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North Korea's missionary
position By Andrei Lankov
SEOUL - Churches are opening in North
Korea, a country long known for its hostility to
any religion, and especially Protestantism. But it
is not the handful of officially sanctioned
churches that are interesting so much as reports
of a revival of the North's "catacomb church".
Given the privation and suffering in North
Korea, it's not surprising that the masses would
find solace in the opiate of the people.
North Korean defectors to South Korea
recently were asked about the fate of those
escapees who were apprehended in China and sent
back for interrogation in North Korea. Their
treatment is harsh but they are not necessarily
doomed. If an arrested escapee does not make some
dangerous confessions while subjected to
relatively mild beatings, he or she is likely to
be set free very soon (not very nice, but still
it's a vast improvement over the situation that
existed two decades ago). This correspondent
asked, "What do interrogators see as dangerous
activity?" The answers were virtually identical
across the board: "Contacting missionaries and
bringing religious literature to North Korea."
For three decades North Korea and Albania
were distinct in being countries without any
organized religious worship and without a single
temple of any religion. But this is changing fast
- and the Pyongyang authorities obviously worry
that they do not have complete control over the
fast-developing new situation concerning religion.
The central authorities also are losing control,
as cracks appear in the country's "Stalinist"
ideology.
Once upon the time, Christianity
played an important role in North Korean politics.
Indeed, few people are now aware that in the
colonial era, between 1910 and 1945, what is now
North Korea was the stronghold of Korean
Protestantism. Protestant missionaries came to
Korea in the 1880s and achieved remarkable success
in conversions. By the early 20th century Koreans
had come to associate Protestantism with modernity
and progress, and many early Korean modernizers
came from Protestant families. Although Christians
composed just 1-2% of the population, they were
over-represented among intellectuals and
professionals. It helped that Korea was colonized
by a non-Christian nation - Japan - so in Korea
the teachings of Jesus avoided those associations
with colonialism that proved to be so damaging in
many other parts of Asia.
Once upon a
time, relations between early Korean communism and
Korean Christianity were much closer than either
side is willing to admit nowadays. Kim Il-sung
himself, the founder of the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea (DPRK), was born into a family
of prominent Protestant activists. His father
graduated from a Protestant school and was an
active supporter of the local missions, and his
mother was the daughter of a prominent Protestant
activist. This was fairly typical: it seems that a
majority of early Korean communists had Christian
family backgrounds, even though Christians were
few and far between in the general population.
By the early 1940s Pyongyang was by far
the most Protestant of all major cities of Korea,
with some 25-30% of its adult population being
church-going Christians. In missionary circles
this earned the city the nickname "Jerusalem of
the East".
Thus, throughout the first
years of North Korean history, the nascent
communist government had to reckon with the power
of the Christian community. Even Kim Il-sung's own
family connections with the Protestants could be
put to a good use. A large role in the North
Korean politics of the 1940s and 1950s was played
by Kang Ryang-uk, a Protestant minister who also
happened to be a relative of Kim's mother. He even
became the target of an assassination attempt by
rightist agents, specially dispatched from the
South.
Nonetheless, left-wing Christianity
was not a success in North Korea. Most Protestant
preachers and activists were enemies of the new
regime. There were a number of reasons for this.
Most pastors came from affluent families and were
not happy about the redistribution of wealth
during the land reforms of 1946 and subsequent
nationalization of industries. As well, many
Christians had personal connections with the West
and admired the United States as a beacon of
democracy, and thus were alienated by the regime's
intense anti-American propaganda. The increasingly
harsh and repressive policies of the new
government did not help either.
Thus in
1946-50 Protestants formed one of the major groups
of the refugees who moved to the South. When the
Korean War began, these Protestants often helped
the advancing United Nations troops. Such
incidents once again demonstrated to the Pyongyang
leaders what they believed anyway: that Christians
were politically unreliable.
In the 1950s
anti-Protestant propaganda reached a hysterical
pitch. All kinds of religious worship were banned,
but Protestantism was particularly singled out as
a "wicked teaching of the US imperialists". All
churches were closed by the mid-1950s, and those
Protestant leaders who were unlucky, naive or
foolish enough to stay in the North after the
Korean War were purged in the late 1950s as
"American spies". Even those who renounced their
faith, though doing so usually saved their lives,
were not completely off the hook: under North
Korea's elaborate system of hereditary groups,
such people became members of "hostile group No
37" and remained branded until the end of their
days.
Meanwhile, the official media
bombarded North Koreans with ranting
anti-Protestant propaganda. The educational
efforts of the early missionaries were explained
as part of their scheme to pave the road for the
long-planned US invasion. Pastors and activists
were portrayed as a spies and saboteurs on the
payroll of the US Central Intelligence Agency, or
as sadists killing innocent and naive Koreans with
their own hands. Works of fiction depicted how
missionaries were killing innocent Korean children
in their "clinics" - in order to sell their blood,
eyes or body parts (very improbable in the era
before body-parts transplantation, but good
propaganda anyway). The "regeneration" of a Korean
Christian was another favorite topic of North
Korean fiction of the late 1950s. A protagonist of
such stories was initially misled by scheming
missionaries and their willful collaborators and
foolishly became a Christian, but then some
incident or bitter personal experiences helped him
or her to discover the depraved nature of
Christian teaching. Of course, he or she rejected
the "imperialist ideological poison" and led
others to eventual enlightenment.
