Tag Archive: north korea

The Church in North Korea

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North Korea’s cryptic response to the Pope’s visit to Seoul is emblematic of the nation’s complicated relationship with religion in general. Its constitution formally grants citizens religious freedom, but in reality, religious practice is punishable by public execution or banishment to the nation’s kwan-li-so prison camps.

The few churches in Pyongyang are maintained by the state in order to give the appearance of religious practice; congregants are actors bussed in to services for the benefit of tourists.

It hasn’t always been this way. North Korea actually has a long history with Christianity. Catholic missionaries first arrived on the Korean Peninsula in 1784. There, prominent Korean Studies historian Andrei Lankov reports, the Church took root with such success that by the 1920s, Pyongyang was known among missionaries as “the Jerusalem of the East.” Kim Il-sung himself grew up in a Christian household, and was reportedly a church organist as a teenager.

In her book Escape from North Korea, journalist Melanie Kirkpatrick writes of North Korea’s underground church. Figures reporting on the size of such organizations are inherently subject to inaccuracy, but her estimate puts their number at 200,000 to 400,000 adherents, somewhere around 1% of North Korea’s population.

Though their numbers are small, Christians in North Korea are important for at least two key reasons. First, they are faithful in quiet opposition to an ideology of state propaganda that amounts to a religion of dictator worship. The modest ideological diversity they represent is anathema to authoritarianism and may constitute the seeds of a freer future North Korea.

Second, Christians are key actors in what Kirkpatrick calls Asia’s underground railroad – a network of safe houses that help North Korean defectors escape to China and beyond. Defectors’ testimonies bring to light the heinous human rights abuses of the Kim regime, which will eventually oblige the international community to respond. The defectors also reach out to their family and friends in North Korea with reports of the outside world, exposing what the state propaganda calls “paradise on earth” for the hellish prison it really is.

[Huffington Post]

A North Korean strike on the US electric grid?

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The electric grid in the United States remains largely unprotected, according to a longtime adviser to Congress on national security issues, Peter Vincent Pry.

Pry told VOA he believes North Korea is ready to attempt a strike on the U.S. electric grid using an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP). Pry said North Korea practiced an EMP strike against the U.S. last year when it orbited a satellite at the optimal altitude and trajectory to carry out such an attack.

Pry was a member of the former Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack (2001-2008). He also is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, a congressional advisory board dedicated to achieving protection of the United States from electromagnetic pulse and other threats.

An electromagnetic pulse (or disturbance) is a short burst of electromagnetic energy that can be natural or man-made. EMP interference generated by lightning, for example, can damage electronic equipment. At very high energy levels, an EMP can damage physical objects such as trees, buildings and aircraft.

Pry said the North Korean test last year took place over the South Pole, which he called a strategic move. “We are blind from the south. We don’t have the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System or interceptors to protect us from the south,” said Pry.

The congressional analyst said this was done after North Korea’s third illegal nuclear test in February 2013 and after the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, threatened to strike the United States and its allies with a nuclear missile.

[VoA] 

Wife of detained Ohio man asks North Korea for mercy for him

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The wife and three children of an American man, Jeffrey Edward Fowle, 56, charged with “anti-state” crimes in North Korea apologized Tuesday to the communist country and pleaded for its government to show him mercy, saying in a statement they’re “desperate for his release and return home.”

North Korea said Monday it is preparing to try two Americans who entered the country as tourists, for carrying out what it says were hostile acts against the country. Fowle is suspected of leaving a Bible in a nightclub in the northern port city of Chongjin.

Fowle’s wife, Tatyana, has personally written to President Barack Obama, asking for his intervention, as have his three children, Alex, 13, Chris, 11, and Stephanie, 9. She also has written to three former presidents — George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter — and asked them to intercede.

“The family would like to express its heartfelt apology to the people and the government of the (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea). Jeff has apologized publically for his actions and Jeffrey’s family petitions the government for mercy toward Jeffrey and asks for his release,” the family’s lawyer said.

Tepe has said Fowle was not on a mission for his church, that he was in North Korea on vacation as part of a tour and “loves the adventure of experiencing different cultures and seeing new places.”

North Korea has said authorities are preparing to bring Fowle and another American detainee, 24-year-old Matthew Todd Miller, of Bakersfield, California, before a court, but hasn’t yet specified what they did that was considered hostile or illegal, or what kind of punishment they might face. The date of the trial has not been announced.

[AP]

Kenneth Bae gets consular visit at North Korea labor camp

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The State Department says the Swedish Embassy in North Korea has visited detained American missionary Kenneth Bae at a labor camp.

Spokeswoman Marie Harf said Wednesday this week’s visit was the 12th by Swedish representatives since Kenneth Bae was arrested in November 2012. As a result of his missionary and humanitarian work, he is serving 15 years of hard labor for alleged “hostile acts against North Korea”.

Sweden handles consular cases for the U.S. because Washington does not have diplomatic relations with Pyongyang. He’s one of three Americans now held.

