The people of North Korea

Prayer for beleaguered believers in North Korea is more important than ever. We must respond now to the North Korean Christian leaders’ request to pray for them. We should also pray for Kim Jong-un; that God will work in his heart and he will pursue peace and not war. Pray families will find food to feed their families. Finally, pray that no matter what happens, Christians will remain strong in their faith.

While the world is rightly concerned with North Korea’s threats of war and nuclear attack, we can sometimes forget that the Kim regime has been committing what amounts to genocide on millions of their own people for well more than half a century.

Christians will continue to suffer. Tragically that means tens of thousands of Christians will probably remain locked up in atrocious conditions for the foreseeable future while thousands more remain in hiding, risking imprisonment or even execution for something as simple as owning a Bible.

In North Korea, a possible lesser penalty for someone having a Bible would be for the offender, and three generations of his or her family, to be sent to prison camps, where at estimated 50,000 to 70,000 people are held.

Christians have no freedom in five spheres used to measure freedom, the private, family, community, congregational, and public.

North Korea is known to have somewhere between 50,000 to 70,000 Christians in forced labor camps. And they’re there for doing nothing except trying to worship the Lord.