North Korea crushing churches: U. S. report
Commission tells of Christians executed in front of schoolchildren
A U.S government report says North Korea is raising religious persecution to the same heights as ancient Rome.
While the Romans threw Christians to the lions for sport, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom says North Korea’s leaders settle for snap trials followed by firing squads or simply crushing the heads of underground church leaders under a steamroller.
In the same week U. S. President George W. Bush is touring Asia to call for increased political freedom, the independent U. S. government commission issued a report claiming North Korea is waging all-out war on religion and free thought.
The reports says there are only three formal churches in North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang, but they are primarily for show and are visited only by foreigners and the elderly. Everywhere else, the North Korean government is engaged in the forceful suppression of religious and intellectual life.
Relying on eyewitness accounts from 40 recent refugees who fled to South Korea via China, the commission says North Korea has created a reign of terror to crush any religious belief that might challenge the god-like authority of leader Kim Jong Il.
The mere possession of a Bible can bring a death sentence, while attending a secret underground church service can result in gruesome public executions.
One eyewitness told commission investigators he witnessed five Christian church leaders being executed by being run over by a steamroller in front of a crowd of spectators.
The underground church leaders were told, “ If you abandon religion and serve only Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, you will not be killed,” said the witness, a soldier in a local construction battalion.
“None of the five said a word. Some of the fellow parishioners [who were] assembled to watch the execution cried, screamed out or fainted when the skulls made a popping sound as they were crushed beneath the steamroller.”
In another case, a woman told of being forced to witness the 1997 firing squad execution of a young woman and her father near where the Seong Cheon River runs into the Tumin River.
The young woman had been washing clothes by the river when she accidentally dropped a Bible she had hidden in her laundry.
After three months of interrogation, she and her father were put on trial in a marketplace, condemned as traitors and executed on the spot in front of an assembled crowd of schoolchildren and their teachers.
A former policeman described how he was involved in the arrests of 11 church members. Two of them were tortured to death during interrogation, while the others were executed, he said.
In the early 20th century, religious life flourished in North Korea, the report says. Religious groups played an essential role in uniting Koreans opposed to Japanese colonial rule, but the churches were viewed as political competitors by Kim Il Sung’s Korean Workers Party.
When North Korea’s founder came to power after the Second World War, he labelled the churches “counterrevolutionary” and crushed them.
Ever since, North Korea has promoted a personality cult that has virtually deified Kim Il Sung and his son and successor, Kim Jong Il.
North Korean newspapers have carried stories claiming North Korean sailors have been saved at sea during terrible storms by simply gathering on storm-tossed decks to sing the praises of Kim Il Sung.
And the country’s official histories claim that when Kim Jong Il was born on Mount Paektu, a sacred mountain on the border with China, a double rainbow appeared in the sky, along with a single bright star, to herald his birth.
“Having faith in God is an act of espionage,” one North Korean refugee told the U. S. commission’s investigators. “Kim Il Sung is a god in North Korea.”
“ The Kim dynasty is much more than an authoritarian government,” the commission report says. “ It also holds itself out as the ultimate source of power, virtue, spiritual wisdom and truth for the North Korean people. Heterodoxy and dissent are repressed, quickly and efficiently, with punishments meted out to successive generations of the dissident’s family.
“ This study provides compelling evidence of the systematic denigration of religious life in North Korea and of ongoing abuses of the freedom of thought, conscience and religion or belief,” the report adds.
The commission is a bipartisan government body that monitors religious practices overseas in relation to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The release of the U. S. report coincides with a UN General Assembly vote yesterday in which member states expressed “serious concern” over human rights violations in North Korea.
The General Assembly’s social and humanitarian committee approved a resolution put forward by the European Union raising concerns over the use of torture, public executions and restrictions on freedom of thought and religion. The final vote was 84 to 22, with 62 countries abstaining. South Korea abstained and China voted against.