The US State Department’s 2022 NK Religious Freedom Report continues to “bury the lede”

Posted on June 20, 2023 by Pastor Foley

The US State Department’s 2022 Report on International Religious Freedom was released last month. News of the report’s release appeared most commonly in headlines like this:

“North Korea sentenced Christian toddler to life in a prison camp”–UPI

“Toddler in North Korea ‘sentenced to life in prison after parents caught with Bible’”–Telegraph

“North Korea sentenced a toddler to life after his parents were found with a Bible”—Times of India

The US State Department’s 2022 Report on International Religious Freedom.

Some articles noted that the toddler’s alleged imprisonment happened 14 years ago, in 2009. Most, however, omitted any mention of date. Typical was the Times of India report which wrote in a timeless present-tense, “[A] family along with a two year old has also been sentenced to life in a North Korean prison camp as his parents were found in possession of the Bible.”

No media report contained more than a few details about the toddler because the State Department report itself says little more: “One case involved the 2009 arrest of a family based on their religious practices and possession of a Bible. The entire family, including a two-year-old child, were given life sentences in political prison camps.” Presumably the State Department report says little more because the original 2021 Korea Future report from which the State Department cites the incident is itself a brief 61-word “case study”.

This is not to question the validity or importance of reports like those from Korea Future or the State Department. But there is more at issue here than media clickbait. How organs like the State Department report on NK religious issues lends itself to sensationalism, nudging readers closer to shocked, hopeless paralysis rather than informed, motivated action.

Media have a tendency to portray the State Department report as breaking news about North Korea. But the State Department itself makes no such claim. It acknowledges that the report is a selective literature review of previously published third-party reports considered by the US government to be credible and relevant. The report introduction says, “[T]he Department of State is not in a position to verify independently all information contained in the reports. To the extent possible, the reports use multiple sources to increase comprehensiveness and reduce potential for bias. The views of any particular source are not necessarily those of the United States government. The report is designed to spotlight examples of government and societal action that typify and illuminate issues reported in each country.”

What typifies and illuminates religion in North Korea? According to the State Department report, “Multiple sources indicated the situation had not fundamentally changed since publication of the 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) report on human rights in the DPRK.” The report cites a 2021 white paper by the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU) that it is “practically impossible for North Korean people to practice religion.”

What the State Department annually portrays about religion in North Korea is that it remains in a steady state of bad. As the report says, “The government reportedly continued to execute, torture, arrest, and physically abuse individuals for their religious activities.” When it comes to religion in North Korea, it doesn’t matter if the 2-year old is now 14. It is simply timelessly bad in North Korea. There is little more to do than to add more of the same distressing anecdotes to the pile.

Careful readers of the State Department report, however, may find themselves asking: If there are indeed 100,000 to 400,000 Christians in North Korea, what do they do all day other than get beaten? If religious life is practically impossible for them, are they simply hunkering down and praying for regime change so they can once again be religious?

While the State Department’s report changes little from year to year, the State Department is mistaken that North Korean religious life is endlessly stuck in 2014. One of the reports the State Department does not cite is the 2020 White Paper on Religious Freedom by the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, the latest update in a longitudinal study. As the 2020 paper details, 20 years ago virtually no one inside North Korea had seen a Bible with their own eyes. But by 2016, the number of those inside North Korea who had seen a Bible had jumped to nearly 8 percent. In the 2020 report, the Center says that number has continued to increase by 4 percent annually. More North Koreans may be reading the Bible today than at any other time in history.

And if roughly 1.6 million North Koreans have now seen a Bible, a KINU report estimates that 10 to 30%, or between 2 and 6 million, have listened to illegal foreign radio broadcasts. As the State Department knows from confidential US government reports, religious programs are among the most popular broadcasts inside North Korea, which is why the North Korean government has significantly increased its jamming efforts against them. Yet, even though listening to religious radio broadcasts is likely the most widespread religious activity among North Koreans, it receives essentially no mention in the State Department report.

A North Korean defector records a radio broadcast at VOM Korea’s radio studio.

