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Local Missionaries in North Korea

Slightly larger than the state of Virginia, North Korea borders China and South Korea between the Korea Bay and Sea of Japan.

Since the mid-1990s, the citizens of this totalitarian state have faced chronic food shortages with severe famine and starvation through the mid-2000s. Though technically a centrally planned economy where the state is supposed to provide everything for its people, North Korea’s economy barely functions. In 2002, the government began allowing semi-private markets to sell a wider range of goods, giving way to a private economy that has sprung up out of necessity.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital city, was called the “Jerusalem of Asia.” Christians worshipped in around 3,000 churches throughout the country at that time. But everything changed under the subsequent Japanese rule and following dictatorships of Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and Kim Jong-un. Today, there is no visible presence of Christians, though the Body of Christ is secretly growing; some estimate there are hundreds of thousands of believers in the country.

North Korea is considered by many to be the world’s worst persecutor of Christians. If North Korean believers are discovered, they are sent to one of the country’s notorious labor camps, tortured, or sometimes killed. Tens of thousands of Christians are currently held in these camps.

Christian Aid Mission assists an indigenous ministry that is planting churches among trafficked North Korean women near the Chinese border. Hoping to find work to send money back to their hungry children, hundreds of thousands of North Korean women have entered China throughout the years—only to be met by traffickers who sell them to poor or disabled Chinese men. Some stay, losing all hope to ever see their families again. Some are arrested and sent back to North Korea where they’re put in a labor camp.

The ministry discovered a group of 91 North Korean trafficked women near the border in 2015 during a Christmas outreach where they delivered hot noodle soup to more than 2,000 North Korean workers and clothing to 580 orphans and elderly people in nursing homes. They planted a church among them and began to disciple them. They have since planted several additional churches among North Korean refugees. The ministry requests assistance to provide them with food, clothing, and other compassionate aid, as well as Bibles.

Sources: Joshua Project, CIA World Factbook, Providence Magazine: Jesus in the Land of Kim Jong-un: https://providencemag.com/2016/06/jesus-land-kim-jong-un/