North Korean defector describes 'life of hell' for Christians
North Korean Choi Kwanghyuk is one of the lucky ones.
The 55-year-old managed to escape from the work camp where he was sent after being targeted and persecuted by the government for his Christian faith.
“We couldn’t raise our voice during a service, we couldn’t sing out loud during a worship … that was hard,” Choi told Fox News through a translator. “Also, we had to hide so that other people could not see us.”
Despite having to hide his faith in plain sight while living in North Hamgyong province, Choi was still compelled to bring religion to others when he started an underground church.
“There were about nine people,” he said. “I couldn’t do mission work because we had to keep it secret that we had a church.”
“If that information had leaked, we could have faced the death penalty.”
The 55-year-old managed to escape from the work camp where he was sent after being targeted and persecuted by the government for his Christian faith.
“We couldn’t raise our voice during a service, we couldn’t sing out loud during a worship … that was hard,” Choi told Fox News through a translator. “Also, we had to hide so that other people could not see us.”
Despite having to hide his faith in plain sight while living in North Hamgyong province, Choi was still compelled to bring religion to others when he started an underground church.
“There were about nine people,” he said. “I couldn’t do mission work because we had to keep it secret that we had a church.”
“If that information had leaked, we could have faced the death penalty.”
“I never heard the term ‘underground church’ until I got here [to the U.S.].”
In 2008, North Korean authorities caught up to Choi and arrested him. He was held in prison by the state security department where he says he was interrogated about his faith.
“I was tortured there,” he said. “I kept denying it.”
He said that he was about to be sent to one of North Korea’s brutal labor camps when he was able to break free.
“I decided to escape because I thought that once they sent me to the other camp, they could eventually send me to the concentration camp or kill me,” Choi recalled. “I was traveling back and forth between China and North Korea, but they kept searching for me, and I knew it could put my friends in danger too, so I left.”
The North Korean gulag system is notorious for harsh conditions and brutal treatment of its prisoners.
Choi feared being sent to the most notorious camp within the system -- Camp 22.Also known as Hoeryong concentration camp, and part of a large system of prison camps throughout the Communist dictatorship, Camp 22 is an 87-square-mile penal colony located in North Hamgyong province where most of the prisoners are people accused of criticizing the government.
Inmates, most of whom are serving life sentences, face harsh and often lethal conditions. According to the testimony of a former guard from Camp 22, prisoners live in bunkhouses with 100 people per room and some 30 percent show the markings of torture and beatings -- torn ears, gouged eyes and faces covered with scars.
“Unfortunately, it is inexplicably easy to wind up in one of these camps. While someone can be sent to one of these camps for openly evangelizing, someone can just as easily be sent there for simply being in contact with a religious person,” said King of the International Christian Concern.
Prisoners are forced to stand on their toes in tanks filled with water up to their noses for 24 hours, stripped and hanged upside-down while being beaten or given the infamous "pigeon torture” -- where both hands are chained to a wall at a height of 2 feet, forcing them to crouch for hours at a time.
Tiny rations of watery corn porridge leave inmates on the brink of starvation, and many hunt rats, snakes and frogs for protein. Some even take the drastic measure of searching through animal dung for undigested seeds to eat. Beatings are handed out daily for offenses as simple as not bowing down in respect to the guards fast enough. Prisoners are used as practice targets during martial arts training. Guards routinely rape female inmates.
Choi said he finally escaped to neighboring China. While he was figuring out where to go next, he had heard how the general image of North Korean defectors was not positive among those in South Korea.
“So, I applied for asylum in the U.S.,” he told Fox News.
Choi, who was single when he lived in North Korea, was granted asylum in the U.S. in 2013. He first lived in Dallas before eventually moving to Los Angeles where he now lives.
Choi said that as a result of injuries he received while being tortured, he is unable to work but has committed himself to telling the world about the human rights abuses in his native land.
“First of all, every human must have the right to freedom,” he said. “There is no freedom in North Korea. By law, they have the freedom of religion and the freedom of the press, but the reality is very different.”
And despite the hardships he may face, Choi said that life in the U.S. is a vast improvement.
“There is an enormous difference between my life in North Korea and my life in the U.S,” he said.
“The life in North Korea is hell … life in America is heaven.”
Source: Fox News - http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/10/25/north-korean-defector-describes-life-hell-for-christians.html
North Korean Church Thrives
OPERATION BIBLE SMUGGLING: NORTH KOREA
Give thanks to Jesus for the growing Christian church in North Korea.
Pray: for the Bibles that are smuggled into North Korea to get into the hands, and hearts, of believers and seekers.
And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe. (1 Thess 2:13)
On the nights when the winds are light and the skies are dark, hundreds of helium-filled balloons are sent up and away from multiple points in South Korea, destined a few miles away and into North Korea. Only these are no ordinary balloons — they are considered “Bible Balloons,” adorned with the Words of God printed in Korean or flash drives featuring the entire texts of the Testament.
