Tag Archives: Country: North Korea

NTD Television: Human Rights Without Frontiers, an international NGO based in Brussels, presented its latest report on freedom of religion and belief around the world at the European Parliament on Tuesday.

Express.co.uk: Fears that famine-stricken North Koreans are being forced to eat human flesh heightened earlier this year following claims a man was executed for murdering his two children for food.

Nina Shea at National Review: North Korea’s Kim dynasty considers religion a hindrance to the nation’s socialist evolution. For 50 years, its secret police has waged a brutal campaign to eradicate religious belief. It has nearly succeeded. But the numbers of Christian believers are now slowly rising (maybe even in the low hundreds of thousands) and they must be prepared to pay with their lives for their faith.

Baptist Press: Of an estimated 200,000 prisoners in North Korea, 70,000 of them are Christians, Open Doors reported.

Glenn Greenwald at The Guardian: This belief in the unfettered legal and moral right of the US to use force anywhere in the world for any reason it wants is sustained only by this belief in objective US superiority, this myth of American exceptionalism. And the results are exactly what one would expect from an approach grounded in a belief system so patently irrational.

The Sun: HUNGRY parents in North Korea have been caught eating their CHILDREN to avoid starvation, according to reports

Melanie Kirkpatrick at the Wall Street Journal: Public worship is dangerous. A ‘congregation’ might mean two people on a park bench, silently sharing their faith.

LIfeNews: As a result, the United States is currently one of only nine nations that allow abortion after 14 weeks of gestation.[ii] Even among this group, however, the United States is one of the most permissive in its treatment of abortion, placing it in the company of China, North Korea, and Canada, the only countries in the world that permit abortion for any reason after fetal viability.[iii]

AP: Yonhap News Agency says China arrested the activists while they were discussing ways to help North Korean defectors in China. Yonhap cited no sources.

Guardian: Nearly a third of children under five show signs of stunted development because of food scarcity, according to agency.

AP: The study released Wednesday by the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea says all adults in the socialist state are categorized as one of three classes: loyal, wavering or hostile.

AP: Myanmar, run by a cabal of generals, squelched any attempt at democratic change and kept the country’s most popular figure under strict house arrest for years. North Korea, run by the same family as a Stalinist dictatorship since the 1940s, simply sealed itself off.

AP: For centuries, rulers have used choreographed spectacles to help them maintain control, mixing the appearance of absolute public unity with an underlying threat of what happens to anyone who goes against the grain.

Christian Science Monitor: Like the thousands of women who fled North Korea before her, Kim Eun-sun made it into China and paid a woman to help her, only to discover she’d traded one form of captivity for another.

Jeff Jacoby at Townhall: There is no cruelty so depraved that people cannot be induced to do it, or to look the other way while it is being done. Escape from Camp 14 reconfirms what we have known for years: North Korea’s rulers brutalize their people with unparalleled and bloody barbarity. Why do we find it so easy to look the other way?

AP: The press bus took a wrong turn Thursday. And suddenly, everything changed in the official showcase of North Korean achievement.

AP: The U.S. human rights envoy for North Korea says conditions in communist country’s “brutal” prison camps are worse than in the Soviet Union’s gulag during the Cold War.

News from The Associated Press: South Korea allowed members of a private group to accompany aid to North Korea for the first time Friday since leader Kim Jong Il died last month.

Gordon G. Chang at National Review Online: Beijing has, for decades, been buying the loyalty of the North’s generals and admirals faster than Kim Jong Il could purge them. Now that Kim is resting under glass in the Kumsusan Memorial Palace, the Chinese are going to own all the flag officers they need.

TheHill.com: North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, 69, has reportedly died after nearly two decades in power. The White House said it was closely monitoring reports that the reclusive leader was dead.

News from The Associated Press: The United States will hold talks with North Korea in Beijing on Thursday on the possibility of providing food aid to the impoverished country, the State Department said.

Breitbart: North Korea warned South Korea on Sunday of “unexpected consequences” if Seoul displays Christmas lights near the tense border, and vowed to retaliate for what it called propaganda attempts.

The Washington Post: Just don’t bring your cellphone or BlackBerry, don’t try to send an e-mail, don’t plan to stroll down a street, and never try to talk to strangers or take pictures of ordinary people. None of that is allowed.

MSNBC.com: In a pediatric hospital in North Korea’s most productive farming province, children lay two to a bed. All showed signs of severe malnutrition: skin infections, patchy hair, listless apathy.

OneNewsNow.com: The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) welcomes the Obama administration’s release of the Annual Report on International Religious Freedom, and the Commission is urging the U.S. government to increase action to promote freedom of religion or belief. Burma, Eritrea, China, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Uzbekistan are eight “countries of particular concern,” but USCIRF spokesperson Elizabeth Cassidy says her group thinks the list is incomplete . . .

Daily Mail Online: The North Korean government may deny their existence, but photos taken from space have revealed in unprecedented detail the concentration camps that are used imprison more than 200,000 citizens. Men, women and children are forced to work seven days a week as slaves and eat ‘rats, frogs, snakes, insects’ and even faeces to battle starvation in the camps.

