North Korea is preparing to execute 33 people for being Christians.
The official charge from the government is “attempting to overthrow the government.” In reality, the group was working with a South Korean Baptist missionary to set up underground churches.
Missionary Kim Jung-wook has been jailed and tortured for a year because of his attempts to start underground churches in North Korea. He was presented at a press conference last week where he apologized for his “anti-state crimes” and appealed for his release.
He was also forced to say that South Korea Intelligence services had provided him with information and equipment. The South Korean government said they had no involvement with Kim Jung-wook.
North Korean officials say the 33 people involved with Kim Jung-wook were planning to build a church on the site of a massive statue of North Korea’s founder after they overthrew the government.
Kim Jong-un has been on a murderous rampage including members of his government. His top deputy disappeared last week and some people have speculated that the North Korean leader has killed him.
The United Nations report on the atrocities committed by the North Korean government is slowly being completely released to the public and the latest information shows horrific drawings of torture.
A man who survived two years inside a prison camp gave the sketches to the UN. The drawings show a glimpse into the camp where cameras are forbidden by the North Korean government.
“This was the first thing that I saw: there it said that ‘if you run, you die,'” Kim Kwang-Il told the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights.
“We are supposed to think there’s an imaginary motorcycle and we are supposed to be in this position as if we are riding the motorcycle. And for this, we pose as if we are airplanes ourselves. We are flying. And if we stand like this there’s no way that you can hold that position for a long time. You are bound to fall forward. Everybody in the detention center goes through this kind of torture,” said Kwang-Il, who was able to escape to South Korea.
Kwang-Il was sentenced to 29 months in a labor camp for smuggling pine nuts into the country.
Witnesses say the prisoners are kept starving to the point they would eat rats or snakes that they would catch in their cells or outside their buildings.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is pressing for the International Criminal Court to put North Korean leaders on trial.
A Christian missionary from Australia is being held captive by the North Korean government on unknown charges.
75-year-old John Short, a missionary to Hong Kong for 50 years, was taken into custody a day after arriving in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. Short’s family says that police came to his hotel to question him and then later returned to place him under arrest.
While no charges were mentioned for the arrest, Short was believed to be carrying Christian tracts written in the Korean language.
Short has been arrested previously in China for giving out Christian materials including Bibles written in Chinese.
Short is the second Christian missionary known to be held by the North Korean government. American Kenneth Bae was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor after being convicted of committing hostile acts. Bae provided Christian materials to North Korean Christians.
Australia has no embassy in North Korea and usually works with the Swedish embassy on international matters. The Swedish embassy says they have had no contact with North Korean officials about Short.
A new report from a United Nations investigative panel has found atrocities in North Korea that the panel compared to crimes committed by Nazi Germany.
The report said that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered women kidnapped from China to be strapped to a table and injected with abortion drugs. He also ordered women who had infants to drown them or smother them in his presence if there was any possibility the children were fathered by Chinese nationals.
“The gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world,” the U.N. Commission on Inquiry wrote in a 372-page report.
The Commission took the unprecedented step of warning the North Korean leader that he could be tried for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court for his actions.
The forced abortions were part of a campaign by Kim Jong Un to create a “pure Korean race” and that any child which is not purely North Korean is “contamination of ‘pureness’.”
The report also found multiple “secret” prison camps where hundreds of thousands of North Koreans and kidnapped people from South Korea or Japan were executed.
Out of the top ten countries for oppression against Christians, nine of them are because of Islamic Extremism.
The annual World Watch List was released yesterday showing that Islamic extremism is a threat worldwide. Of the top ten, only North Korea, which was ranked number one for the 12th straight year, does not have Islamic extremism driving its persecution of Christians.
The rest of the top ten: Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Maldives, Pakistan, Iran and Yemen.
The overall list shows the top 50 nations worldwide that contain levels of persecution against Christians. 27 of the 50 listed have what is considered “severe” levels of prosecution according to Open Doors, which conducts the survey.
Only one nation in the top 50 is located outside of Asia and Africa. Colombia is ranked 25th on the list despite Christianity being the main religion in the nation. The nation routinely has Christians attacked by FARC rebels and drug cartels who oppose acts of Christian charity.
The government of North Korea has murdered Christians for possessing a Bible.
A South Korean newspaper reports that the people labeled criminals by the North Korean government for owning a Bible were killed in public execution events arranged by Kim Jong-un’s government.
A source said in the city of Wonsan, those being executed were tied to stakes in a local stadium and shot to death with machine guns while over 10,000 residents were forced by military forces to watch. He said the bodies were so riddled with machine gun bullets that identities could not be determined.
Relatives or accomplices of those murdered were taken to prison camps.
Some North Korean experts say the executions are an effort by the government to quell any possible opposition.
U.S. nuclear analysts say steam seen rising from the Yongbyon nuclear facility in North Korea indicate the reactor is in or nearing operation.
The US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University, which uses satellite imagery to track actions in North Korea, said the color and volume of steam released from the reactor is the indication of operation. Continue reading →
A North Korean ship has been seized trying to pass through the Panama Canal containing a large cache of hidden weapons which may violate U.N. prohibitions against sending weapons to the unstable Asian nation.
Missiles reportedly “being sent for repair” from Cuba were found buried under large sacks of sugar. None of the weapons were listed on the ship’s manifest which is a violation of maritime law. Continue reading →
North Korea conducted a missile test over the weekend in another attempt to show defiance to the world’s sanctions.
A short-range guided missile was fired into the water off the eastern coast Sunday and three short-range missiles were fired in a test on Saturday. South Korea called the acts “provocations” but noted that no North Korea troops were moving toward the border. Continue reading →
In a joint news conference with South Korea’s leader, U.S. President Barack Obama said that North Korea’s days of receiving concessions from the world by making threats is over.
“The days when North Korea could create a crisis and elicit concessions, those days are over,” President Obama said. “President Park and myself very much share the view that we are going to maintain a strong deterrent, we’re not going to reward provocative behavior but we remain open to the prospect of North Korea taking a peaceful path.” Continue reading →