It is one of the few creative — and inherently dangerous — ways Bibles are smuggled into the oppressive dictatorship in the hopes that impoverished North Koreans will know that they aren’t forgotten. Other activists, such as American pastor Eric Foley, have opted for a much larger hydrogen-fueled 40-foot balloon brimming with Bibles and testimonials. These are then dropped into rural areas with the help of GPS technology, in the hopes that even just one will be picked up.
Nonetheless, the regime is well aware of the biblical balloons — which have been at the center point of Bible smuggling since the 90’s — and if the endeavor to shoot them down fails, anyone spotted collecting the contents is immediately arrested….
Another smuggling method in is via the occasional — and lawbreaking — tourist. Although any visitors to the hermit kingdom are rigorously warned by external tour companies to take in absolutely no religious texts or symbols and refrain from any type of discussion on it that could be interpreted as proselytizing, some still take the risk. And pay the price.
Just ask Ohio native, Jeffrey Fowle. A devout Christian and father of three, the perpetually curious 58-year-old journeyed to North Korea on an organized tour in 2014, and was detained after deliberately concealing a Bible under a trash can in the men’s room of a Pyongyang nightclub. He had hoped the bootlegged Bible — which contained his name and family photographs — would make its way to someone in the underground Christian community.
Three years later, in May of this year, his release was finally secured by U.S officials.
Fowle is one of the lucky ones. Religious freedom is written into the country’s constitution, but the reality on the ground paints a much different picture. For the vast majority of trapped Christians inside the brutal dictatorship, the consequence is life in a labor camp or a public execution by firing squad. Their relatives too are often subject to callous retribution.
“The North Korean regime’s legitimacy and claim to power flow out of the idea that Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and now Kim Jong Un are divine beings. North Korean children are taught to pray before a meal, ‘Thank you Father Kim Il Sung for our food,’….
Furthermore, Christian North Korean defectors in the border areas of South Korea broadcast gospels on an almost daily basis. Roughly 20 percent of the 25 million North Korean population own a radio — an illicit item — and many will risk their own lives to tune in.
“Radio, just as in the days of the Cold War, remains an incredibly useful tool to inject truth and the Gospel into North Korea,” said Jeff King, president of advocacy group International Christian Concern. “And we remain an ardent supporter of pushing Christian content into North Korea through radio and other means.”
But despite the harsh penalties that come with praising anyone of any belief system outside the Kims, there is a sense that an ascending number of North Koreans are turning to Christianity.
“The church is growing at a faster rate in North Korea than in South Korea, where the church has declined in membership every year since 1991,” Foley observed….
According to the prominent pastor, the uptick in the North is mainly due to the covert network of North Korean Christians, rather than religious advocates from the outside.
“The reason why is that the work of missionaries on the North Korea/China border is easily infiltrated and neutralized by North Korean state security agents, but the work of underground North Korean Christians has continued faithfully for more than three generations,” he explained. “They don’t smuggle large numbers of Bibles into North Korea, but instead, certain members of the underground church carry Bibles across the border one at a time, often in the form of MP3 players.”
These Christians are native North Koreans who are given permission to travel to China on relative visas or work visas. Some have established relationships with border guards who accept bribe money — and are under close and careful surveillance themselves — who turn a blind-eye to the illegal material being brought back in, while others have it carefully concealed from all….
(Excerpted from Fox News , reporting by Hollie McKay.)
More: https://www.ifapray.org/blog/operation-bible-smuggling-how-christian-texts-infiltrate-north-korea/
North Korea Missile Claims
- Pyongyang has warned that the 'entire US mainland is within our firing range'
- North Korean official threatened 'severe punishment' for US if it 'dares to invade'
- Country claims to be developing rocket capable of reaching the US East coast
North Korea has warned that nuclear war 'may break out any moment' amid claims it is developing a missile that can reach the East coast of the US.
Pyongyang said the 'entire US mainland is within our firing range' and threatened 'severe punishment' for America if it 'dares to invade out sacred territory'.
The chilling statement comes as a North Korean official claimed the secretive nation was building a rocket capable of travelling more than 6,000 miles.
The new missile would be capable of reaching 'all the way to the East coast' of the US, one of Kim Jong-un's officials claimed.
The official told CNN Pyongyang was not ruling out diplomacy, but that beforehand, 'we want to send a clear message that the DPRK has a reliable defensive and offensive capability to counter any aggression from the United States'.
It comes after North Korea's deputy UN ambassador warned yesterday that the situation on the Korean peninsula 'has reached the touch-and-go point and a nuclear war may break out any moment.'
Kim In Ryong told the U.N. General Assembly's disarmament committee that North Korea is the only country in the world that has been subjected to 'such an extreme and direct nuclear threat' from the United States since the 1970s - and said the country has the right to possess nuclear weapons in self-defense.
He pointed to large-scale military exercises every year using 'nuclear assets' and said what is more dangerous is what he called a US plan to stage a 'secret operation aimed at the removal of our supreme leadership.'