SMH.com.au: A South Korean missionary working with North Korean refugees in China died suddenly in the street amid suspicions Pyongyang agents were involved, a newspaper and another missionary said Friday.

Ekklesia: Christian advocacy groups are among a 28-strong international coalition calling for North Korea, criticised by many for its human rights abuses and nuclear threats, to step down from the presidency of the United Nations Conference on Disarmament (UNCD) – writes John Zarocostas.

: President Hu Jintao of China praised North Korea and its ailing leader, Kim Jong-il, for giving “top priority to improving people’s lives,” according to a report on Thursday night by Xinhua, the state news agency

AP: The United States plans to send an envoy to North Korea for talks on the North’s urgent request for food aid, a South Korean official said Tuesday.

BBC: A rights group has published satellite images of what it says are North Korea’s political prison camps, saying they appear to be growing in size.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) today released its 2011 Annual Report and recommended that the Secretary of State name the following nations “countries of particular concern” or CPCs: Burma, China, Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.

Fides: Human rights trampled and denied freedom of religion, more than 50 thousand Christians in prison camps for their faith, victims of a judicial system based strictly on ideology of the regime: this is the picture of the situation in North Korea, a country, according to the 2011 Report of the Ong “Open Doors”, holds the “black shirt” in terms of respect for freedom of conscience and religion in the world.

Christian Today: “Release International has launched a new campaign calling upon North Korea to protect the human rights of Christians.”

Doug Bandow writing at The Center for Vision & Values: “There is more than enough bad news to fill the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s latest annual report. Worst of all were the conditions in 13 ‘countries of particular concern.’”

ChristianNewsWire: “Despite Communist North Korea topping the annual Open Doors World Watch List (WWL) for the ninth consecutive year, the most dangerous countries in which to practice Christianity are overwhelmingly Islamic ones.”

Korea Times: “Some 99.5 percent of defectors living in Seoul said that they had not had religious freedom in North Korea.”

Doug Bandow writing at The American Spectator: “The DPRK routinely rates among the world’s worst religious persecutors. Formally atheistic, the regime has turned politics into a quasi-religion. The communist system is holy like a church, the ruling Kims, both father and son, are secular saints, the self-reliance philosophy of Juche amounts to theology, recorded in books of Kim sayings, and heretics are severely punished.”

AP: “The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said Monday he has opened an preliminary investigation into possible war crimes by North Korea resulting from its recent clashes with South Korea.”

Pat Buchanan writing at Townhall: “Fifty-seven years after that armistice, a U.S. carrier task force is steaming toward the Yellow Sea in a show of force after the North fired 80 shells into a South Korean village. We will stand by our Korean allies, says President Obama. And with our security treaty and 28,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, many on the DMZ, we can do no other. But why, 60 years after the first Korean War, should Americans be the first to die in a second Korean War?”

Christian Post: “Last year, about 2,900 people made their way to the democratic South, and over 2,000 have arrived so far this year, said Jong-joo Lee, an official with the Unification Ministry. Each month, an average of 200 North Koreans make it to the South, according to the Ministry.”

Christian Today: “Christians are treated without mercy. Up to three generations of Christian families are rounded up and thrown in prison camps to try to eliminate the faith. The nation is now grooming its next leader. But the question is, will Kim Jong-un finally put an end to his country’s policy of ruthless persecution?”

Christian Post: “A South Korean pastor was indicted Thursday on the charge of violating South Korea’s National Security Law after returning from an unauthorized trip to North Korea . . . South Korea forbids its citizens from making unauthorized trips to the north and supporting Pyongyang’s repressive regime. Han, a pro-unification activist, could face up to seven years in prison if convicted of violating the security law.”

The Boston Globe: “A Boston man being held in North Korea since January for crossing into that country illegally was freed yesterday at the behest of former President Jimmy Carter, and is expected to arrive back in Boston today . . . His friends told the Globe he was active in an evangelical church in South Korea and was very upset when a friend, Korean-American Robert Park, was arrested after crossing into North Korea on Dec. 25 to protest human rights abuses there.”

Boston.com (AP): “Jimmy Carter was to leave for North Korea today to try to gain the freedom of a Boston man imprisoned for illegally entering the communist nation, US officials said last night.”

Christian Post: “A U.K.-based Christian human rights group is urging Europe’s foreign ministers to add their support to a U.N. inquiry into crimes against humanity committed in North Korea. Christian Solidarity Worldwide has written to foreign ministers of all EU member states asking them to support the establishment of a U.N. Commission of Inquiry into the secluded communist country when the European Union introduces its annual resolution on the North Korean human rights situation to the U.N. General Assembly in October.”

ADF Attorney Kevin Theriot writing at Speak Up Movement / Churches: “Thank God we’re not as far gone as North Korea, but we’re definitely headed that direction. Christianity Today reports that government officials raided a Christian church service and either executed or jailed all 23 in attendance . . . We’re still a long way off, but make no mistake, recent attacks on religious freedom here in the U.S. open the door for unlimited government, and eventual persecution of the Church. North Korea is a great example of what we’re fighting to avoid.”