Harf gave no update on Bae’s condition but said the department spoke to Bae’s family after Monday’s visit. His family says he has diabetes, heart and liver problems.

Bae recently told a pro-North Korean newspaper his health was worsening and he felt abandoned by the U.S. government.

[Bellingham Herald]

Will Pope Francis address North Korean atrocities?

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Pope Francis leaves on Wednesday for five days in South Korea, his first outing to Asia. The pontiff is scheduled to meet government leaders and to take part in an Asian Catholic youth festival, beatify a group of Korean martyrs from the 18th and 19th centuries, and also meet family members of victims of the recent Sewol shipwreck that claimed more than 300 lives, and will lay out a role for the church’s mission in Asia in a speech to bishops from the continent.

The outing poses challenges to Francis the peacemaker on multiple levels. First is the division of Korea itself. Francis will try to send signals of openness across the DMZ that separates the peninsula, without provoking the North Korean regime. He’ll want to promote reconciliation but can’t afford to turn a blind eye to the problems in the north, including an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 believed to languish in forced labor camps.

There’s no indication Francis will spring another surprise by inviting leaders of the two Koreas to join him for a peace prayer in the Vatican, as he did with the Israelis and Palestinians while visiting the Middle East in late May. North Korea has spurned an invitation to send a delegation to an August 18 papal Mass in Seoul.

In addition to the North Koreans, Francis will be speaking to another party that won’t be physically present but will certainly be listening: China, especially President Xi Jinping, with whom Francis has already had backdoor contact. China is one of just a handful of nations without diplomatic relations with the Vatican.  The Vatican wants to improve the lot of China’s roughly 13 million Catholics, many of whom are compelled to practice their faith underground.

Francis is certainly conscious that martyrdom is very much with us in the here and now. For one thing, he can’t ignore the fact that just across the DMZ to the north, Christians face a systematic form of persecution that’s arguably the most grotesque anywhere in the world. Since the armistice in 1953 that stabilized the division of the peninsula, some 300,000 Christians in North Korea have simply disappeared and are presumed dead.

The anti-Christian animus in North Korea is so strong that even people with Christian grandparents are frozen out of the most important jobs — a grand irony, given that founder Kim Il Sung’s mother was a Presbyterian deaconess.

It would be odd indeed if Francis were to celebrate the memories of martyrs from three centuries ago without at least acknowledging the reality that many Koreans today are paying a similar price. Figuring out how to do that in a way that doesn’t anger the North Koreans, potentially making life even more difficult for Christians, will be among the pontiff’s stiffest challenges.

[Boston Globe] 

Has Washington kept South Korea welfare dependent?

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From a Forbes opinion piece by Doug Bandow:

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is angry with the U.S. again, citing all manner of crimes and misdemeanors.  To emphasize its point the DPRK is prosecuting two Americans currently held in the North for “hostile” behavior. [Additionally, another American]  Kenneth Bae is serving a prison term, apparently for promoting Christianity while visiting.  Pyongyang has been using them as bargaining chips in an attempt to get America’s attention.

Why is North Korea worried about Washington?  Because the U.S. military remains deployed in the South 61 years after the end of the Korean War.  Washington has turned the otherwise successful Republic of Korea into an international welfare queen, apparently forever stuck on the U.S. defense dole.

Last week North Korea’s deputy UN ambassador, Ri Tong-il, gave a press conference denouncing Washington in florid terms.  U.S. behavior “is reminding us of the historical lasting symptoms of a mentally retarded patient,” said Ambassador Ri.

His list of grievances was long [including] that Washington was sabotaging improved inter-Korean relations and ignoring Pyongyang’s proposals for reducing tensions on the peninsula. Although it’s tempting to dismiss Ambassador Ri’s dyspeptic remarks, he made a legitimate point when justifying his nation’s nuclear program:  “No country in the world has been living like the DPRK, under serious threats to its existence, sovereignty, survival.”  There is much not to like about North Korea, but even paranoids have enemies.

In any war the North would face South Korea, which has vastly outstripped Pyongyang on virtually every measure of national power, and the U.S., the globe’s superpower.  East Asia is filled with additional American allies, while the North’s Cold War partners, Moscow and Beijing, have drifted away and almost certainly wouldn’t help in a conflict.

Which raises the question:  just what is America doing with troops on the Korean peninsula?

Today the ROK leads the North on most measures of national power.  The former has 40 times the GDP, twice the population, all the new technologies, the most important allies, access to international markets, and a system legitimized by elections and popular consent.  This is precisely the development the American defense shield was supposed to enable.

North Korea preparing to prosecute 2 Americans

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North Korea says it plans to prosecute two American tourists that it detained earlier this year, accusing Jeffrey Fowle and Matthew Miller of “perpetrating hostile acts.”

“According to the results of the investigation, suspicions about their hostile acts have been confirmed by evidence and their testimonies,” the North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Monday. “The relevant organ of the DPRK is carrying on the investigation into them and making preparations for bringing them before court on the basis of the already confirmed charges,” the report said.

