Christmas tree in N. Korea

The fuss made by North Korea over the Christmas lights on a steel tower at an observation post overlooking the demilitarized zone reminds me of a similarly lit tree far inside North Korea. It was on the shelf behind the bar of a hotel in the industrial east coast city of Hamheung. I saw this miniature twinkling imitation of a Christmas tree when I visited Hamheung in July.

The woman who was serving me at the bar, as well as several raucous North Korean officers at a table a few feet away, did not seem to have any idea of the significance of the tree. Nonetheless, its presence as a decoration did indicate the impossibility of keeping insidious anti-state religious influence out of the North, however hard the authorities may try to crush any sign of Christian belief.

For North Korea, Christianity poses a serious challenge to a regime with its peculiar form of worship of the founding “Great Leader” Kim Il-sung and his son and grandson. Pastors from South Korea are among the main crusaders for human rights in North Korea. They also play a vital role in caring for defectors who make it across the Tumen River into China. From time to time they’ve been arrested by Chinese authorities.

The punishment for reading a Bible or Christian prayer book inside North Korea is severe. The country has “secret Christians” who hold services far out of the view of the authorities. Anyone caught participating in such a service faces torture, life imprisonment and death. The secrecy with which they practice Christianity calls to mind the “hidden Christians” around Nagasaki in Japan. Imbued in Christianity by Portuguese traders in the 16th and early 17th centuries, they had to practice their faith secretly during the Edo period until the “restoration” under the Emperor Meiji in the mid-19th century.

The severity of the punishment of North Korean Christians reflects the terrible insecurity of a regime that’s imposed its own religion in place of Christianity, Buddhism and other beliefs. Christianity is especially fearsome since Christian missionaries historically were extremely influential in the North. Pyongyang was known as a “city of churches,” and Hamheung, the North’s second largest city, was also noteworthy as a center of Christianity before the Soviet Union took over the North in 1945 and installed Kim Il-sung.

Considering the harshness of North Korea’s anti-Christian policy, one story about the North’s denunciation of the display of lights on the tower was remarkable for what it neglected to say. “North Korea allows sanctioned churches,” said the story, “but many associate Christianity with foreign interference.”

No, North Korea does not “allow sanctioned churches.” There are three ostensibly Christian churches in Pyongyang, one Catholic, one Protestant and the other Russian orthodox, but none of them are real churches. Rather, they are filled every Sunday with people ordered to play the role of worshippers for the benefit of foreigners.

When I visited one in July, I saw rows of these “worshippers,” mostly middle-aged women, going through the motions of a service. They all wore veils or white pieces of cloth on their heads, and they trooped out of the church afterwards in a single group, their eyes averted from the foreigners near the door. Defectors say anyone showing signs of actually believing in the religious forms enacted at the service faces the same punishment as secret Christians.

The second half of the same sentence in the story about the lighted Christmas tree was equally misleading. Deadpan, it said that “many associate Christianity with foreign interference.” Actually, few if any North Koreans outside the ruling elite know anything about Christianity. Defectors have told me they never heard of God or Christ while in North Korea. They were introduced to Christianity by pastors who harbored them in China, shielding them as they made their way to Mongolia, Vietnam or Thailand. For those in charge in the North, Christianity constitutes more than “foreign interference.”

One result of the work of Christian pastors in aiding defectors is that many of them have become Christians. The people who launch balloons that drop propaganda leaflets over the North are passionate in their belief in Christianity. They say they are carrying out God’s will in bringing “the truth” about human rights to North Koreans. The leaflets, printed on waterproof plastic, carry religious as well as political messages.

The tower was not lit during the decade of the Sunshine Policy of reconciliation from1998 to 2007. An agreement on stopping propaganda blitzes across the line precluded lighting the tower until after the sinking of the navy ship the Cheonan and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in 2010. The tower was lit that year but not last year after the death of Kim Jong-il when the North threatened to fire on it. By lighting the tower this year, South Korea is daring the North to do something about it beyond rhetoric.

When I visited the observation post beside the tower two years ago, I saw no signs of life in the hills on the other side. As a symbol of South Korea’s will to stand up under North Korean threats, the lighted tower is about as effective as those “sanctioned churches” that have so far done nothing to upset a regime that sees them as an ideological and spiritual threat to its existence.

Columnist Donald Kirk, www.donaldkirk.com, has visited both the Protestant and Catholic churches in North Korea and seen the golden dome of the Orthodox church from an upper floor of his hotel in Pyongyang. He’s at kirkdon@yahoo.com. <The Korea Times/Donald Kirk>