Religious life inside North Korea today is not the same as 2014, nor is it a practical impossibility. There is a massive popular information movement underway, much of it centered around religion. If religious life in North Korea was reducible to brief yearly anecdotes about beatings for Bibles, then the world could simply stand by, shake its collective head, and leave the matter to governments to sort out. But if faith is a dynamic, active, spreading force in North Korean daily life, then the State Department’s latest religious freedom report continues to bury the lede.

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The Ross Bible re-enters North Korea 140 years after it first arrived!

Posted on June 7, 2023 by Pastor Foley

In 1882, Koreans successfully smuggled the first ever Korean language version of the scriptures—in the form of the Gospel of Luke they had just translated with Missionary John Ross—from Moukden, China (today’s Shenyang) inside of what is today North Korea. Now 140 years later, according to persecution ministry Voice of the Martyrs Korea, Koreans have repeated the same feat—this time with copies of the ministry’s new John Ross Bible “Reader’s Edition” Gospel of Luke.

“In many ways, the situation today is the same as it was for John Ross and the first Korean Bible couriers,” says Voice of the Martyrs Korea Representative Dr Hyun Sook Foley. “The punishments for possessing a Bible or contacting a missionary are essentially the same as they were 140 years ago, namely, death. So the need for secrecy is the same today as it was for the first Korean Christians. But praise God, the power of the word of God remains the same as it did 140 years ago, too.”

Representative Foley says Voice of the Martyrs decided to disclose news of the re-entry of the Ross Bible into North Korea in order to challenge churches in Korea and globally to be involved in Bible-based ministry to North Koreans today.

“Christians outside of North Korea wrongly think that the only kinds of mission activity possible toward North Koreans today are things like teaching at North Korean universities, sending money for humanitarian aid through North Korean government-approved projects, or conducting training programs to plan for missions in the future when North Korea might ‘open’ to the gospel,” says Representative Foley. “But as the Apostle Paul wrote Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:9, ‘The word of God is not bound!’ The Bible is continuing to get inside North Korea today, and more North Koreans are reading it and being transformed by it today than at literally any other time in history.”

“We received confirmation that multiple copies of our Ross Bible Gospel of Luke entered North Korea this month and are in the hands of underground North Korean Christians, who are overjoyed to have them,” says Dr. Hyun Sook Foley, representative of Voice of the Martyrs Korea. She says that for security reasons related both to her organization and the recipients, the organization is keeping the exact details confidential. “It is now a criminal offense to bring a Bible into North Korea in any format—digital, print, or audio–from any country, including from here in South Korea,” says Representative Foley. She says the Ross Bible edition that entered North Korea intentionally has a different appearance than the one the ministry distributes in South Korea and elsewhere.

According to Representative Foley, independent surveys show that Bible-based ministry to North Koreans is continuing to increase the number of North Koreans who have seen a Bible inside of North Korea.

“The North Korean Human Rights Information Center, an independent data-gathering NGO, has been conducting an ongoing study where they found that in the year 2000, effectively 0% of people inside North Korea had ever seen a Bible with their own eyes,” says Representative Foley. “They have continued to update that study, and at the end of 2020 they determined that around 8% of people inside of North Korea have now seen a Bible with their own eyes.”

Representative Foley says Voice of the Martyrs Korea has distributed an average of 40,000 to 50,000 North Korean dialect Bibles a year for 20 years to North Korean citizens outside of South Korea, in print, audio, and digital formats using the Chosun Bible translation. She notes that the Bible is also read daily on Voice of the Martyrs Korea’s five shortwave radio broadcasts to North Korea. But she says the return of the Ross Bible to North Korea has special significance.

 “The Ross Bible is how the voice of Christ first came to ordinary Korean people, and in it Jesus and the other figures speak with a North Korean accent, since that was the accent of the translators,” says Representative Foley. “Ordinary North Korean people deserve to hear that original voice again today, and to experience the spiritual power of the original translation of the Bible into Korean.”