Christian Today: “North Korea has executed three leaders of the underground church and jailed 20 other Christians, reports a news agency focused on Asia.”

Associated Press: “North Korea executed a former Cabinet official who was in charge of talks with South Korea, a news report said Tuesday, the latest reported death sentence for a North Korean official over policy failures.”

WSJ: “China is blocking a United Nations Security Council move to condemn North Korea for the sinking of a South Korean warship, say diplomats familiar with the negotiations, marking a rankling divide on the issue between the Washington and Beijing.”

Asia News: “A North Korean Evangelical Christian was tortured and then killed in a Pyongyang’s prison. The victim’s brother pieced the story together and made it public. In a long interview, he slams the North Korean regime, calling it ‘hypocritical’, trying to be above any law, be it man-made or divine. Son Jung-hun, who now lives in South Korea, became a devout Christian after his brother Son Jong-nam was sentenced to death by the world’s last Stalinist regime.”

Yahoo (AFP): “North Korea threatened harsher punishment Thursday for a jailed US citizen unless Washington drops a campaign to censure it for the sinking of a South Korean warship. … Aijalon Gomes, a former English teacher in South Korea and reportedly a devout Christian, was arrested in January — the fourth US citizen in less than a year to be detained for illegal entry.”

AP: “The Obama administration is warning more than a dozen states, including perennial rogues Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Myanmar, of possible sanctions for failing to do enough to fight human trafficking.”

WSJ: “Watching China’s instant condemnation of the Israeli assault on an aid flotilla bound for Gaza, South Koreans must be wondering more than ever when China will muster a clear response to their own nautical tragedy.”

ADF Attorney Heather Gebelin Hacker writing at the Speak Up Movement blog (via the Christian Post’s Advancing Religious Liberty blog): “There was a compelling article in National Geographic last year that recently came to my attention. It is about the plight of North Korean defectors attempting to escape from the brutal regime and the Christian missionaries who come to their aid . . . Sometimes, as Americans, it is easy for us to forget about or grow indifferent to the shocking loss of basic freedoms that millions of people endure around the world. And as Christians, it is easy for us to take for granted the freedom we have in this country, and fail to take measures to protect it. But as I’ve noted in a previous post, Thomas Jefferson was right when he said that ‘eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.’”

“Young female refugees from North Korea are increasingly becoming a commodity in China, where they are sold to farmers for up to 1,500 dollars a head, according to a Seoul campaigner. The human trafficking is far from new but has become more prevalent as prices soar amid a shortage of Chinese women in the countryside . . . ”

Christian Post: “A U.S. citizen who is said to be a devout Christian was sentenced to eight years of hard labor by North Korea, the North’s official news agency reported Wednesday . . . Aijalon Mahli Gomes, 30, was convicted of illegally entering North Korea and ‘hostile acts’ against the country, said the Korean Central News Agency. In addition to the prison sentence, Gomes was also fined 70 million North Korean won, the equivalent of about $700,000.”

Religion Clause Blog: “According to Voice of America, North Korea today said it will release Robert Park, the U.S. Christian activist who crossed into North Korea from China on Christmas day carrying a Bible and a letter urging North Korean leader Kim Jong II to embrace God and close political prison camps . . . ”

Catholic Culture: “The list compiled by Open Doors was dominated by Islamic governments. Conspicuously absent from the ‘top 10′ list were China and Vietnam . . The top 10 persecutors on the Open Doors list were . . . ”

Associated Press: “A Korean-American missionary believed detained in North Korea walked into the country carrying a Bible, intent on preaching Christianity in a country that bans illegal worship – a bold move that may put him at greater risk of harsh punishment.”

AP: “An American missionary believed to be detained when he stepped into North Korea on Christmas didn’t inform his parents of his plans but they had a hunch he would visit the communist nation.”

Reuters: “North Korea and Iran were among the world’s worst offenders in abusing religious freedom, the U.S. State Department said on Monday in an annual report spotlighting countries Washington charges with severe religious repression.”

Christian Today: “Ri Hyon Ok, 33, was publicly executed on June 16 for allegedly distributing the Bible, and also for charges of spying for South Korea and the United States, according to reports from the Investigative Committee on Crimes Against Humanity.”

Associated Press: “A Christian woman accused of distributing the Bible, a book banned in communist North Korea, was publicly executed last month for the crime, South Korean activists said Friday.”

Washington Post: “Nor have the camps become much of an issue for the American public, even though annotated images of them can be quickly called up on Google Earth and even though they have existed for half a century, 12 times as long as the Nazi concentration camps and twice as long as the Soviet Gulag. Although precise numbers are impossible to obtain, Western governments and human groups estimate that hundreds of thousands of people have died in the North Korean camps.”

“Voice of the Martyrs is asking the communist North Korean government to release ten college students who were arrested for reading the Bible and watching a DVD about God’s Word.”

The AP reports on the Boston Globe: A federal commission said Tuesday that North Korean refugees suspected of meeting with religious groups in China are often marked for harsh interrogation, torture and long detention without trial after Beijing forces them …