Even
nowadays, in Sinch'on Museum, a propaganda
center dealing with US atrocities (largely
invented), one can see a collage of photos of all
prominent American missionaries active in Korea
around 1900, accompanied by the caption: "the
American missionaries who crawled into Korea,
hiding their daggers in their clothing".
By the mid-1950s, not a single church was
left functioning. As usual, the Korean Stalinists
outdid Stalin himself: even in the worst days of
Josef Stalin's rule a handful of churches remained
opened in Soviet cities, and some priests avoided
the gulag (more often than not through cooperation
with Stalin's secret police).
Some North
Korean believers continued to worship in secret.
The precise scale of the North Korean "catacomb
church" is likely to remain unknown forever.
Serious research is made impossible by the secrecy
of the church, and in the post-unification future
(if there is one), the picture is likely to be
distorted by exaggerations and myth-making to
which religious organizations are usually so
prone. A lot of martyrdom stories are certain to
emerge in post-unification Korea, and some of them
are certain to be true, but none of these stories
should be taken at face value without careful
checking. Nonetheless, the existence of the
Protestant underground is beyond doubt.
In
the early 1970s the North Korean approach to
religion was softened, but the liberalization was
initially designed for export only. By the 1970s,
Pyongyang had given up its earlier hopes of a
communist revolution in the South. Long and
persistent efforts would be needed to bring the
"Seoul puppets" down, and cooperation with
"progressive religious forces" in the South would
be useful.
Thus some Christian
associations had to be created under the auspices
of the North Korean government, to be put to good
use as propaganda organizations. In 1974, the
Korean Christian Association reappeared on the
political scene. This association was established
in 1946 to steer religious activity in the right
direction, but in 1960 it was disbanded. Of
course, the restoration of the KCA did not mean
much for the few surviving underground Christians.
Its sole task was to influence South Korean
religious circles and provide a convenient outlet
for dealing with them. Indeed, the KCA conducted a
number of remarkably successful propaganda
exercises that targeted credulous Southern
lefties.
The real turning point came in
1988 when the first North Korean church was opened
in Pyongyang. This was done under some pressure
from overseas religious circles, but was
significant nonetheless.
Nowadays, North
Korea has two Protestant churches with, allegedly,
150 believers. That figure is suspect, however;
one should not be surprised to learn eventually
that these people were appointed to be "believers"
after careful selection by the party and screening
by secret police. After all, their major role is
to be props during frequent visits of foreign
delegations.
The existence of two churches
is hardly a sign of revival in a country that once
boasted 3,000 churches and some 250,000 believers.
Nonetheless, it could be a sign of liberalization.
North Korea has also opened a Catholic church,
also located in Pyongyang.
Recently,
Pyongyang suggested opening an Orthodox church as
well. The hitherto unknown "Orthodox Committee of
the DPRK" contacted Russian church leaders - and
nobody was surprised by the fact that nothing has
been heard about North Korean Orthodox believers
for six decades (and even in 1945 they hardly
numbered more than few hundred). The dear leader,
Kim Jong-il, assured a Russian official who
expressed some doubts in this regard: "Do not
worry, we'll find believers!" No doubt they will -
the North Korean "competent agencies" know how
this should be done.
However, there are
signs of a genuine Christian revival in North
Korea. From the mid-1990s an increasing number of
South Korean missionaries have been going to
northeastern China, adjacent to the almost
uncontrolled border with the DPRK. These
missionaries are overwhelmingly Protestant, of
various denominations. They preach among the
refugees, and their mission is remarkably
successful. This is understandable: Christian
organizations are among the few organizations that
take note of the refugees and work hard to help
them - much to the annoyance of the North Korean
authorities. Newly converted North Koreans often
go back to their country, taking Bibles and
religious literature there. The North Korean
authorities take the problem very seriously. As
mentioned above, defectors extradited from China
and then interrogated by North Korean political
police are always asked whether they have been in
contact with Christian missionaries.
There
are reports about the growing Christian
underground. Alas, these reports cannot be
verified. Still, it seems that some sort of
catacomb church is fast developing in North Korea
- a development that has nothing to do with the
elaborate performances staged by the authorities
in the officially approved churches.
It is
remarkable how successful Protestantism is among
Northern defectors who are currently living in
South Korea. Many of them converted in the first
months of their sojourn. Once again, this can be
partially explained by the active involvement of
right-wing Christians with the refugee community
(the secular left and South Korean society in
general are quite indifferent if not hostile to
these people). Still, it is clear that North
Koreans are willing to embrace the religion with
exceptional zeal.
Perhaps this is a sign
of things to come, and Pyongyang is on the verge
of regaining its old title "Jerusalem of the
East". The collapse of Kim Jong-il's rule someday
is likely to leave a serious ideological and
spiritual vacuum, which can be easily filled by
Christianity. The associations between
Christianity and South Korean prosperity will not
hurt either - as well as right-wing sympathies of
Korean mainstream Christians (the left is unlikely
to be popular in post-Kim North Korea for at least
a generation). And it seems likely that in many
cases the new-found North Korean Protestantism
will take rather extreme forms.
Dr
Andrei Lankov is a lecturer in the faculty of
Asian Studies, China and Korea Center, Australian
National University. He graduated from Leningrad
State University with a PhD in Far Eastern history
and China, with emphasis on Korea, and his thesis
focused on factionalism in the Yi Dynasty. He has
published books and articles on Korea and North
Asia. He is currently on leave, teaching at
Kookmin University, Seoul.
(Copyright
2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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