Dr. Foley notes that the Ross Bible was completed before the Korean language was standardized, so in its original form it is no longer readable by Koreans in either the north or the south. “Our new John Ross Bible ‘Reader’s Edition’ Gospel of Luke updates the text direction, word order, letters, grammar, and spelling so that modern readers can read it easily and understand it fully,” she says. “It retains the full original wording and adds simple notes to briefly and clearly explain unfamiliar vocabulary.”

The Ross Bible “Reader’s Edition” Gospel of Luke is available for purchase in Korea in the same size and shape as the original version. “It is a reader’s edition that ordinary Korean readers can understand. It is designed for easy, frequent reading and for tossing in your backpack to read on the subway, not for being displayed in a museum,” says Representative Foley. It is available for 10,000 KRW at www.vomkorea.com/store  or by phone at 02-2065-0703.

Representative Foley believes all Koreans should read the Ross Bible at least once.

Dr. Hyun Sook Foley and Pastor Eric Foley, co-founders of Voice of the Martyrs Korea, display the ministry’s new Contemporary Reader’s Edition of the Ross Bible Gospel of John at a press conference in November 2022.

“The Ross Bible was for the first two decades of Korean Christianity the only hangul New Testament available to Koreans. It was the Bible of the Korean church during its formative period, and it left a permanent imprint on the Korean church in the form of a church that is Bible-centered and lay-driven. God used the Ross Bible powerfully to impart the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ to the first generation of Korean Christians even before missionaries arrived in Korea.”

The Ross Bible Reader’s Edition Gospel of Luke is the first of three Ross Bible versions Voice of the Martyrs Korea will be releasing over the next two years. The organization is currently working on a Luke/John/Acts trilogy edition for publication in mid-2023 and a full Ross New Testament “Contemporary Reader’s Edition” for publication in 2024. Representative Foley says that the organization intends to share these editions inside North Korea as well.

Individuals interested in learning more about Voice of the Martyrs Korea’s North Korean Bible ministry can visit https://vomkorea.com/en/northkorea/.

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Persecuted Christians omitted from international evangelism crusade. Again.

Posted on May 22, 2023 by Pastor Foley

An estimated audience of 14,000 gathered on March 4 and 5 at the Phu Tho Sports Facility in Ho Chi Minh City to hear Reverend Franklin Graham, CEO of the US-based Billy Graham Evangelistic Association as he proclaimed the gospel and announced, “Jesus is in the city tonight.”

But according to Reverend Eric Foley, CEO of Seoul-based Voice of the Martyrs Korea, Rev. Graham omitted a crucial truth from his presentation.

“He did not mention that Jesus is also in prison tonight in Vietnam,” says Rev. Foley.

Rev. Foley noted that during the week of the Graham crusade, Voice of the Martyrs Korea received reports on four new cases of Christian persecution in Vietnam. “Each case involved believers in rural areas, pressured to renounce their faith and ultimately either forced to leave their village or be subject to violence and/or destruction of property,” says Rev. Foley. He says that what is happening in Vietnam is typical of the experience of Christians in other Communist countries.

Second night of Revered Franklin Graham’s Spring Love Festival, held at the Phu Tho Sports Facility in Ho Chi Minh City (Photo credit: March 6th post on Franklin Graham’s Facebook Page)

“It’s a pattern that goes back to Soviet times,” says Rev. Foley. “Communist governments are eager to portray to the rest of the world that religious freedom exists in their country. So they invite groups like the Graham association in to hold large-scale crusades that receive extensive coverage from the international media. The international evangelists praise the Communist government for their religious freedom. But in truth, there is only freedom for Christians and churches who register with the government and follow the government religious regulations. The Lord’s most faithful servants in the country are forgotten or ignored by each side for what they regrettably view as greater strategic gain.”

The United States Department of State currently includes Vietnam on its “Special Watch List” of countries under the terms of the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) of 1998, due to continuing reports of violations of religious freedom in the country. The US government’s Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) advocated in its 2022 report that the State Department should designate Vietnam as a “country of particular concern,” the highest level of religious freedom violation, for “engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom”.

