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NORTH KOREA - BACKGROUNDThe Korean peninsula (South and North Korea) has a history with idolatry that dates back some 4,500 years. Some of it, including various forms of shamanism is homegrown, while others like Buddhism and Confucianism are imports, mainly from China. Western Christians brought the Gospel to the Korean peninsula in the 1880s and a revival started in 1907, particularly in the north. Three thousand churches sprang up in the present North Korea and Pyongyang was even called, "The Jerusalem of Asia." Satan counter-attacked in 1910 when Japan annexed the Korean peninsula and mandated worshipping the Japanese emperor. Christians who bowed down to his portrait were spared. Those who didn't were imprisoned, tortured and/or executed. Despite their suffering, Christians grew in number during the 35 years of Japanese persecution, which ended when Japan surrendered in 1945 to end the Second World War. The respite was short-lived in, however, as the Communists led by the Soviet-trained Kim Il Sung streamed into and occupied the northern half of the peninsula. Backed by the Soviets, Kim spent the next 5 years consolidating his power in North Korea, crushing opposition, including from Christians, and building an army of his own. In 1950, Kim's Communist army of North Korea invaded the Democratic South Korea. The ensuing Korean War killed millions, flattened both South and North Korea, and ended three years later in a draw, with the post-war border more or less where the pre-war border had been. After the war, Kim Il Sung intensified the persecution of Christians in North Korea. Those who renounced their faith and swore allegiance to him and his new "Juche" ideology were spared, although relegated to the lowest levels of his new social order. Those who refused were executed or deported to remote concentration camps where they were starved, overworked, tortured and/or shot to death. By the 1960s, North Korea's once ubiquitous Christians were nowhere to be seen, at least not on the surface. |