Prayer Alert – 6 Million North Koreans in Jeopardy – Need for Immediate Food Aid
North Korea’s food shortage has reached a crisis point because the agricultural sector was affected by torrential rains and the coldest winter in 60 years. Six Million are living “on the knife edge” and will go hungry without food aid according to the World Food Program. Please pray for the $224 million needed—that it will be supplied quickly and get to those who are suffering want.
Prayer Initiative for North Korea (PINK), September 19-22, 2011
Prayer Initiative of the Organizers of Several Korean Prayer Organizations Supported by the IPC:
1. We want to bring together about 300 local and 100 foreign prayer leaders from all over the world to pray for critical breakthroughs regarding the issues regarding North Korea and for its liberation.
2. We also want PINK 2011 to be a stepping-stone for the World Prayer Assembly, May 14-18, 2012 in Jakarta, Indonesia—more information available at www.wpa2012.org.
2.1 We aim to download strategies from the heaven for the global prayer issues of this generation: Islamization of the globe, the homosexual agenda, increasing natural disasters, restructuring of the global economy, etc.
2.2 We want to connect various prayer networks all over the world to be united in focused prayers for these things.
3. We expect that nation-wide prayer networks can emerge in Japan, China, and Korea, and that these networks can be joined with each other to form an East Asian prayer network.
A Call to Prayer for the Liberation of North Korea
Korea is the only divided country n the world and many people in North Korea are dying in hunger and oppression every day. Several million have already perished under the regimes of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. The appalling human tragedies we see there have come about through the spirit of communism and idolization of egocentric leaders. The current rising prosperity of South Korea is a huge contrast, much of it certainly resulting from the influence of the gospel and its vigorous prayer movement.
To bring down the barriers around North Korea and set the people there free, we believe that God is calling the nations, including those who delivered His gospel to South Korea in the past, to pray together for the decisive breakthroughs we need to see in the North. Pyongyang was once called the “Jerusalem of the East” during the 1907 revival that swept Korea, so we believe that as we pray, the Lord is able to transform and restore North Korea to its former spiritual greatness.
We do not believe that this is only a matter of North Korea itself. As this most oppressive national situation on earth is death with by bringing down barriers and setting the people free, we will also see the ancient doors in the other nations open, and the King of Glory come in to reign. ‘Lift up your heads, O you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in.’ (Psalm 24:7).
The current situation in North Korea cries out for an international prayer initiative like this. These are some of the ways it has been described in the media and by those who have been there as eyewitnesses:
• Largest prison camp in the world
• Worst human rights violating country
• Worst persecutor of Christians
• 4 million North Koreans have died of starvation since 1995
• Economy “literally collapsed, operating at about 20%” due to adherence to juche central planning failures
• Famine again stalks the land
• 500,000 fled to China for survival, mostly women and 80% of them raped and sexually trafficked
• 1 million killed in concentration camps with cruel brutality
• North Korean people “the most isolated, most persecuted, and most suffering”
Please pray with us for what we believe will be a history-shaping initiative for the last divided nation. God brought down the Berlin Wall, uniting East with West Germany, after a concerted strategic prayer initiative. He also united black and white South Africa on the verge of Bloody civil war as His people prayed so a new nation was born. He can do the same for Korea, liberating the North and reintegrating it peacefully with the South. Let’s believe Him for this to happen!
Prayer Concerns for PINK:
1. Please pray for PINK 2011 and its effective organization.
2. Pray for the right ministry leaders and intercessors to take part from within South Korea and around the world.
3. Ask the Lord to unite us and give us His strategies for the issues of our time and for breakthrough in North Korea.
4. Prayer for a documentary prayer video on North Korea being prepared now that will help rally prayer around the world.
5. Pray for the formation of a regional prayer network for NE Asia.
Thank for your support for this initiative and for His healing and transformation of the Korean peninsula!
For more information about the PINK initiative, please contact Youngchae Song of All Nationals Intercessors, one of the sponsoring bodies in the new national prayer network that is organizing this prayer initiative. His email address is This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Call to Prayer for the Drought and Famine Crisis in East Africa
Over 11 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and the newly formed Republic of South Sudan have been left in need of food, water and emergency healthcare. The U.N. calls it “the worst drought for 60 years), and it is this severe drought that has forced thousands of people to flee their homes and cross their country’s borders in search of aid. Southern Somalia is already experiencing famine – the first for 19 years – and unless the international community acts quickly, it may spread to the rest of the country within months. “We still do not have all the resources for food, clean water, shelter and health services to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of Somalis in desperate need,” said Marke Bowden, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Somalia.
The long-running conflict in Somalia has made it very difficult and dangerous for aid agencies to operate inside the country, complicating the crisis. Al-Shabaab, an Islamist insurgent group linked to al Qaeda, has recently once again banned international relief efforts, making it impossible for food agencies to help those most at risk.
From an article by Bryony Jones, CNN
http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/22/what-has-caused-the-east-africa-crisis/
Please pray for a lifting of this ban by Al-Shabaab and for the resumption of effective relief efforts where they are most needed. Pray for the rescue of those in the region who need food, water and emergency healthcare and that the international community will be moved to take quick and appropriate action.
