02/08/2012 North Korea (Korea Herald) - The U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and Article 6 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court define genocide as five specific actions committed with “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
What is indisputable is that North Korea, officially the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, has employed each of the five acts characterized as genocidal through (a) executions and state-sanctioned murders, (b) the systematic use of torture, (c) state-induced mass starvation in political prison camps and elsewhere, (d) forcible abortions and infanticide and (e) the forcible transfer and enslavement of children.
The argument that North Korea has directed these attacks against the specific human groups protected under the Genocide Convention and Article 6 of the Rome Statute is also very strong.
In 2007, Christian Solidarity Worldwide published a report based on seven years of research and written by international lawyers which concluded there are indicators of genocide taking place against religious groups in North Korea, specifically against Christians. Christian watchdogs such as Open Doors and Release International rate North Korea as the world’s most egregious violator of religious rights. But North Korea’s policy towards its indigenous religious population extends far beyond “persecution” ― religious believers and their families to three generations, including non-religious relatives, children and babies still in the womb ― are being exterminated.
Before the installation of the Kim Il-sung regime by the Soviets in 1945, the North was considered to be the center of Christianity in East Asia; 25-30 percent of Pyongyang’s population was Christian. Today all traces of this once-flourishing religious community and culture have been obliterated. Recognizing the inherent threat posed by faith to totalitarian rule and the Kim cult of personality, the DPRK regime has since its inception committed genocide against religious believers and their families.
There are many indications of the specific intent to destroy religious groups in North Korea. Former North Korean police and security agents who were tasked specifically to identify and “eliminate” Christian groups have testified that the DPRK regime considers religion, and particularly Christianity, to be the primary threat to national security. Accordingly, the harshest punishment is meted out to repatriated North Korean refugees who have had contact with missionaries and churches in China. Refugees after being forcibly returned are brutally tortured and interrogated specifically to discern whether or not they had any contact with religious groups. Those that confess to or are suspected of having met with missionaries in China or converting to Christianity are either killed or banished to concentration camps for life along with their entire families, including children, to three generations. Open Doors estimates between 50,000-70,000 Christians are imprisoned in North Korea’s concentration camps today.
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