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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...pulled out her teeth and fingernails to get information about her underground church in the country's northeast. Then, they threw her in prison for four years. "They demanded to know who was helping me and where they were," says Jeong, an evangelist in her 50s now living in South Korea, who uses an alias to protect her family back home. Despite their efforts, the Northern officials could not stop her. After she fled two years ago, she secretly began sending Christmas gifts to her old church. "Christmas," Jeong says, "would otherwise be meaningless...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: How Christmas Is (Not) Celebrated in North Korea | 12/24/2009 | See Source »

...helped some 20,000 North Koreans defect to China. As a result, the regime routinely imprisons and executes Christian religious leaders who teach their faith without state approval, according to a U.S. State department report. Official figures put the number of practicing Christians at 13,000 in 2001, but South Korean church groups estimate about 100,000 Christians practice in secret churches across the nation now. "We always met for prayer at peoples' homes, in groups of two to keep it private," Jeong says. "When we met in bigger groups, we went far away to the mountains where...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: How Christmas Is (Not) Celebrated in North Korea | 12/24/2009 | See Source »

...Later, as Christianity gained popularity, worshippers held group prayers in public every Christmas. But after the Japanese government took control of Korea in 1910, the new administration began suppressing religious gatherings, and by the 1950s, - after the Korean War left the peninsula split into a communist north and capitalist south, - the northern government began to carry out executions of thousands of Christians for the years to come...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: How Christmas Is (Not) Celebrated in North Korea | 12/24/2009 | See Source »

...government took a more nuanced - if short-lived - approach to religion in the following decades. In 1988, South Korea expanded economic ties with its neighbor, bringing in more foreigners on business and exchange trips; the following year Pyongyang hosted the World Festival of Youth and Students, a massive socialist festival that attracted 22,000 people from 177 countries. With an influx of foreigners, the government saw a need to build four state-run churches in Pyongyang in the following years, though critics maintain they're facades to show the world that it supports freedom of religion. "[Foreign missionaries] are allowed...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: How Christmas Is (Not) Celebrated in North Korea | 12/24/2009 | See Source »

...regime practices a kind of pragmatic tolerance of Christianity, suggesting North Korea's intelligence agency chooses to ignore underground churches because of their political usefulness. "How can they not know the whereabouts of 100,000 Christians?" says Philo Kim, a professor of sociology at Seoul National University in South Korea, who has visited North Korea several times to study Christianity there. "The government takes advantage of them by dispatching spies into the churches. They can gather information about the churches in China and how they help defectors escape...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: How Christmas Is (Not) Celebrated in North Korea | 12/24/2009 | See Source »

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