North Korea

Robert Park, a Korean-American missionary who was tortured during his time in a North Korean prison camp, has never opened up to the media with specifics of what happened to him while he was a prisoner, until now.

Park recently shared with Yonhap News Agency just some of the abuse he suffered after he illegally crossed the frozen Tumen River into North Korea on Christmas Day 2009. After being beaten by North Korean soldiers, he was taken to Pyongyang, the nation's capital, where he was sexually tortured and abused.

"Several North Korean women surrounded me and did the worst thing to me to try to make me commit suicide," Park told Yonhap News Agency. He was placed in a brightly lit room, where a group of women beat his genitals with a club to "make me not to have a baby and get married forever," he said. more >>

The eldest brother of North Korea's new "supreme leader" believes that the leadership of Kim Jong-un is doomed to "fail," according to a new book released in Japan last Wednesday.

It is unclear what a failed state would mean for the citizens of North Korea and the nation's Christian population specifically, but indications point to massive upheavals and large-scale problems for the country as a whole.

"(Kim Jong-nam is) not comfortable that his younger brother is succeeding the power of Kim Jong-il. He sees his brother failing. He thinks he has a lack of experience, he's too young and he didn't have enough time to be groomed," Yoji Gomi, author of the new book told CNN last week. more >>

North Korea has begun persecuting those who did not appear genuinely emotional following their late leader's death.

Kim Jong-il, 69, died December 2011, and as the country's official mourning period has come to an end, authorities have begun punishing those who did not display genuine sadness, according to Mail Online.

North Korea, also referred to as Democratic People's Republic of Korea, is a single-party state led by the Korean Workers' Party and often receives criticism for what critics allege is complete social control over its citizens and a lack of human rights. more >>

Release International, a ministry that supports Christians who are persecuted for their faith, is set to present a petition for religious freedom to the North Korean embassy in London on Jan. 20.

The petition will be presented after a staged funeral procession and prayer vigil which is meant to symbolize the death of freedom in North Korea. Release International hopes the petition will catalyze the British government into pressing for more religious freedom in North Korea.

The organization has gathered 48,000 signatures in response to the human rights situation in the communist country. more >>

On Friday, a day after North Korea completed its nearly two weeks of “mourning” for the late Kim Jong-il, the country sent a stern message to the world vowing that it would not alter policies despite the death of their “Dear Leader.”

North Korea is widely known as an intelligence “black hole” and leaders of the international community have expressed grave concerns over the future of the nuclear-armed nation, especially under a new and inexperienced leader.

The North Korean populace lives in some of the worst human rights conditions on the planet, with virtually no freedoms and all aspects of cultural, political, and social life tightly monitored and controlled by the leading Workers’ party. more >>

On Wednesday, a highly choreographed three-hour funeral took place for North Korea’s “Dear Leader,” Kim Jong-il.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans lined the streets of Pyongyang for Kim’s 25-mile funeral procession. The procession began and ended at Kumsusan Memorial Palace, where Kim’s father and founder of North Korea, Kim Il-sung, is preserved.

Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong Il’s son and heir, led the funeral procession for his father, which included American cars from the 1950s followed by a fleet of Mercedes-Benz vehicles. more >>