Religion in North Korea - History of Anti-Religious Campaign

History of Anti-Religious Campaign

It is very difficult for outside observers to know what has happened to North Korean religious bodies over the past 60 years due to the extreme isolation of the state, and as a result significantly differing interpretations exist among academics about what has happened.

One interpretation has held that all open religious activity in DPRK Korea was persecuted and eradicated after Kim Il Sung took power, only to be revived in the present as part of a political show. Another interpretation has held that religion survived and has genuinely been revived in the past few decades.

Kim Il Sung criticized religion in his writings, and North Korean propaganda in literature, movies and other media have presented religion in a negative light. The Juche philosophy often took the place of religion and taught Koreans to see religion as an unscientific delusion. Kim Il Sung's attack on religion was strongly based on the idea that religion had been used as a tool for imperialists in the Korean peninsula. He criticized Christians for collaborating with the UN forces against him during the Korean war, although he praised Christians who supported him.

Accounts from the Korean war speak of harsh persecution of religion by Kim Il Sung in the areas he controlled. Prior to the war, the Christian community in the Korean peninsula was most heavily concentrated in the North and with the war being fought, many of these Christians fled to the South. Some interpretations have considered that the Christian community in the DPRK were often of a higher socio-economic class than the rest of the population, which may have prompted their departure for fear of persecution for this reason. The large-scale destruction caused by the massive air raids and the suffering experienced by North Koreans during the Korean War helped foster hatred of Christianity as being the American religion. Religion was attacked in the ensuing years as an obstacle to the construction of communism, and many people abandoned their former religions in order to conform to the new reality. On the basis of accounts from the Korean war as well as information from defectors, an interpretation has held that the DPRK was the only state in the world to have completely eradicated religion by the 1960s. Buddhism was thought to have been eradicated, under this interpretation and its reappearance later was thought to be a show. ‘The Federation of Korean Christians’ in DPRK Korea (the umbrella organization of Christians in DPRK Korea, which began in 1970), under this interpretation, has been considered a ‘fake’ organization meant to present a favourable image to the outside world. Other interpretations have thought that perhaps they do represent a genuine faith communities in the DPRK that survived the persecutions. An interpretation has considered that these religious communities may have been genuine believers who genuinely adhered to Marxist-Leninism and the leadership of Kim Il Sung, thus ensuring their survival. This interpretation has been supported by recent evidence gathered that has shown that the DPRK may have tolerated the existence of up to 200 pro-communist Christian congregations during the 1960s, and by the fact that several high-ranking people in the DPRK’s government were Christians and they were buried with high honours (Kang Yang Wook was a Presbyterian minister who served as vice president of the DPRK from 1972 to 1982, and Kim Chang Jun was a Methodist minister who served as vice chairman of the Supreme People’s Assembly ). Differing interpretations often agree on the disappearance of religion under Kim Il Sung in the first few decades of his rule. The DPRK never made an open public policy statement about religion, leading to unresolved speculation among scholars as to what exactly the government’s position was at any point in time.