10/40 WINDOW SUNDAY – OCTOBER 2, 2011
A special opportunity to focus prayer on a region of the world that is home to:
• the majority of the world’s Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists
• the majority of the world’s least-reached people groups
• the poorest of the poor (more than eight of every 10 impoverished people)
• 45 of the 50 nations where Christians are most persecuted
WHEN? The first Sunday of every October. This year, 10/40 Window Sunday will be celebrated on Sunday, October 2.
WHERE? In your home, with your small group, at church…. Anywhere Christians gather to seek the Lord.
WHY? Because the 10/40 Window is the “final frontier” of world missions. In order to finish the task given to the Church, we need to pray!
“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you….” – The Bible, Matthew 28:19,20
HOW? Mark Sunday, October 2 on your calendar. Tell your friends, family, small group, pastor…. Plan to join with Window International Network and countless Christians around the globe in interceding for the 10/40 Window.
You don’t have to wait until October. Start praying today! Go to www.WIN1040.com for nation profiles, prayer points, and to learn about how you can get involved in reaching the people of the 10/40 Window.
International Prayer Initiative for the Liberation of North Korea
This September 19-21, several hundred local church leaders, supported by 50 international prayer leaders and intercessors, will gather in Seoul for a special prayer initiative—PINK (Prayer Initiative for North Korea). Goals as mapped out by the Korean organizers are: 1) To see real breakthroughs in the critical issues on North Korea; 2) As one of the stepping stones for the World Prayer Assembly—to connect various prayer networks before WPA and to receive strategies on global prayer issues; 3) To build up ongoing national and regional prayer networks in East Asia. If you are in prayer ministry and are interested to participate, please let our office know.
Robert Park, a Christian human rights activist who was imprisoned for three months last year by the Pyongyang regime, has repeatedly called for concerted prayer and action for the liberation of North Korea. In his April 20, 2011 article in the Washington Post, Park calls on the international community to stop the “genocide” that has been occurring in North Korea. This is also a call to prayer for God’s deliverance since Scripture encourages us to intercede for His transformation of nations. As one theologian has affirmed, “history belongs to the intercessors” (Walter Wink). Let us fervently pray with faith-filled expectation during these months leading up to September’s initiative, trusting the Lord to bring real change inside this deeply oppressed nation.
Here are a few excerpts from Park’s provocative article that should move our hearts to care and intercede:
“Holocaust” is the word used to describe the systematic extermination of millions of innocent European Jews during World War II. In the aftermath of this mammoth failure of humanity, many nations “repented” and declared that “never again” would such inhumanity and absolute disregard for human dignity and life be tolerated.
Yet on Jan. 1, the regime of Kim Jong Il warned that a “nuclear holocaust” would be inevitable if South Korea engaged the North in war. While the world watches peoples in the Middle East and North Africa rise up against tyranny, another people suffers on the Korean Peninsula. And that Pyongyang so irreverently invoked this term to describe its so-called necessary defence is a stark reminder of the genocidal and inhumane nature of Kim Jong Il’s regime and the atrocities it has committed against millions of innocents.
Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, called on the international community in 2004 to investigate “political genocide” in North Korea. In response to reports of “North Korea’s use of gas chambers to murder and perform medical experiments on political dissidents and their families” and the “chilling image of the murderers coolly watching their victims’ death agonies...all too reminiscent of Nazi barbarism,” the group’s chairman, Avner Shalev, wrote to then-U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that “the issue is all the more severe due to North Korea’s status as a member of the U.N.”
“An estimated 1 million innocent men, women and children have been murdered in North Korean political concentration camps since 1972, academics believe. Virtually nothing has been done to speed the closure of these camps since 2004, though the testimony of tens of thousands of refugees provides mounting evidence of crimes against humanity and genocide.
Outside observers and nongovernmental organizations estimate that 3.5 million North Koreans died of starvation between 1995 and 1997. They continue to die in huge numbers in a government-organized famine akin to the Holodomor famine-genocide in Ukraine (1932-33), which was orchestrated by Joseph Stalin. Billions in humanitarian aid have been shipped to North Korea, more than enough to feed the nation’s population, but government and academic studies have revealed that North Korea systematically diverted the aid, using it to bolster its military might while millions, for whom the aid was intended, starved to death. “
“North Korea has been considered the world’s worst persecutor of Christians for many years by objective
researchers of religious persecution such as Open Doors and Christian Solidarity Worldwide. Soon Ok Lee, one of the few survivors of the North Korean concentration camp system, has testified before Congress and later told MSNBC that “since the Korean War—in Korea they call it June 25 War—the No. 1 enemy is God. Kim Il Sung hated God most.”
It is common knowledge among refugees and people who follow North Korea that those discovered to have any kind of faith or religious belief—and their families, to three generations—are executed or sent to concentration camps for life. This constitutes genocide under Article 2 of the convention; consequently, the world has not only the moral duty but also the legal right and obligation, under Article 8, to intervene.”
Please pray with us for the liberation of North Korea and for the effective planning and success of this crucial initiative!
