“One can confidently say that it is the Kim family regime that has taken religious persecution, in particular the persecution of Christians, to a level, perhaps, on par with Nero’s Rome as well as the Assyrian, Greek and Armenian genocide of World War I or the Yazidi genocide today,” Committee for Human Rights in North Korea executive director Greg Scarlatoiu told lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
According to the Christian Post, International Christian Concern, a religious liberty group, called for the meeting. They heard testimony from various activists about the state of freedom of religion in North Korea.
Lawmakers, including Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Oklahoma Senator James Lankford, New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith, and California Rep. Ed Royce, gave speeches to show support.
Scarlatoiu talked about how North Korea was once a home of religious freedom. “Prior to the Communist takeover, the capital city of Pyongyang used to be known as the ‘Jerusalem of the East.’ In North Korea, Christianity was once a way of life with two churches on the same street corner (being) a common sight.”
When the Communist Party seized power in 1946, they placed a ban on religion and began an extreme crackdown on Catholic and Protestant churches. Scarlatoiu explained, “The (People’s Provincial) committee began to forbid Protestant and Catholic in-house assemblies and made Sunday a work day and Monday a rest day. And, this was just the beginning. Under the pretext that the sound of religious songs disturbed public life, the same committee asked churches to relocate. Communist Party agitators were inserted into Christian communities and church assemblies. They began criticizing the sermons as being unprogressive.” In 1968, religious freedom was banned totally by the Kim regime, forcing the populace to worship the heads of state.
According to Scarlatoiu, North Korea was at least 25 percent Christian prior to the communist takeover. Now it is less than one percent.
Their southern neighbors are working to record the terror aimed at the church. Scarlatoiu said, “Our colleagues in South Korea have thoroughly documented cases of religious persecution. Organizations such as Database Center for North Korean Human Rights and the Korean Institution for National Unification interviewed thousands of defectors who brought testimony of extremely severe religious persecution. Like other Communist leaders, as mentioned earlier, Kim Il-sung and the Kim regime has rejected religion as the ‘opium of the people.’”
The United Nations reports that over the past 50 years, hundreds of thousands of Christians have died from communist persecution. According to Open Doors USA, a Christian persecution watchdog group, North Korea has been ranked at the top of their World Watch List with regard to persecuting Protestants and Catholics for the past 15 years.
Despite the grave situation in North Korea, defector Kim Chung-seong says that the underground church is growing. He himself escaped the communist nation prior to his execution.
Speaking at the first annual World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians in Washington, D.C., Kim says there are thousands secretly practicing the faith. “The one thing that the North Korean regime fears the most, and is afraid of, is the spreading of the Gospel.” He went on to say, “They (the communist regime) will do anything to prevent the spread of the Gospel in North Korea. As you can see, we cannot block the sunlight with our hand.”