The Executive Summary of the State Department’s 2021 Report on International Religious Freedom in Vietnam notes, “Religious activists blamed authorities for ‘manipulating’ recognized religious groups and accused their agents or proxies of causing conflicts in order to suppress the activities of unregistered groups.”

Rev. Foley sees the March Graham crusade in Ho Chi Minh City as the latest example of such manipulation. “The Graham Association explains that they were invited by local churches, and that during their visit they spoke to the government about religious freedom. But even the Graham Association website itself says they were ‘welcomed to the country by government officials in Hanoi, who granted permission’ for the event, and the Graham Association praised the government officials for ‘open support of religious freedom’. The Graham Association website praises the churches for ‘working together with the government of Vietnam’.”

Second night of Revered Franklin Graham’s Spring Love Festival, held at the Phu Tho Sports Facility in Ho Chi Minh City (Photo credit: March 6th post on Franklin Graham’s Facebook Page)

But Rev. Foley says the most concerning aspect of the crusade was the omission of any mention of the Christians who are currently experiencing persecution in Vietnam. Notes Foley, “According to Charisma News, Franklin Graham said that during the crusade, ‘We stood and prayed together for those in authority as the Bible commands.’ But the Bible also commands us to remember those who are in prison for their faith—to stand for them, and not to omit mentioning them. Jesus says that whatever we do to the least of his brothers and sisters, we do to him. So, failing to mention the active persecution of Christians in a country, simply to gain favor with the government, is not an acceptable evangelism strategy to Jesus.”

According to Rev. Foley, the Voice of the Martyrs movement has historically been critical of the Graham Association’s willingness to hold crusade events in Communist countries where Christians are actively experiencing persecution.

“The Graham Association has a long history of accepting such invitations and of portraying them as signs of growing religious freedom in a country,” says Rev. Foley. “But inviting the Graham Association to preach has not historically proven to be a sign of growing religious freedom in Communist countries.” Rev. Foley notes Billy Graham’s 1984 trip to Moscow to preach at a Baptist church. “Graham urged those in attendance to pray for and obey the government, and he thanked and praised the government for the invitation to come. But during the event, one Christian man unfurled a banner that asked, ‘What about the 200+ Baptist prisoners in the Gulag?’ Within two minutes, KGB officials had torn down the banner and arrested the brother.  He spent two years in prison. He was never mentioned by the Graham Association.”

A typical rural dwelling for Christians in Vietnam. (File photo from Voice of the Martyrs Australia)

Rev. Foley says Voice of the Martyrs Korea is requesting prayers for the four recent cases of persecution whose reports the organization received during the Graham crusade. “Let’s pray that the suffering and faithfulness of these persecuted brothers and sisters in Vietnam will not be forgotten even as the international news media focuses its reports on the crusade.”

  • “Pray for Vy, who became a Christian about a month ago. Her decision for Christ greatly angered her children who work for the local authorities. They physically attacked her and forced her out of her house. She is now staying with another believer. VOM will fund the purchase of a piece of land so Vy can cultivate it and provide for herself.”
  • “Pray for Brother Dang, a faithful servant of God. On more than one occasion he has been physically attacked by thugs and by the local authorities as he has gone about ministering to his fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Recently he was once again beaten, then his phone was confiscated, and his motorbike destroyed. VOM will fund the costs of replacements.”
  • “Pray for Xuyen, a former communist soldier. As a soldier, he received all kinds of benefits and subsidies from the government. But when he and his family accepted Christ, not only were all the benefits and subsidies cut but his land was also seized; he was also physically attacked. VOM will purchase some land for Xuyen and his family.”
  • “Lastly, pray for brother Kieu, whose house was burned and then demolished after he became a Christian. He set up a temporary shelter nearby, which is unstable. VOM will provide funds to rebuild or repair.”

Individuals interested in learning about or supporting Voice of the Martyrs Korea’s work in partnership with the persecuted Christians of Vietnam can visit www.vomkorea.com/en/vietnam.

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