The Exploitation of the Christian Ecumenical Movement by North Korea

On May 15, 2023, the U.S. State Department released its 2022 Report on International Religious Freedom, including a report on North Korea. If you are a TLDR type of person, here’s the bottom line. It’s bad. It’s very, very bad. 

Anti-religious indoctrination, surveillance, imprisonment, torture, sexual violence, forced labor, forced disappearance, and execution are standard tools of the regime. Punishment extends to the families of violators. The social environment is oppressive, with people encouraged to turn in anyone who shows any signs of religious practice. 

Christianity, Buddhism, Shamanism, and Neo-Confucianism all have roots in North Korea, but none are allowed to practice openly or freely. Christians are special targets of regime hostility, according to the State Department report. Open Doors describes North Korea as a “brutally hostile place for Christians to live.”

The report contains numerous quotations from several human rights organizations, including the Korean Institute for National Unification (KINU), an NGO dedicated to reunification of the peninsula. It is possible to be pro-peace and pro-unification and still recognize the Kim regime for what it is.

Ironically, the Christian ecumenical movement not only turns a blind eye to North Korean religious oppression, it actively cooperates with this evil. More on that at the end, but first let’s set the stage. 

The closest thing to an allowable religion in North Korea is Juche, the official ideology of the DPRK. The Kims are held in religious-like reverence by the DPRK elite, and North Koreans are forced to participate in religious-like rituals focused on the Kim dynasty. The Kims deny that it is a religion, but if it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's a duck.

Of course, human rights are all-around bad in North Korea. See, for example, reports from the United Nations Human Rights Council, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Korea Future, the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights (NKDB), the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU) and again, the United States State Department. It's not just in the area of religion that the Kim regime perpetrates crimes against humanity.

The actual number of religious practitioners is impossible to determine. Estimates vary wildly. My NCO in Korea was convinced that there is a vast underground church in North Korea. I am skeptical. Regardless, escapees from North Korea universally report that virtually no visible religious activity takes place in the DPRK. There is swift punishment wherever religious expression appears.

North Korea's Propaganda Churches

Surprisingly, then, in Pyongyang there are three Protestant churches (Bongsu, Chilgol, and Jeil), a Catholic "Cathedral" (Changchung), and the Russian Orthodox Church of the Life Giving Trinity. What's up with that? Why do these churches exist? There are no other recognized Christian churches in a country of 25 million people. None. 

The answer is both simple and obvious. The handful of religious institutions allowed to exist in Pyongyang are “show churches” for the international community and conduits for donations to the DPRK. Their operations are tightly controlled by the state security apparatus. 

Of those five institutions, the Orthodox church is probably the closest to a functioning church. It falls under the Moscow Patriarchate and may serve Russian visitors to the capitol. Koreans do not attend. As for the Catholic "Cathedral", there are no Catholic priests recognized by the Vatican in North Korea, much less a bishop.

It is the three Protestant churches, however, that are most pertinent to the subject of this essay. Together, these three churches comprise the Korean Christian Federation, basically the world’s smallest national council of churches. At least that’s what North Korea wants you to believe. 

The churches are fake and the Korean Christian Federation is fake. 

Here are some extracts from the 2022 State Department report.

In its 2021 report, KINU stated the government continued to use state-approved religious institutions for “political propaganda” targeted at foreign visitors, with regular citizens strictly barred from entering the facilities. In the case of the Bongsu Protestant Church in Pyongyang, according to the report, authorities gathered several hundred “carefully selected” North Koreans to participate in “fake church services” for foreign guests. Ordinary citizens considered such places primarily as “sightseeing spots for foreigners.” … 

In its 2020 annual report, the NKDB stated, “Although there are several churches and other religious facilities in North Korea, such as Chilgol and Bongsu Church, as well as Jangchung Cathedral, they are sponsored entirely by the state, and therefore access to the facilities for the sake of genuine religious activity, especially for regular citizens, is heavily restricted.” …

The 2014 [United Nations] COI report concluded that authorities systematically sought to hide from the international community the persecution of Christians who practiced their religion outside state-controlled churches by pointing to the small number of state-controlled churches as exemplifying religious freedom and pluralism. … 

In KINU’s 2019 report, one defector said that when he lived in Pyongyang, authorities arrested individuals whom they believed lingered too long outside these churches to listen to the music or consistently drove past them each week when services were being held, on suspicion of being secret Christians. …

Foreign legislators who attended services in Pyongyang in previous years reported congregations arrived and departed services as groups on tour buses, and some observed the worshippers did not include any children. Some foreigners noted officials did not permit them to have contact with worshippers, and others stated they had limited interaction with them. Foreign observers said they had limited ability to ascertain the level of government control over these groups but generally assumed the government monitored them closely. …

According to KINU, in years past, foreign Christians who visited the country stated they witnessed church doors closed on Easter Sunday, and many foreign visitors said church activities seemed to be staged. In its 2020 dossier on North Korea, ODUSA stated, “The churches shown to visitors in Pyongyang serve mere propaganda purposes.” 

The Korean Christian Federation

It’s all a Potemkin village. The churches are instruments of North Korean propaganda.

Which brings us back to the worldwide ecumenical movement. In my setting, that means the World Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, and the United Methodist Church working through its General Board of Church and Society. They all treat the Korean Christian Federation (KCF) as a valid representative of North Korean Christians and partner with it in political activities. The KCF is not a legitimate ecumenical partner. 

The KCF no more represents Christians in North Korea than does the man in the moon. What the KCF does represent is the Kim regime. Every KCF member that meets with foreign religious leaders is an agent of the government. Whatever message they carry, whatever cause they espouse, it’s all to advance the regime’s interests. The KCF is a North Korean influence operation, not a church.

It’s exasperating and embarrassing, then, that the KCF has been able to dupe Christian leaders and co-opt the work of ecumenical organizations. How can they be this ignorant and naive?  The Christian bodies that support the KCF are cooperating with evil. Meanwhile, they ignore the suffering of real Christians in North Korea and close their ears to their cries.

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