North Korea tortures orphans for their Christian faith, defector says

A human rights advocate who defected from North Korea said that orphans who were discovered to be Christians were "tortured harshly" by the dictatorial regime.

Several human rights advocates revealed some of the struggles of orphaned children in North Korea during a panel discussion that was part of the week-long North Korean Freedom Week. The said event was hosted at Georgetown University, according to The Christian Post.

During the discussion on Wednesday, Lim Hye-Jin of the New Korea Women's Union narrated a story, through a translator, how the North Korean government treated 17 orphans who tried to defect.

The orphans were able to make their way to China, but they were arrested and forced to repatriate to North Korea. Three of the 17 orphans were sent to a political prison camp after it was discovered that they were Christians.

Lim noted that minors are not supposed to be sent to a political prison camp under North Korean law. But the three orphans were arrested and sent to a camp because the authorities discovered that they were Christians who had been in a church. The security agents found out that they were believers because of the calluses on their knees, as they had been praying for a long time.

The defector noted that the three Christian children were "tortured harshly" while the other orphans have been sent to a re-education camp with other children. The 14 orphans were told that the three Christian children were sent back to an orphanage in North Korea. However, the orphans told Lim that if that was true, the Christians would try to escape from the orphanage because they were "100 percent sure" that they will starve to death if they stay. Lim said that the children have a better chance of survival if they begged in the streets.

Suzanne Scholte, founder and president of the Defense Forum Foundation, who co-hosted the panel, said that North Korean refugees are different from refugees elsewhere because they can be immediately resettled in South Korea as a citizen under the South Korean Constitution.

"There's no reason for China to continue this brutal inhumane policy of how they deal with the North Korean refugees and the orphans," she said.

She contended that the problem could be resolved overnight if the Chinese government abides by its international treaty obligations.

The persecution watchdog group Open Doors USA has ranked North Korea as the most oppressive country in the world for Christians. Some believers have to hide their faith even from their own family to avoid being discovered by government officials.

Scholte said that the Kim regime has used some doctrines of the Christian faith to establish its dynasty.

She claimed that Kim Il Sung recognized the power of faith since many Koreans who stood up to the Japanese oppressors were Christians. Believers were also instrumental in the Korean independence movement even though they were just a small minority of the population.

Scholte said that Christianity has been perverted by Kim Il Sung for his own purposes, and he had set himself up as God. His son was appropriated as a Christ figure, and "Juche," which means "self-reliance," stands for the Holy Spirit. The regime's creed, which declares religious allegiance to the dictatorship, was patterned after the Apostles Creed, according to Scholte.

"So if you're a Christian and you believe in God [and not the dictator] that's a direct threat to the regime," she said.