Religion is a serious crime in North Korea. Those accused of practicing it are routinely put to death, as was the case of 33-year old mother of three,
Ri Hyon Ok, who was executed a few years back in Ryongchon, near the border with China. Her crime? Distributing copies of a banned book: the bible. The following day, Ok’s husband as well as their three children, were, in accordance with North Korea’s “three generation punishment” rule, sent to live out the remainder of their lives at one of the countries many notorious political prison camps or gulags, a
fate many consider to be worse than death itself.
There are of course any number of “crimes” that can land one in a gulag, but in North Korea, religious offenses have increasingly been punished with unusual severity and zeal. The reason? North Korean officials view organized religious activity as a serious challenge to its own authority. As Donald Kirk reports, “The worst fear of the ruling elite in Pyongyang is that people will begin to believe in some other faith, to realize there’s another way. The powers-that-be cannot tolerate such defiance of their own state religion.”
As a general rule, North Korean officials don’t like competition and its for this reason why civil society has been systematically rooted out in the country. In fact, the only clubs or social organizations a North Korean is permitted to join are those explicitly sanctioned by the government. And for good reason.
For years political scientists have recognized civil society - that is to say the aggregate sum of nongovernmental organizations, institutions, and independent community groups - as an indispensable cog of democratic polities and civic governance. For instance, Alexis de Tocqueville during his now famous travels in a young American republic purposefully commented the country’s many civic associations. “Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition,” Tocqueville noted, “are forever forming associations.” For Tocqueville, as for later social observers, these voluntary associations played an essential role in facilitating American democracy by fending off political repression and reigning in any would-be tyrant. “No countries,” Tocqueville decried, “need associations more—to prevent either despotism of parties or the arbitrary rule of a prince—than those with a democratic social state.”
Unsurprisingly, authoritarian regimes have historically sought to clamp down on civil society, as civil society itself has proven a rather adept vehicle through which resistance movements are fostered. North Korea is no exception. There, its leadership has banned all unsanctioned social organizations, while harshly punishing anyone caught participating in them. Religion obviously falls into this category, and yet, despite the many risks associated with religious activity, The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life estimates the Christian population in North Korea to be around half a million people, or roughly 2 percent of the country’s total population.
While relatively little is known about Christian worship in the Hermit Kingdom, in recent years, North Korean Christians, as well as a growing number of foreign missionaries have become more assertive in their proselytizing efforts:
“Despite the perception of North Korea as a country hermetically sealed to the outside -- and despite the very real risks -- dozens, if not hundreds, of Christian missionaries operate inside the country, sometimes living there for months at a stretch, in the capital, Pyongyang, or in the Rason region, near the country's Chinese border. Some run factories, distributing bread and soy milk to the poor. Others work for NGOs or universities, like the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, North Korea's first privately funded university (launched in 2010), which is bankrolled mostly by evangelical Christian movements.”
Irrespective of one’s personal feelings of religious evangelism (or for that matter those groups commonly associated with it), the nascent North Korean Christian community is arguably the largest articulation of civil society found within that country. This alone worries North Korean leadership. Perhaps even more troubling for Pyongyang are the bible’s numerous passages of resistance and rebellion. And given the present repressive political climate in North Korea, it is a near certainty that Kim Jong-un isn't a big fan of the Book of Exodus and its narrative of deliverance from the hands of a brutal leader
All that said, I wouldn't expect North Korea to become a democratic state anytime in the near future. However, its budding Christian community might just be the soil from which a future democratic movement takes roots. Who knows, perhaps a future Moses already walks among the North Korean people. If s/he does, I wouldn't be surprised to learn they’ve already distributed a bible or two.