Repressive, atheist North Korea has a surprising relationship with Christian missionaries
The North Korean government does not take kindly to Christian missionary activities. Just ask American Jeffrey Fowle.
North Korean defectors living in Seoul, South Korea sing a hymn during a prayer service for peace and reunification of the divided Korean Peninsula in April 2013. (Credit: Lee Jae-Won/Reuters)
October 22, 2014 · 5:15 PM EDT
PRI's The World
Producer Matthew Bell
Fowle was charged in June with committing “hostile acts" against North Korea for leaving behind a Bible in a sailor’s club in the city of Chongjin. He joined two other Americans being held by North Korea; one of them, Kenneth Bae, was also accused of proselytizing and is now serving a 15-year prison sentence in a labor camp.
Open Doors, a US-based group, has even put North Korea at the very top of its list of countries where Christians face persecution — for 12 years in a row.
Yet Christianity has a surprising history in North Korea. In 1992, the Reverend Billy Graham became one of the first international religious figures to visit communist North Korea. The American evangelical leader met with "Eternal President" Kim Il-Sung and was allowed to give a speech in Pyongyang, a city once known as the “Jerusalem of the East" for its religious fervor. He even got invited back, and made a second trip in 1994.
Even today, there are many more Christian activists at work in North Korea than you might realize, says Isaac Stone Fish, Asia editor at Foreign Policy Magazine. In addition to foreign visitors like Fowle and Bae who travel to North Korea on tourist visas, some Christians actually enter the country at the behest of the government.
http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-10-22/repressive-atheist-north-korea-has-surprising-relationship-christian-missionaries
5:06 audio at link.