Earlier this year, Prayer Alert readers were asked to pray for Hyeon-Soo Lim, the leader of the 3,000-member Light Korean Presbyterian Church in Toronto. After hundreds of humanitarian trips, he was detained last January for ‘intending to overthrow the North Korean government and set up a new religious state’. Detaining Christian foreigners is somewhat of a North Korean tradition, but accusing them of planning to set up a theocracy is new. We are sad to announce that North Korea has sentenced him to life in prison. According to the official Korean Central News Agency, state prosecutors argued for the death penalty against Lim in Wednesday’s 90-minute trial. The defence begged for mercy, pointing to Lim as a fellow-Korean and that he readily confessed to his crimes. The Canadian government has severed consular ties with North Korea, but Sweden has an embassy in Pyongyang and does some diplomatic work for Canada.