Christian persecution in North Korea is 'on Par With Nero's Rome,' says human rights activist

A prominent human rights activist has said that the level of persecution experienced by Christians in North Korea is comparable to the persecution faced by the Early Christian Church in ancient Rome under Emperor Nero.

At a conference organized by the religious freedom advocacy group International Christian Concern (ICC), a North Korean defector and some activists recounted the human rights abuses committed by the Communist Kim regime against its citizens.

During a morning introduction at the Rayburn Office Building, human rights advocates with years of experience in dealing with North Korea detailed how the Communist regime nearly wiped out Christianity in the nation which was once known as the "Jerusalem of the East."

Greg Scarlatoiu, the executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, noted that North Korea was once the "cradle of the Korean Presbyterian Church," and it was once common to see two churches on the same street corner.

He narrated that the regime began its crackdown on Christianity in 1946, when the Provisional People's Committee for North Korea forced closure of churches with congregations that did not meet a predetermined required number of people.

"The committee began to forbid Protestant and Catholic in-house assemblies and made Sunday a work day and Monday a rest day. And, this was just the beginning," Scarlatoiu said, as reported by The Christian Post.

"Under the pretext that the sound of religious songs disturbed public life, the same committee asked churches to relocate. Communist Party agitators were inserted into Christian communities and church assemblies. They began criticizing the sermons as being unprogressive," he added.

In 1962, then-leader Kim Il-sung told the regime's security agency that North Korea "cannot move toward a common society with religious people," according to the human rights advocate.

Scarlatoiu said that the Communist leader then told government officials that deacons and other church officials have to be put on trial and be punished.

He further noted that about a quarter of the North Korean population held some religious belief in 1948, but the statistical data today indicate that the number is below one percent.

He explained that Kim Il-sung and his successors have rejected religion as the "opium of the people" and have killed hundreds of thousands of North Koreans over the years.

North Korea has been ranked by Open Doors USA as the top persecutor of Christians for the past 15 years. Scarlatoiu noted that there are state-run churches in North Korea, but he asserted that they are being run by government officials disguised as pastors and priests.

"One can confidently say that it is the Kim family regime that has taken religious persecution, in particular the persecution of Christians, to a level, perhaps, on par with Nero's Rome as well as the Assyrian, Greek and Armenian genocide of World War I or the Yazidi genocide today," he said.

North Korean citizens are split up into social classes according to their political risk to the regime. According to Liberty in North Korea, about 27 percent of the population are assigned to the "hostile class," which is composed of political dissidents, religious people, capitalists and their descendants.

Despite the lack of access to the isolated nation, it is estimated that at least 120,000 people are being tortured, beaten and forced to do hard labor in the regime's prison camps.