Several dozen North Korean believers have been discovered by the authorities – and immediately executed.
They were gathered for a meeting when security guards broke in and arrested them all. More than 100 members of their families were then sent to political camps, which is a common fear tactic in North Korea, whereby the government extends punishments to the relatives of supposed culprits too. It is believed that information about the time and place of the meeting was deliberately leaked to the authorities.
This latest government persecution is part of a major sweep against underground Christians. In North Korea, where worshipping any god who is not leader Kim Jong-Un is strictly forbidden, Christianity is considered a threat to the government and the Kim family. This has intensified recently, possibly to quell any possible rebellion caused by the Covid-19 crisis. The ‘anti-reactionary thought law’ was enacted in 2020 and has tightened controls over external information (such as videos and radio broadcasts) and increased punishments for infringements. That law has made it even more difficult for underground church members to worship and pray together.
In a separate development, The North Korean Prison Database has just been launched by Korea Future, the non-profit, non-governmental organisation investigating human-rights violations in North Korea.
The database provides a growing archive of international law violations within the North Korean penal system. It includes evidence of offences carried out by perpetrators, and their links to state organisations and penal facilities. Korea Future’s latest report has identified 597 perpetrators linked to 5,181 human-rights violations committed against 785 detainees in 148 penal facilities.
The report underpins research by the United Nations, which has established that such violations are taking place on a systematic and industrial scale. Thousands have fled, tens of thousands are missing, and millions are known to have died. The database seeks to investigate and preserve evidence of breaches of international law so that those responsible may be held to account.
Until now, little evidence had been gathered according to international law standards for the explicit purpose of holding those perpetrators accountable. Rarer still has been evidence that identifies individual North Korean perpetrators and links them directly to cases where international law has been violated.
