenders of religious persecution in the Open Doors 2012 Report. The main religions of North Korea consist of Buddhism, Christianity, Shamanism and Cheondonism; a 20th Century fusion of politics, spirituality and nationalistic religion. Buddhism is often viewed as one of the only semi-autonomous religions to be accepted in the Dictatorship State, with many temples still standing, although these are mainly kept as cultural and archaeological remnants of a time gone by. The Shingye Temple has been rebuilt by the leaders of the DPRK and they even claim that hundreds of pilgrims have been able to visit the site. However from reports by defectors and foreigners who have visited, it is clear that the monks are paid by the Korean Worker’s Party, have wives and drink alcohol; all contrary to classical Buddhist teachings.

Shamanism, fortune tellers and divinations are to some extent tolerated by the North Korean authorities as they, along with Buddhism, are not seen as political or ideological in nature and therefore do not constitute as much of a supposed threat as Christianity. However, if one were to visit a fortune teller, they would be punished if caught by members of the dreaded bowibu or informed on by their fearful neighbours. This persecution occurs despite reports that even large numbers of members of the Korean Worker’s Party visit fortune tellers.

Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, was branded the ‘Jerusalem of the East’ prior to the establishment of the atheist state, before 300,000 Christians disappeared. As with the Buddhist temples, one can see churches in North Korea and the state even maintains there are over 500 house churches in operation. Reports to the outside however show a starkly different story; no one uses these houses of worship and when people visit them the whole performance appears staged, are the North Koreans inside the churches paid just like the Buddhist monks?

It is abundantly obvious that Christianity, in particular Protestantism, is heavily persecuted in comparison with other forms of religion in North Korea, as it is seen as a sign of the West. Most of the information we have in the outside world about the mistreatment comes from first-hand accounts of defectors, both civilians and those who were members of the National Security Agency. Those who have escaped who were previously members of the bowibu have contended that they were instructed in discovering those involved with religion, often through training at the National Institute of Security and Defence, and are even instructed to penetrate Korean-Chinese churches to catch any religious refugees. Defectors have claimed that even those caught with a bible can be shot to death, put into one of the many prison camps and tortured for names of others associated with Christianity. For instance, authorities found a book that had the names of North Koreans associated to a church; all 25 were picked up by the authorities in Kuwol-dong, three were executed in public and the others were sent to the infamous Yodok Prison Camp. Furthermore, Jun-Yong-Su, an American citizen was arrested in 2010 for apparently engaging in missionary work.

The brutal prison camp system, the kwalliso, holds about 150,000 to 200,000 prisoners and is one of the main sources of fear which the North Korean leadership use to subdue citizens into abiding by their Juche system. Torture, murder, forced labour and total denial of any human rights flourish within these concentration camps located throughout North Korea. Many defectors who were interred in the camps report a heightened severity to their sentence and treatment if they were at all affiliated with religion. Horrific testaments of alleged experiments of biological agents on prisoners who were known to be active religious adherents have been reported. This severe persecution is made all the worse due to the North Korean ‘three generations policy’ through which multiple generations of one family will anguish in one of the camps, such as Shin Dong-hyuk who was born in Camp 14 and but amazingly managed to escape.

There have been attempts to halt this religious persecution but to no avail. Despite Kim Jong-un’s new allowance of Western foods like pizza in his half of the Korean Peninsula, showing off his new wife and allowing Disney characters to perform, he has kept a harsh grip on political dissidents including those involved with religion. Non-governmental organisations do not have access to the State and even the GPS signal of a balloon filled with Christian leaflets from South Korea was blocked by the North Korean authorities, lest it tempt anyone to realise that Kim Sung-Il and sons are not, in fact, gods. Those persecuted in North Korea need to have their stories heard and the profile of the plight of all those persecuted needs to be raised before the world wakes up with another genocide on their hands, which has arguably already started.