North Korean Church
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How It Began
The church in North Korea began at the end of the 18th century when four Koreans who had come to China to study herbal medicine were converted by their believing tutor.
On returning to their homeland, two of the four men were killed for attempting to bring a foreign religion into the country. The third man waited in prayer. He was instructed in a dream to disguise his gospel of Luke as cords around his backpack. He took the paper scroll and rolled it lengthwise, passing through the border post undetected.
When the first Protestant missionaries arrived in the 1880s, they found small communities of Christians awaiting baptism and further instruction.
The church saw rapid growth. 1907 was a year of revival, and Korea during this time was a missionary marvel with over 1,000 self-supporting churches and 120,000 believers. One million copies of the gospel of Mark were printed, with 700,000 sold that year. A great revival sprang up, impacting the whole country.
Most Christians were soon located around Pyongyang, the center of the revival, called the “City of Churches.”
Japanese Persecution
Persecution began in 1910, with Japanese annexation. Religious instruction was prohibited. No new Christian schools or churches could be opened without official permission, and Japanese became the official language of all instruction.
By 1919, hoping to capitalize on the emerging League of Nations to become self-determining, a group of Koreans wrote a declaration of independence from Japan. Fifteen of its 22 co-signers were Christians.
This unleashed a wave of savage reprisals. Churches and mission schools were destroyed. Thousands of church leaders, including women, were herded into crowded, filthy jails. Indescribable tortures, beatings, and humiliation followed.
Church leaders were forced to worship at Shinto shrines. Rather than bending their knee to idols, many fled to the southern region of Korea (which was still a united nation at the time). By 1939, Japan was engaging its military machine. All missionaries were expelled, and Christianity was attacked relentlessly during the war years.
Soviet Persecution
The Japanese surrender in 1945 resulted in the independent nations of North and South Korea, and brought Christians to the streets, shouting out long-banned hymns.
Their joy was short-lived. The Soviet occupying force in the north had no use for Christians and continued the persecution. At this time there were still some 2,000 Christian churches with over 300,000 believers remaining in the north. Many refused to participate in the election of Kim Il-sung (who was hand-picked by the Soviets), held on a Sunday.
Imprisonment, beatings and death followed. Still, the Church grew in its spirituality. As long as services were not forbidden, believers assembled daily to pray. Some intercessory meetings numbered over 12,000 prayer warriors in attendance.
Korean Persecution
When the Korean War broke out, Christians who were captured and refused to swear allegiance to the State were imprisoned, sent to work in the mines, or were executed. All members of the clergy and lay workers were branded enemies of the State and thousands were slaughtered.
In one town, 190 Christians were rounded up and the pastor was asked to renounce Jesus. When he would not, he was hung on a cross, over a slow-burning fire to prolong his agony. When the soldiers asked if there were any remaining Christians, all 189 stepped forward. They were marched to an abandoned mine and sealed in with dynamite.
With the closing of the borders, the atrocities grew worse, but now the Korean church had no recourse.
In the late 1950s, a Catholic workman was tortured until he revealed the location of a number of Catholics in Wonsan. They were rounded up, beaten mercilessly, then either killed or re-educated.
The anti-Christian purges continued. Massive intelligence efforts provided lists of people, gathering places and sympathizers. In one sweep, 500 prayer cells in the city of Yongchun were disrupted. Several thousand believers were arrested, and prayer group leaders were executed while the rest were sent to re-education camps.
By the early 1960s, it was reported that all church buildings were closed and Bibles destroyed.
In those years, school children were given a special assignment. They were to find black books in their homes, without telling their parents about the “game.” One girl, who later defected and gave this account, gleefully returned to school with a Bible firmly tucked under her arm. When she went home later, there was no one to meet her. At school the next day, she was reassigned to another family. Some 400 children lost their parents that month.
Christians buried their Bibles in small Kimchi jars or hid them in their thatch roofs or under eaves. Informers were everywhere, as revolutionary propaganda took root.
In the 1970s, during a road-widening project in Goksan, an underground room was discovered. It served as a meeting place for 27 believers. They were lined up in front of the 30,000 inhabitants of Goksan. Officials chose four children and threatened to hang them if their parents did not deny Christ. The parents calmly told their children they would be meeting them in heaven soon. Soldiers hung the children. The remaining Christians were told to lie on the road, where a steamroller crushed them to death. This incident was reported in the state newspaper, which claimed that with this last group “all forms of heresy or superstition” had been overcome.
From then on North Korea was silent. Was there a Church left?
A Victorious Remnant
The first announcement of a surviving Church came from North Korean officials in 1984. The Korean Christian Federation, modeled on the Chinese Three-Self Patriotic Movement, invited an outside group for a visit. They claimed to represent 5,000 Christians in the DPRK.
A second source of information was Korean Christians living in Manchuria, northeastern China. They had traveled into the DPRK and met with fellow believers. They reported a house church with 60 members, led by a man healed of incurable cancer.
One older woman had been praying every day for the past 27 years in a secret place in her attic. Her knees had worn deep impressions in the floor boards.
By the early 1990s there were three official churches in Pyongyang. Kim Il-sung, who was raised by a Christian mother, built the Chilgol Protestant church in her memory. In 1994, Billy Graham preached in it, sharing the Gospel with Kim Il Sung during his last days.
The death of the great leader in 1994, the defection of the creator of the Juche philosophy, and the desperate food shortages of the 1990s forced open the sealed doors of the DPRK. The Kim family dynasty continues under his son, Kim Jong-il, and grandson, Kim Jong-un.
Among relief organizations responding to the physical need, were many Christian organizations. They gained the opportunity to enter the country, and some found ways to make contact with the underground church.
In 1998, reliable sources informed Cornerstone Ministries International that there were as many as 120,000 Christians worshipping in underground churches in North Korea.
Today small numbers of North Korean evangelists are moving across their country, boldly sharing the Gospel. Bibles continue trickling into the country in the hands of new believers.
Underground churches have become brave, starting Bible training centers to prepare new evangelists.
Content source:
https://cornerstoneusa.org/index.php?mid=nk_info&page=4&document_srl=1504
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_North_Korea