North Koreans Hunt Believers
Former police and security officers in North Korea told a U.S. government body that their superiors had instructed them to play the role of Christians and infiltrate “underground” prayer meetings in order to incriminate, arrest, imprison and sometimes execute believers in North Korea. Interviewed for a report issued by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), the six officers were tasked – before they fled North Korea – with finding and eliminating small groups of Christians.
They said the North Korean government considers religion – and Christianity in particular – to be the primary threat to national security, according to the report, released April 15. Four of the six security agents had worked with the National Security Agency (NSA), two with the People’s Security Agency (PSA) and another for the Korean Workers’ Party.
They also had meted our severe punishment to refugees repatriated to North Korea who admitted having contact with Chinese or South Korean Christians.
Border Patrol
The six security agents said there were increased attempts to halt religious activities along the border with China, including setting up mock prayer meetings to trap refugee converts, and basic theological training for security agents to enable them to infiltrate churches in China and search for North Koreans in attendance.
The agents described their detention and interrogation of North Korean refugees as “counter-intelligence work,” since the government believed South Korean missionary involvement in the refugee crisis was nothing short of espionage.
One refugee held at a PSA detention center in Saetbyeol, North Hamgyeong province, was told directly that if she had carried the Bible of God into North Korea, she would be “sent to the [labor camps] and they would kill her there.”
Border police sent another refugee to the PSA detention center in North Hamgyeong province and later to the NSA’s prison at Onseong. “They … asked whether I had contact with Christians. I was kicked and struck severely. I had to stand all day long and I was not permitted to move or speak … When they asked again whether I had heard of Christianity, I admitted that I had.”
If repatriated refugees have had little or no contact with religious groups, border police hand them over to the PSA for short-term detention. If religious contact is discovered, however, they are handed over to the NSA for possible torture, sentencing to prison labor camps, or execution.
“There are no preliminary hearings when religious people get caught,” one agent said. “[We] regard them as anti-revolutionary elements. When such an offender is caught in North Korea, the NSA officers surround the person and kick and beat the person severely before interrogating.”
Still another agent confirmed that, “The most important question asked to the repatriated is whether they have met South Korean missionaries or evangelists or encountered or experienced religion. If they confess that they have met missionaries or deacons…then without any further questions, they will be sent to the NSA and they are as good as dead. However, only a small number of cases involve religions.”
Both the PSA and the NSA play an important role in “counter-intelligence” operations. The PSA is a more general police force, while the NSA is the North Korean counterpart to America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation or Central Intelligence Agency. The PSA gathers information on every citizen for a dossier that is kept on file and used by the NSA to “decide whether to arrest a person,” according to one former NSA officer.
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