This year, Kim said, North Korea completed its 'state nuclear force and thus became the full-fledged nuclear power which possesses the delivery means of various ranges, including the atomic bomb, H-bomb and intercontinental ballistic rockets.'
'The entire US mainland is within our firing range and if the US dares to invade our sacred territory even an inch it will not escape our severe punishment in any part of the globe,' he warned.
Kim's speech follows escalating threats between North Korea and the United States, and increasingly tough UN sanctions.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday that his country is curtailing economic, scientific and other ties with North Korea in line with UN sanctions, and the European Union announced new sanctions on Pyongyang for developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Sunday that diplomatic efforts aimed at resolving the North Korean crisis 'will continue until the first bomb drops.'
His commitment to diplomacy came despite President Donald Trump's tweets several weeks ago that his chief envoy was 'wasting his time' trying to negotiate with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whom he derisively referred to as 'Little Rocket Man.'
North Korea's deputy UN ambassador called his country's nuclear and missile arsenal 'a precious strategic asset that cannot be reversed or bartered for anything.'
'Unless the hostile policy and the nuclear threat of the US is thoroughly eradicated, we will never put our nuclear weapons and ballistic rockets on the negotiating table under any circumstances,' Kim said.
He told the disarmament committee that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea - North Korea's official name - had hoped for a nuclear-free world.
Instead, Kim said, all nuclear states are accelerating the modernisation of their weapons and 'reviving a nuclear arms race reminiscent of (the) Cold War era.'
He noted that the nuclear weapon states, including the United States, boycotted negotiations for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that was approved in July by 122 countries at the United Nations.
'The DPRK consistently supports the total elimination of nuclear weapons and the efforts for denuclearisation of the entire world,' he said. But as long as the United States rejects the treaty and 'constantly threatens and blackmails the DPRK with nuclear weapons ... the DPRK is not in position to accede to the treaty.'
Source: Daily Mail UK - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4987806/North-Korea-warns-nuclear-war-break-moment.html
North Korea says ‘a nuclear war may break out any moment’
UNITED NATIONS — North Korea’s deputy U.N. ambassador warned Monday that the situation on the Korean peninsula “has reached the touch-and-go point and a nuclear war may break out any moment.”
Kim In Ryong told the U.N. General Assembly’s disarmament committee that North Korea is the only country in the world that has been subjected to “such an extreme and direct nuclear threat” from the United States since the 1970s — and said the country has the right to possess nuclear weapons in self-defense.
He pointed to large-scale military exercises every year using “nuclear assets” and said what is more dangerous is what he called a U.S. plan to stage a “secret operation aimed at the removal of our supreme leadership.”
This year, Kim said, North Korea completed its “state nuclear force and thus became the full-fledged nuclear power which possesses the delivery means of various ranges, including the atomic bomb, H-bomb and intercontinental ballistic rockets.”
“The entire U.S. mainland is within our firing range and if the U.S. dares to invade our sacred territory even an inch it will not escape our severe punishment in any part of the globe,” he warned.
Kim’s speech follows escalating threats between North Korea and the United States, and increasingly tough U.N. sanctions.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday that his country is curtailing economic, scientific and other ties with North Korea in line with U.N. sanctions, and the European Union announced new sanctions on Pyongyang for developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Sunday that diplomatic efforts aimed at resolving the North Korean crisis “will continue until the first bomb drops.” His commitment to diplomacy came despite President Donald Trump’s tweets several weeks ago that his chief envoy was “wasting his time” trying to negotiate with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whom he derisively referred to as “Little Rocket Man.”
North Korea’s deputy U.N. ambassador called his country’s nuclear and missile arsenal “a precious strategic asset that cannot be reversed or bartered for anything.”
“Unless the hostile policy and the nuclear threat of the U.S. is thoroughly eradicated, we will never put our nuclear weapons and ballistic rockets on the negotiating table under any circumstances,” Kim said.
He told the disarmament committee that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — North Korea’s official name — had hoped for a nuclear-free world.
Instead, Kim said, all nuclear states are accelerating the modernization of their weapons and “reviving a nuclear arms race reminiscent of (the) Cold War era.” He noted that the nuclear weapon states, including the United States, boycotted negotiations for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that was approved in July by 122 countries at the United Nations.
“The DPRK consistently supports the total elimination of nuclear weapons and the efforts for denuclearization of the entire world,” he said. But as long as the United States rejects the treaty and “constantly threatens and blackmails the DPRK with nuclear weapons ... the DPRK is not in position to accede to the treaty.”
Source: Washington Post -https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/north-korea-says-a-nuclear-war-may-break-out-any-moment/2017/10/16/1b4e879e-b2c5-11e7-9b93-b97043e57a22_story.html?utm_term=.e55cb5ae5990&wpisrc=nl_az_most&wpmk=1
A second report from Martin and Norma Sarvis:
