Austrian far-right Party, FPO is talking with conservative party, OVP, and people have been protesting against the administration including FPO. FPO had led in the polls for two years - then Mr Kurz became chairman of the ÖVP and his charisma kept FPO (with neo-Nazi roots) from running the country. To govern Mr Kurz needs a coalition partner, and the FPÖ, was his first choice. Coalition talks began three weeks ago but nothing has yet been agreed. In Germany, coalition talks collapsed after a deadlock on migration and energy caused the FDP to quit negotiations. Angela Merkel faces either forming a minority government, or fresh elections. Many are wondering, ‘Is Europe fending off a populist uprising?’ see https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/19/german-coalition-talks-close-to-collapse-angela-merkel

This year, 2,800 refugees and migrants have perished in the Mediterranean, while countless others died crossing the Sahel desert. The UN Secretary General said there is displacement, and discrimination against refugees and increasing xenophobia that needs addressing.    There is a need to re-establish the integrity of the refugee protection regime on both sides of the Mediterranean. Challenges facing the region include illicit trade in narcotics, weapons and petroleum products, refugees and migrants managed by smugglers, traffickers, and maritime pirates. (The Mediterranean Sea provides economic resources of hydrocarbons, fish stocks and invaluable trade routes.) But its benefits depend on stability and security cooperation.

If we want to pray for all in authority over Europe we should look at the CoE. It is an institution of 47 nations separate from the EU with headquarters in Strasbourg, France. It’s a parliamentary assembly of delegates from national parliaments and has its roots in being one of the first attempting to reconstruct Europe after WWII. It has the oversight of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and through the work of their Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) it oversees subjects as diverse as non-discrimination, protection of children's rights, election observation and upholding freedom of expression. Our nation’s delegates to the PACE can be found at http://www.assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/AssemblyList/AL-XML2HTML-EN.asp?lang=en&XmlID=NationalDelegation-uk

The Christian Post recently joined Cross Catholic Outreach to pack Box of Joy gifts for children around the world. James Cavnar, president of the organization, was inspired by Samaritan's Purse to approach Catholic churches to follow in the evangelical organization's footsteps during the holidays. Operation Christmas Child is a popular evangelism tool used by Samaritan's Purse during Christmas to help provide gifts to children in need. Cross Catholic Outreach modelled their program, Box of Joy, after the same format and fills shoeboxes with gifts for less fortunate children. This year, Cross Catholic Outreach will send 60,000 boxes to children in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Dominican Republic and Haiti.

In August 2011, Tottenham Hale in north London was at the centre of a series of riots, arson attacks and looting which ignited in London, the Midlands and the north-west of England. Two years later the work started on building St Francis. The first purpose built local church in 40 years provides a place of worship and also allows the congregation to grow and play an important role at the heart of Tottenham Hale life by hosting pop up cafés and the Make Lunch project, designed to tackle food poverty in the area.  The new St Francis in the Engine Room Church is part of a planned 100 new Christian communities to be planted in the diocese. Elsewhere in London, planners have given consent for the 1970s Holy Trinity Church in Swiss Cottage to be demolished and replaced by a six-storey complex including a 450-seater auditorium, recording studio, and accommodation for vulnerable young people.

NATIONAL SECURITY FOREIGN AFFAIRS UPDATE
OCTOBER 23, 2017 (REPORT #51)

Highlights:

• Cold War returns with nuclear-armed bombers on 24-hour alert
• CIA expands Taliban hunt
• ISIS battle converges in the Euphrates Valley
• Iraqi, Kurdish forces exchange fire at shared border
• U.S. Forces Korea ready with THAAD
• Russia complains U.S.-led coalition destroyed Raqqa like allies did the German city of Dresden in World War Two
• U.S. SEC State calls on Iran-backed militia to go home
• Iraq’s PM rejects Tillerson’s call for PMU to “go home”

CURRENT

• Cold War Returns with Nuclear-Armed Bombers on 24-hour alert.  DefenseOne reports the U.S. Air Force is preparing to put nuclear-armed bombers on 24-hour ready alert, something not seen since the end of the Cold War.  “This is yet one more step in ensuring that we’re prepared,” Gen. David Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff, said.  “I look at it more as not planning for any specific event, but more for the reality of the global situation we find ourselves in and how we ensure we’re prepared going forward.”  Putting the bomber fleet on alert is just one of many decisions facing the Air Force as the U.S. military responds to changing geopolitical environment that includes North Korea’s rapidly advancing nuclear arsenal as well as Russia’s increasingly potent and active armed forces.
• CIA expands Taliban hunt.  The New York Times reports the CIA is expanding its operations in Afghanistan, sending teams alongside Afghan forces to hunt Taliban jihadi.  The Times reports this is a shift for the CIA in that country, where it had focused on defeating al Qaeda and helping Afghan intelligence operatives.  The agency’s paramilitary division, which is taking on the mission, numbers only in the hundreds and is deployed all over the world.  The expanded mission reflects that agency’s assertive role under Mike Pompeo, the new director, to combat insurgents around the world.  Pompeo said “We can’t perform our mission if we’re not aggressive.  … This is unforgiving, relentless.  You pick the word.  Every minute, we have to be focused on crushing our enemies.”
• ISIS battle converges in the Euphrates Valley.  The Air Force Times reports the coalition’s fight with ISIS jihadi is now focused along a stretch of the Euphrates River Valley straddling the Syrian border.   ISIS no longer has a presence in cities such as Mosul, Tal Afar and Haditha.  Rather, U.S.-led coalition forces are focused on driving ISIS out of towns like al Qaim.   Air operations are “shaping” the battlefield by taking out weapons centers like car bomb factories and ISIS C3 centers.  Brig. Gen. Andrew Croft, deputy commanding general for Air, Combined Joint Forces Land Component Command, Operation Inherent Resolve, said “They’ll move against multiple areas in the Euphrates River Valley in a multi-axis operation.  The preponderance of ISIS forces, we believe, are in that area … essentially all the way out east to Rawa.”

CONSEQUENCES

• Iraqi, Kurdish forces exchange fire at shared border.  The Military Times reports Iraqi federal and Kurdish forces exchanged fire at their shared border on Friday, ending a week of conflict whereby Kurds returned control to Iraqi forces.  By mid-Friday, Iraq’s defense ministry said anti-terrorism forces used artillery against Kurdish forces in AltunKupri, a town in the Kurdish region.    Kurdish forces withdrew last week in most areas to positions they last held in 2014, restoring the map to the time before the rise of ISIS.
• U.S. Forces Korea ready with THAAD.  The Yonhap News Agency reports the U.S. Forces Korea set-up the unit charged with operating the advanced missile defense system deployed in that country.  On Thursday, a ceremony was held in Seongju to transfer the Delta Battery of the 11th Air Defense Artillery brigade to the 35th ADA Brigade in South Korea.  The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery, which has missile launchers, command and control facilities and a powerful radar, was first deployed in April, but at that time there were only two interceptor launchers.  Four more launchers arrived last month.
• Russia complains U.S.-led coalition destroyed Raqqa like allies did the German city of Dresden in World War Two.  The BBC reports the Syrian Democratic Forces, a U.S.-backed alliance of Kurds and Arabs, destroyed Raqqa, and Moscow compared that result to the Allied destruction of the German city of Dresden in WW II.  Russia itself was accused of committing war crimes for bombarding Aleppo, Syria last year.  UN war crimes investigators in June that there had been a “staggering loss of civilian life” in Raqqa.  A Russian defense spokesman said “Raqqa has inherited the fate of Dresden in 1945, wiped off the face of the earth by Anglo-American bombardments.”
• U.S. SEC State calls on Iran-backed militia to go home.  The BBC reports U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called on Iran-backed militias fighting ISIS should leave northern Iraq as the battle is nearing its end.  Tillerson insists mopping up should be left to the Iraqis.   Iraqi forces have been fighting ISIS alongside Popular Mobilization Units, a coalition of Shia militia, backed by Iran.  Those units have been accused of abuses, including torture and killings, during the anti-ISIS operations in Iraq.
• Iraq’s PM rejects Tillerson’s call for PMU to “go home.”The media office of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Oct. 23 criticized U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's recent statements that Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Units who helped Iraq fight the Islamic State should "go home," Reuters reported. According to Reuters, the prime minister's office said that "No party has the right to interfere in Iraqi matters."  

Pray – lets be in prayer over each of these very significant situations and pray as we are guided.

Robert Maginnis
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

No weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and this is their vindication from me,” declares the Lord.  Is 54:17

In this edition of IPC Connections, we are once again highlighting the extremely volatile situation on the Korean Peninsula, that needs our prayers.  

Last month, we prayed about the potential of military options, which could cause many deaths. There is still the danger of provocative actions which we continue to pray against.  We also highlighted the significant relationship with China, who has the power and influence to broker a peaceful resolution to the crisis.  

Since then, an interview (reported here) with an academic with close relations to the Chinese government has warned that a war between China and North Korea was 'on the table'.  Chong Sho-Hu, a professor from Renmin University, Beijing said that the relationship with North Korea was now worse than it had been with both the Soviet Union and Vietnam at the time of the wars with those countries in the past.

In his words: "North Korea is standing on the edge of a deep cliff, one light blow could push this country off the cliff."   When asked whether this meant one more missile test could trigger war, the professor agreed.

Let's pray for continued peace and a 'breakthrough intervention' in the relationship between China and North Korea that will open the door for a U-turn and for positive de-nuclearization negotiations.

We also report in this edition on the real threat that the continued development of intercontinental ballistic rockets by North Korea's regime is creating. North Korea’s deputy U.N. ambassador called his country’s nuclear and missile arsenal “a precious strategic asset that cannot be reversed or bartered for anything.” A UK Daily Mail article also included in this month's edition quotes North Korean official's ambitions - both defensive and offensive capability that will hold the whole of the United States within it's range.  

As I have been writing this, a notification has arrived of an un-confirmed tunnel collapse in September at the North Korean nuclear test site that resulted in 200 deaths of 100 workers and a further 100 rescuers who were killed in a second collapse.  Whilst any loss of life is regrettable, there is no doubt that such an incident will have hampered the efforts of the regime in their attempts to develop these nuclear weapons.  http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-missiles-tunnel/tunnel-collapse-may-have-killed-200-after-north-korea-nuclear-test-japanese-broadcaster-idUSKBN1D018L?il=0

Pray on for the nuclear ambitions of North Korea to be thwarted. (Is 54:17) Let's also pray into the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and other United Nations efforts to restrict and reduce the development of nuclear arsenals globally.

Many Christians are suffering in North Korea for their faith.  Choi Kwanghyuk (55) escaped a work camp where he was sent after being targeted and persecuted by the government for his Christian faith. Read about his harrowing experiences below.

Robert Park, a US prisoner of the Kim Jong-il regime from December 2009 to February 2010 estimates that there are up to 400,000 believers worshipping secretly in North Korea.  He reminds us of the fact that thousands of the imprisoned Christians are in prison camps that are located close to military targets such as weapons facilities and test sites.  Read Robert's moving plea for a workable and peaceable solution addressed to the Korean President below.

Pray on for those being persecuted, raped, beaten, tortured for their faith. (Matt 5:11-12).  Pray for their release and an end to the oppression of believers of all faiths.  Pray for a solution to the crisis that does not endanger lives, either side of the border.  

On a more positive note, let’s be thankful for news of a growing Christian Church in North Korea, reported in this month's edition and for the innovative means being used to make the word of God available to them, through 'Bible Balloons containing text from the Bible or flash drives containing the whole Bible - Praise God!

Pray for the continuing efforts to encourage, equip and educate new believers in North Korea and for those who are taking great risks both in these efforts from South Korea and those who are nurturing God's people within North Korea.  Pray for one, united Korea.

May God bless and encourage you all as you join us in praying both for Korea and these other important global matters.

In His service,

John Robb, IPC Chairman

Dear President Trump,

Thank you for taking the time to hear my plea for peace on the Korean Peninsula.

I was a US prisoner of the Kim Jong-il regime from December 2009 to February 2010. The sole reason why I entered North Korea via Hoeryung city on Dec. 25, 2009 was to call attention to human rights violations that have occurred against innocents in the region and to demand better conditions -- conducive to life -- for North Koreans.

On a personal level, I have been profoundly wounded and suffered loss on an incalculable and irretrievable scale as a result of these efforts to highlight the North Korean populace’s severe victimization and unjust suffering. Accordingly, I sincerely beg that whatever you decide to do in concert with South Korean authorities and the international community that none of the ordinary people of both North and South Korea will ever get hurt; Koreans have already endured and sacrificed far too much.

It’s been brought to my attention that persons who have advised you and are within your administration profess to be Christians. Please kindly be reminded that a large number of underground Christians are within North Korea. They are the most persecuted religious group in the world, according to multiple watchdogs of religious rights internationally. As I pray your team accepts upon deep reflection, it would be decidedly un-Christian to countenance indiscriminate killings of those who are among the people in the world who suffer the most.

