North Korea

As North Korea plans a national celebration for the 100th birthday of the late Kim Il-sung on Sunday, Open Doors, an international Christian ministry which serves persecuted believers, is mobilizing Christians around the world to participate in a day of prayer.

While much of the world's media focused on North Korea's potentially dangerous rocket launch this week, Open Doors wants to bring attention to the country that has been ranked No. 1 on the ministry's World Watch List of the 50 worst persecutors of Christians for the last ten years.

"Even with the media attention that the rocket launch is getting, not many are paying attention to the fate of the people inside North Korea, especially Christians," Open Doors USA Media Director Jerry Dykstra told The Christian Post on Thursday. "They have been virtually ignored. We want to get people praying and advocating for them." more >>

Christian leaders from South and North Korea are expected to hold a joint prayer meeting together on June 12 at the North's border city of Kaesong, a reverend recently revealed, raising suspicions and skepticism among those working to fight injustice in the communist country.

The meeting, which will be conducted at a chapel inside the joint industrial complex in the city, will coincide with the anniversary of the Inter-Korean Summits that began in June 2000 between the leaders of the two countries.

The Rev. Han Gie-yang stated that officials from the North's Christian Federation of Korea – a state-controlled Protestant body of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea founded in 1946 – believes that the prayer meeting between church leaders would "help ease tensions and promote peace on the divided Korean Peninsula," according to The Korea Times. more >>

North Korea is most often in the news due to its nuclear program, but a number of charity organizations have raised concern for another big issue affecting the country – the persecution of its citizens.

Residents looking to escape the poverty and harsh life in the isolated Asian country face severe threats – if caught by government officials, they can be executed and put their entire family, including subsequent generations, in danger of imprisonment.

Last week, about 30 North Korean refugees in China facing the serious threat of persecution and even death back in their home country, were granted temporary relief due to South Korea's National Assembly adopting a resolution urging China to refrain from deporting them. more >>

In what is being described as a ground-breaking deal, North Korea has agreed to suspend its long-range missile and nuclear weapons tests at its nuclear sites in order to receive 264,000 tons of much-needed food aid from the U.S. 

The decision, reached in talks last week in Beijing between U.S. and North Korean negotiators, will also halt North Korea's uranium enrichment program, the BBC reported Wednesday. The deal would mark a major policy shift by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and possibly suggest that the country's new leader, Kim Jong-un, might be taking the country in a different direction than his father, dictator Kim Jong-il, who died in December 2011.

A great deal of speculation has surrounded Kim Jong-un's first decisions as leader of North Korea, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a Senate committee that the move constitutes a "modest first step" in improving relations between North Korea and the rest of the world and in long-standing talks of eliminating its nuclear weapons program. more >>

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 >>