The State Department report on religious freedom in North Korea says that “authorities held 50,000 to 70,000 citizens in prison for being Christian.” Even Christians who were not imprisoned “experienced persecution that was ‘violent and intense.’” The report stated that “life for Christians … is a constant cauldron of pressure; capture or death is only a mistake away.”

“North Korea: Where Christians are the Enemy of the State,” International Christian Concern, November 22, 2024:

11/22/2024 North Korea (International Christian Concern) — Though it maintains a small token church as a nod to its previously religious past, the North Korean government is no friend to religion.

Its despotic leader, Kim Jong Un, demands absolute loyalty to himself. In his calculus, any religious sentiment is proof of divided loyalties and cause for indefinite imprisonment, cruel torture, and even death.

Though the severity of the persecution makes a study of the North Korean church extremely difficult, escapees of the regime tell of a small but growing church body in the country worshipping quietly but faithfully….