As was recorded by a 2013 United Nations Commission of Inquiry, an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 “Christians still professing their religion secretly” despite “high risks” are in North Korea today.

Another ethical dilemma vis-a-vis military strikes would be that North Korea’s political prison camps -- where thousands of Christians are imprisoned and suffering grievously -- are near weapons of mass destruction facilities and test sites.

For instance, as was written in the above-cited UN report: “Political Prison Camp No. 16 covers about 560 square kilometres of rugged terrain in Myonggan, North Hamgyong Province. It is located in close proximity to the Punggye-ri nuclear test site. ... The GeoCoordinates for the central area of Camp 16 are 41.1849N 129.2032E.”

Furthermore, an estimated 10 million Korean families were heartbreakingly severed by the brutal realities engendered through Korea’s division. Fewer than 1 percent have been permitted to see or even hear from their missing or displaced loved ones to date. As the artificial border became fixed, whether Koreans discovered themselves in the North or the South amid the tumult and upheaval of the period was in innumerable cases but a question of chance.

The South’s President Moon Jae-in -- like a multitude of South Koreans, Korean-Americans and other Koreans worldwide -- has family in North Korea.

Therefore, it is my sincere and tearful prayer that you, Mr. President, would take into serious consideration these excruciatingly painful and unresolved tragedies, while honoring the moral imperative to determine a peaceful resolution vis-a-vis the security predicament.

We must remember Kim Jong-un disallows North Koreans all of the basic freedoms most of us take for granted. North Koreans of all classes and backgrounds are not permitted to read what they wish. Neither are they able to travel freely within their own territory. Going abroad is simply out of the question for the overwhelming majority. Punishments in retaliation for being caught with books such as the Bible, or accidentally speaking out of turn or appearing irreverent, for example, are draconian and routinely deadly. These are but a few of the reasons the whole area is often referred to as a single enormous prison.

High-level escapee Thae Yong-ho, who defected to the South last year with his immediate family, characterizes North Korea as a “gigantic slave society that exists only for the hereditary succession of the Kim family.” Although once among Kim Jong-un’s most entrusted -- having been Pyongyang’s diplomat in London for 10 years -- he bravely declared subsequent to escaping, “I am very determined to do everything possible to pull down the regime to save not only my family members but also the whole North Korean people from slavery.”

There are countless individuals -- even among North Korea’s elite and military -- who confidentially share Thae’s hunger and thirst for reform and transformation within the North today. I know this with certainty.

Here is my earnest, wholehearted and tearful plea to you, Mr. President: Please unconditionally preserve the lives of both North and South Korea’s general population. Under no circumstances -- if international laws, norms and principles professing to safeguard innocents’ most sacred right to life contain any substance -- can the loss of their lives be tolerated.

There is a thoroughly workable and peaceable solution to the North Korea crisis. It involves reaching out to the general populace of North Korea in sympathy and supporting their internal unseating of Kim Jong-un -- one individual. This procedure must be accompanied by the freeing of all political prisoners -- who are victims of crimes against humanity and possibly genocide -- which can be achieved via the mediation of those North Koreans who assume interim administrative responsibilities in the immediate aftermath of Kim’s indigenous and peaceful ouster.

Elite or senior-level defections are conspicuously rising. The South’s Ministry of Unification recently reported that this year, North Korean elites -- including party officials, diplomats, and university professors -- are defecting twice as often as in 2016. Numerous members of the North’s military have been defecting to the South as of late, as well. Countless more have died while attempting to flee.

In July, an elite-level family of five -- including a former North Korean party official, his wife, son and two daughters -- struggled courageously to defect to the South. They carried poison with them to kill themselves -- as an alternative to Kim Jong-un’s systematic cruelty -- if Chinese authorities forcibly repatriated them. Heartbreakingly, these refugees deserving of protection were apprehended en route. To avoid inhumanity and torture, all five members of this senior-level family committed suicide.

As Thae Yong-ho has emphasized, high-ranking North Koreans are in actual fact slaves and are suffering gravely also.

The overwhelming majority of North Koreans hope and yearn to be reunified with the South, to live in a gentler and more egalitarian society and to bid adieu to Kim Jong-un. Those who suggest otherwise, Mr. President, unfortunately retain an inaccurate assessment of the overall situation on the ground.

Accordingly, we must reach out to the North Korean people if a peaceable solution is veritably what we seek. The native and nonviolent ousting of Kim Jong-un is distinctly achievable.