The U.S. State Department called on North Korea to release the two men on humanitarian grounds.

North Korea said in late April that it had taken Miller into custody, claiming he had come to the country seeking asylum and had torn up his tourist visa.

It announced the detention of Fowle in early June, saying he had violated the law by acting “contrary to the purpose of tourism.” It didn’t provide details at the time on what exactly he was accused of doing. But the Japanese news agency Kyodo cited unidentified diplomatic sources as saying that Fowle was part of a tour group and that he was detained in mid-May after allegedly leaving a Bible in a hotel where he had been staying.

[CNN]

Imprisoned Kenneth Bae feels abandoned by US

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Kenneth Bae, an American citizen detained in North Korea, said he feels like the U.S. government has abandoned him, according to an interview he did with a pro-North Korea, Japan-based newspaper, Choson Sinbo.

Bae said that he heard the U.S. government is doing everything it can to have him released and thanked the American and North Korean government for allowing him to speak to his family over the phone and medical treatment.

He’s been in North Korea for two years and there is no sign of this issue being solved, according to the paper.

Bae said he is suffering from several health problems and is worried that his condition will worsen when he returns to a special labor camp soon. Bae was re-admitted to a hospital in Pyongyang in March. “He expressed anxiety that if he is to go back to the labor camp, such symptoms may become worse and said he is stressed that he is unable to pay fees for the hospital treatments,” the newspaper reported.

Bae, of Lynwood, Washington, was arrested in November 2012. Pyongyang sentenced him to 15 years of hard labor, accusing him of planning to bring down the government through religious activities. He is widely reported to have been carrying out Christian missionary work in North Korea.

Bae is one of three Americans currently held in North Korea. Matthew Miller Todd was taken into custody on April 10 and Jeffrey Fowle, from Ohio, was detained in June for breaking a law, according to North Korea’s state news agency.

[CNN]

Silicon Valley to host North Korea hackathon

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A two-day “hackathon” plans to harness the technical prowess of Silicon Valley to come up with new ways to get information safely into North Korea. Hack North Korea, scheduled to take place in San Francisco on August 2-3, is organized by the Human Rights Foundation, a New York-based group that focuses on closed societies.

Several prominent North Korean defectors will attend the event including pro-democracy activist Park Sang-hak, former North Korean child prisoner Kang Chol-hwan, media personality Park Yeon-mi and Kim Heung-Kwang, a former professor in computer studies in North Korea. They are expected to speak on the methods currently used to get information into the country, which include CDs and DVDs, USB sticks, shortwave radio, and leaflets dropped from balloons.

Organisers said they are not encouraging hacking in the sense of gaining unauthorised access to data, but is instead hoping to “spark better ideas for getting information into the world’s most closed and isolated society”. Participants will become familiar with the various ways that information and truth are smuggled into North Korea today, and gain an understanding of the technology landscape inside the country.

Earlier this year, helped HRF to launch balloons carrying USB flash drives loaded with Korean-language Wikipedia as well as pro-democracy materials and DVDs with South Korean dramas, so that they could float from the launch site in Paju, in South Korea, across the border into the North.

Park Sang-hak also visited Silicon Valley with HRF, to improve GPS tracking on the balloons, so that the group can try and follow what happens to the balloons once they cross the border.

[The Guardian]

The politics of Beijing’s impatience with North Korea

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Senior officials from China and South Korea will hold talks over the coming days to boost their cooperation on regional security, following a landmark visit to Seoul by President Xi Jinping. Xi’s visit indicated Beijing was shifting its attention from North Korea to the South as the Chinese president broke a tradition of his predecessors by not visiting Pyongyang first on an official visit to the Korean peninsula.

There have been no top-level visits between Beijing and Pyongyang since Kim Jong-un assumed power in 2012. Xi’s trip to Seoul is being interpreted as a sign of Beijing’s growing frustration with the volatile hardline state following a series of nuclear tests and missile launches.

An Asia-based diplomat who did not wish to be named said Beijing had been exerting pressure through diplomatic channels to stop Pyongyang launching a fourth nuclear test after it conducted its third in 2013.

Stalled six-nation nuclear talks have been dormant since late 2008. South Korea, the US and Japan demanded Pyongyang show its sincerity to seek denuclearisation before the talks could resume, but Pyongyang demanded there be no pre-conditions.

[Despite these recent actions] Cui Zhiying, a professor of Korean affairs at Tongji University in Shanghai, said China still believed that taking tough action against Pyongyang would create further uncertainties on the Korean peninsula. So Beijing would not go hand in hand with Seoul against Pyongyang, while Seoul still depends on its security alliance with Washington.

The US has urged Seoul and Tokyo to improve their relationship as their worsening ties could play into China’s hands, while Seoul is aware that its strategic value to Beijing will be lessened should Sino-US relations return to a more positive track, Lee Jung-nam, a professor at the Asiatic Research Institute at Korea University said.

“The development of ties between South Korea and China has implications for the relationship between South Korea, the US and Japan.”

[South China Morning Post]