TIME FOR JUCHE TO GET SOME MARTYRS OF ITS OWN

Martyrdom in North Korea (Uwe Siemon-Netto, 5/6/2003, UPI)

The martyrdom of Christians in North Korea seems to be escalating as the crisis of the Stalinist-run country gets worse, United Press International learned Tuesday.

Chinese authorities have rounded up and repatriated North Korean Christians who had sought refuge and been catechized on Chinese territory. "We have reports that these refugees had wires driven through their wrists and noses. By these wires they were led back into North Korea," said Thomas White, head of the U.S. section of the Voice of the Martyrs organization.

Jeff King, president of International Christian Concern, a Washington-based advocacy group, told UPI that this forced repatriation was due to the worldwide attention North Korean escapees on the Chinese side of the border had received in the last few months.

"China evidently felt it lost face," he suggested, "hence the crackdown."

But White reported that clandestine Bible schools for Koreans still appeared to be in operation in Chinese caves. "Amazingly, some of their graduates then went back to their country to spread the message of hope."

White, King and other sources interviewed by UPI agreed that whether these Christians were forced to return or did so voluntarily, they faced a dire fate.

What Christian organizations such as VOM and ICC had been saying for years was confirmed last year by an eyewitness testimony before Congress: hundreds of thousands of political prisoners are unspeakably mistreated in North Korea's gulags. But the worst tortures are meted out to Christians.

Soon Ok Lee, once a senior cadre of the ruling communist party, testified that while she was in the Kaechon political prison camp, she observed the atrocious execution of five or six elderly Christians who refused to give up their belief in Christ.

Their slaughter occurred at a cast-iron factory that was part of the prison compound. The Christians were lined up and told to renounce their faith and accept instead the North Korean ideology of Juche (self-reliance).

"The selected prisoners all remained silent at the repeated command of conversion. The security officers ... killed them by pouring molten iron on them one by one," related Soon.

Soon also reported that the bodies of hundreds of prisoners served as fertilizer for orchards that produced especially large and sweet apples, pears, peaches and plums reserved for senior party and police officials. She herself was there when 150 prisoners were buried under these trees.

Regime change can't come fast enough, in fact comes fifty years too late. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 9, 2003 9:40 AM