I’ve been praying through an outpouring of tears and wholeheartedly plead for you and your administration to remember the acute suffering and unparalleled victimization of tens of millions of warm-hearted, gentle and benevolent North Koreans -- who deserve compassion and require grace -- and to please pursue a peaceable answer with regard to the security quandary.

Thank you once again for your time and attentiveness to the above concerns.

By Robert Park

Robert Park is a founding member of the nonpartisan Worldwide Coalition to Stop Genocide in North Korea, minister, musician and former prisoner of conscience. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. -- Ed.

North Korean Choi Kwanghyuk is one of the lucky ones.

The 55-year-old managed to escape from the work camp where he was sent after being targeted and persecuted by the government for his Christian faith.

“We couldn’t raise our voice during a service, we couldn’t sing out loud during a worship … that was hard,” Choi told Fox News through a translator. “Also, we had to hide so that other people could not see us.”

Despite having to hide his faith in plain sight while living in North Hamgyong province, Choi was still compelled to bring religion to others when he started an underground church.

“There were about nine people,” he said. “I couldn’t do mission work because we had to keep it secret that we had a church.”

“If that information had leaked, we could have faced the death penalty.”

The 55-year-old managed to escape from the work camp where he was sent after being targeted and persecuted by the government for his Christian faith.

“We couldn’t raise our voice during a service, we couldn’t sing out loud during a worship … that was hard,” Choi told Fox News through a translator. “Also, we had to hide so that other people could not see us.”

Despite having to hide his faith in plain sight while living in North Hamgyong province, Choi was still compelled to bring religion to others when he started an underground church.

“There were about nine people,” he said. “I couldn’t do mission work because we had to keep it secret that we had a church.”

“If that information had leaked, we could have faced the death penalty.”

“I never heard the term ‘underground church’ until I got here [to the U.S.].”

In 2008, North Korean authorities caught up to Choi and arrested him. He was held in prison by the state security department where he says he was interrogated about his faith.

“I was tortured there,” he said. “I kept denying it.”

He said that he was about to be sent to one of North Korea’s brutal labor camps when he was able to break free.

“I decided to escape because I thought that once they sent me to the other camp, they could eventually send me to the concentration camp or kill me,” Choi recalled. “I was traveling back and forth between China and North Korea, but they kept searching for me, and I knew it could put my friends in danger too, so I left.”

The North Korean gulag system is notorious for harsh conditions and brutal treatment of its prisoners.

Choi feared being sent to the most notorious camp within the system -- Camp 22.Also known as Hoeryong concentration camp, and part of a large system of prison camps throughout the Communist dictatorship, Camp 22 is an 87-square-mile penal colony located in North Hamgyong province where most of the prisoners are people accused of criticizing the government.

Inmates, most of whom are serving life sentences, face harsh and often lethal conditions. According to the testimony of a former guard from Camp 22, prisoners live in bunkhouses with 100 people per room and some 30 percent show the markings of torture and beatings -- torn ears, gouged eyes and faces covered with scars.

“Unfortunately, it is inexplicably easy to wind up in one of these camps. While someone can be sent to one of these camps for openly evangelizing, someone can just as easily be sent there for simply being in contact with a religious person,” said King of the International Christian Concern.

Prisoners are forced to stand on their toes in tanks filled with water up to their noses for 24 hours, stripped and hanged upside-down while being beaten or given the infamous "pigeon torture” -- where both hands are chained to a wall at a height of 2 feet, forcing them to crouch for hours at a time.

Tiny rations of watery corn porridge leave inmates on the brink of starvation, and many hunt rats, snakes and frogs for protein. Some even take the drastic measure of searching through animal dung for undigested seeds to eat. Beatings are handed out daily for offenses as simple as not bowing down in respect to the guards fast enough. Prisoners are used as practice targets during martial arts training. Guards routinely rape female inmates.

Choi said he finally escaped to neighboring China. While he was figuring out where to go next, he had heard how the general image of North Korean defectors was not positive among those in South Korea.

“So, I applied for asylum in the U.S.,” he told Fox News.

Choi, who was single when he lived in North Korea, was granted asylum in the U.S. in 2013. He first lived in Dallas before eventually moving to Los Angeles where he now lives.

Choi said that as a result of injuries he received while being tortured, he is unable to work but has committed himself to telling the world about the human rights abuses in his native land.

“First of all, every human must have the right to freedom,” he said. “There is no freedom in North Korea. By law, they have the freedom of religion and the freedom of the press, but the reality is very different.”

