FOR several decades, charities monitoring the persecution of Christians have listed North Korea as the most hostile place on earth for the faithful. The Hong Kong-based BBC correspondent Danny Vincent has been meeting refugees from the hermit state for more than a decade now. He wove their testimonies into a Heart and Soul documentary, Escaping North Korea (BBC World Service, Friday).
The self-styled “Democratic People’s Republic” is clearly a very strange place, as well as a harsh one: the Korean word for “great” is no longer permitted in normal conversation, because it must be used only in connection with the Communist dictatorship’s founding leader, Kim Il-sung. Every interviewee said that devotion to the Kim family in Pyönyang’s state ideology was like a religious faith in a god.
Although there are Christians there, nobody is sure how many. It is evident that they suffer terrible persecution. Some, such as the elderly Mrs Park, who was interviewed by Vincent, and whose dramatic escape story involved days of trekking through windswept mountains, had become Christians since fleeing their homeland. Many in South Korea worry that their words could cause problems for their loved ones still in the North; so they often form tightly knit groups in southern churches.
Mrs Kwon saw public executions and endured famine as a schoolchild. She left North Korea without telling anyone. Thirteen years later, her mother also defected to the South. She revealed that the family had endured terrible harassment from the secret police on account of her flight, and that one of the women who had guided her across the border had been executed publicly.
It is telling that many became Christians in underground churches in China before making it to safety in the South. Others were less positive about these Chinese Christian rescue camps. Mr Jun said that he had been pressured to become a Christian for months before his Chinese rescuers allowed him to leave for South Korea.
At a time when the news is so grim that the horrors of North Korea can rarely compete for a headline, people can hardly be blamed for wanting to “zone out from reality”. That’s what 16-year-old Dylan told Sunday (Radio 4) that bell-ringing helped him do after being in the winning Yorkshire Tykes team at The Ringing World’s National Youth Contest in St Martin-in-the-Bull-Ring, Birmingham.
While he appreciated the atmosphere of friendly co-operation in his tower, mostly he rang because he loved the sound of bells.
His teammate, 17-year-old Harry, said that social media had helped to fuel a recent rejuvenation of bell-ringing, especially at the time of the Coronation. But the reality was that in their own local towers, the other ringers were mostly much older; so the opportunity to ring regularly at regional level with other teenagers was particularly welcome.
