David Hawk on religious persecution in North Korea

(By guest blogger Andy Jackson)

I was in Seoul on Tuesday to do some work for the Seoul Summit (I live outside Seoul). That gave me a chance to visit a meeting of Catacombs, a group led by Tim Peters. I walked in out of a cold Korean December night and saw about 25 people packed shoulder to shoulder in a very small art gallery. I sat on a small stool in front of the door because their wasn’t room to go in any further.

In addition to the prayer and missionary reports that you would expect at such a meeting, they also had special guest David Hawk, who is with the US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK). This was an unexpected bonus for me because I will not be at the closed session of the summit today when he talks about HRNK’s latest report on North Korea: Thank you Father Kim Il-sung: Eyewitness Accounts of Severe Violations of Freedom of Thought, Conscience and Religion in North Korea.

Hawk mentioned that most human rights organizations need clear and decisive documentation before they can act on violations of human rights. The problem is that the Kim Jong-il regime keeps North Korea so closed that such documentation is almost impossible to obtain. As stated on page four of the report, Chinese government policy is not helping.

But the recent trickle of refugees who made it out of China provided HRNK with a much needed opportunity to document what is going on in North Korea. Here are the some points in the report that Hwank shared:

– Kim Il-sungism (or Juche) is essentially a state religion with many of the hallmarks of religious practice.

-Religious groups (Hawk did not single out Christians) were the main organizers of opposition to Japanese colonial rule in Korea, so Kim Il-sung saw them as potential rivals and suppressed them.

-Organized religion has largely been snuffed out in most of North Korea, although some underground churches are found from time-to-time and their leaders executed.

-Buddhist temples are preserved but only as cultural relics. The refugees were not award of any religious activities going on in them.

But it is not all bad news:

-After the famine in the 1990s, believe in the Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il cults of personality have broken down some.

-Traditional Korean shamanism and fortune telling have come back into North Korean life. They are still technically illegal but are apparently tolerated by regime officials.

-The three showcase churches in Pyongyang provide some opportunity for genuine worship, although there is no Catholic clergy and few of the normal parts of Protestant religious life such as Sunday school.

That is very little good news when compared to this (from page four of the report):

This study provides eyewitness testimony of gruesome public executions for those possessing importing Bibles or for groups discovered worshipping clandestinely.

One note about Hawk’s speaking style, at least at this meeting: He demonstrated a grim humor sense of humor that you usually associate with soldiers who have seen combat. He periodically laughed as he talked about the repression in North Korea. It was a little disconcerting to hear things like ‘…because they were all killed’ followed by a chuckle. But I can’t really blame Hawk for that. A lifetime spent documenting atrocities would affect almost anyone.