And despite the hardships he may face, Choi said that life in the U.S. is a vast improvement.

“There is an enormous difference between my life in North Korea and my life in the U.S,” he said.

“The life in North Korea is hell … life in America is heaven.”

Source: Fox News - http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/10/25/north-korean-defector-describes-life-hell-for-christians.html

OPERATION BIBLE SMUGGLING: NORTH KOREA

Give thanks to Jesus for the growing Christian church in North Korea.

Pray: for the Bibles that are smuggled into North Korea to get into the hands, and hearts, of believers and seekers.

And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe. (1 Thess 2:13)

On the nights when the winds are light and the skies are dark, hundreds of helium-filled balloons are sent up and away from multiple points in South Korea, destined a few miles away and into North Korea. Only these are no ordinary balloons — they are considered “Bible Balloons,” adorned with the Words of God printed in Korean or flash drives featuring the entire texts of the Testament.

It is one of the few creative — and inherently dangerous — ways Bibles are smuggled into the oppressive dictatorship in the hopes that impoverished North Koreans will know that they aren’t forgotten. Other activists, such as American pastor Eric Foley, have opted for a much larger hydrogen-fueled 40-foot balloon brimming with Bibles and testimonials. These are then dropped into rural areas with the help of GPS technology, in the hopes that even just one will be picked up.

Nonetheless, the regime is well aware of the biblical balloons — which have been at the center point of Bible smuggling since the 90’s — and if the endeavor to shoot them down fails, anyone spotted collecting the contents is immediately arrested….

Another smuggling method in is via the occasional — and lawbreaking — tourist. Although any visitors to the hermit kingdom are rigorously warned by external tour companies to take in absolutely no religious texts or symbols and refrain from any type of discussion on it that could be interpreted as proselytizing, some still take the risk. And pay the price.

Just ask Ohio native, Jeffrey Fowle. A devout Christian and father of three, the perpetually curious 58-year-old journeyed to North Korea on an organized tour in 2014, and was detained after deliberately concealing a Bible under a trash can in the men’s room of a Pyongyang nightclub. He had hoped the bootlegged Bible — which contained his name and family photographs — would make its way to someone in the underground Christian community.

Three years later, in May of this year, his release was finally secured by U.S officials.

Fowle is one of the lucky ones. Religious freedom is written into the country’s constitution, but the reality on the ground paints a much different picture. For the vast majority of trapped Christians inside the brutal dictatorship, the consequence is life in a labor camp or a public execution by firing squad. Their relatives too are often subject to callous retribution.

“The North Korean regime’s legitimacy and claim to power flow out of the idea that Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and now Kim Jong Un are divine beings. North Korean children are taught to pray before a meal, ‘Thank you Father Kim Il Sung for our food,’….

Furthermore, Christian North Korean defectors in the border areas of South Korea broadcast gospels on an almost daily basis. Roughly 20 percent of the 25 million North Korean population own a radio — an illicit item — and many will risk their own lives to tune in.

“Radio, just as in the days of the Cold War, remains an incredibly useful tool to inject truth and the Gospel into North Korea,” said Jeff King, president of advocacy group International Christian Concern. “And we remain an ardent supporter of pushing Christian content into North Korea through radio and other means.”

But despite the harsh penalties that come with praising anyone of any belief system outside the Kims, there is a sense that an ascending number of North Koreans are turning to Christianity.

“The church is growing at a faster rate in North Korea than in South Korea, where the church has declined in membership every year since 1991,” Foley observed….

According to the prominent pastor, the uptick in the North is mainly due to the covert network of North Korean Christians, rather than religious advocates from the outside.

“The reason why is that the work of missionaries on the North Korea/China border is easily infiltrated and neutralized by North Korean state security agents, but the work of underground North Korean Christians has continued faithfully for more than three generations,” he explained. “They don’t smuggle large numbers of Bibles into North Korea, but instead, certain members of the underground church carry Bibles across the border one at a time, often in the form of MP3 players.”

These Christians are native North Koreans who are given permission to travel to China on relative visas or work visas. Some have established relationships with border guards who accept bribe money — and are under close and careful surveillance themselves — who turn a blind-eye to the illegal material being brought back in, while others have it carefully concealed from all….  

(Excerpted from Fox News , reporting by Hollie McKay.)
More: https://www.ifapray.org/blog/operation-bible-smuggling-how-christian-texts-infiltrate-north-korea/