NORTH KOREA USCIRF–RECOMMENDED FOR COUNTRIES OF PARTICULAR CONCERN (CPC) KEY FINDINGS I n 2020, religious freedom conditions in North Korea—officially known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)— remained among the worst in the world. North Korea’s ruling ideology, known as Juche, deifies North Korean leaders and justifies their rule. It forbids competing ideologies—including religious ones—and treats religion as an existential threat. Rooted in Juche, the Ten Principles for Establishing a Korean Workers’ Party Transcendental Guidance System require unconditional loyalty and obedience to the North Korean leader. They also effectively override the rights and freedoms enshrined in international and North Korean law, including the North Korean constitution, which nominally grants freedom of religion. Internal Party legal commentaries, published in 2018, which constitute authoritative guidance for interpreting North Korean constitutional and criminal law within the framework of the Ten Principles and Juche, contain explicit antireligion language. The North Korean government attempts to provide an illusion of religious freedom to the outside world through state-backed religious organizations and sites such as the Korean Christian Federation, Korean Buddhist Federation, Changchung Cathedral, and Kwangbop Temple. In practice, authorities target and persecute various religious groups and adherents, including Protestants, Buddhists, adherents of shamanism or traditional Korean folk religion, Chondoists, and others. The songbun system classifies citizens based on their perceived loyalty to the state; religious practitioners belong to the “hostile” class and are considered enemies of the state, deserving “discrimination, punishment, isolation, and even execution.” According to the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Korean Future Initiative’s (KFI) 2020 report on religious freedom violations in North Korea, authorities persecuted religious believers on a variety of charges, including religious practice, religious activities in China, possessing religious items such as Bibles, contact with religious persons, attending religious services, and sharing religious beliefs. Religious adherents suffered a range of official violations and mistreatments, including arbitrary surveillance, interrogation, arrest, detention, and imprisonment; punishment of family members; torture; sexual violence; forced labor; and execution. The report also provides details on North Korean government agencies that have been directly involved in carrying out egregious persecution of religious believers, including the Ministry of State Security (MSS), which operates internment camps, holding centers, political prison camps, and pretrial detention centers; the Ministry of People’s Security (MPS), which operates labor camps, holding centers, pretrial detention centers, long-term reeducation camps, and precinct offices; and the Border Security Command, which plays “a significant role in religious freedom violations alongside the MSS and MPS.” Consistent with past USCIRF reporting, KFI findings indicate that Protestant Christians are especially vulnerable to persecution, followed by adherents of shamanism. The NGO Open Doors has long ranked North Korea as the country where Christians face the “most extreme” persecution, most recently in January 2021. Open Doors estimates that of around 400,000 Christians in North Korea, approximately 50,000 to 70,000 are currently imprisoned. Most North Korean Christians are unable to meet for collective worship due to severe repression, and they suffer from harsh abuses such as long-term imprisonment in various prisons or prison-like facilities, severe beatings that result in broken bones and ruptured skin, strangulation, starvation, sexual violence, forced abortion, and execution. The MSS is believed to be principally responsible for persecution against Christians. The practice of shamanism is pervasive in North Korean society, but its practitioners face severe persecution. As North Korean authorities define shamanism as a “crime of superstition,” practitioners have been subjected to detention, arrest, physical assault, and execution. The MPS is believed to be primarily responsible for abuses against adherents of shamanism. Information on the condition of adherents of other major religious traditions—such as Buddhism, Catholicism, and Chondoism—in North Korea remains very limited. RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE U.S. GOVERNMENT • Redesignate North Korea as a “country of particular concern,” or CPC, for engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations, as defined by the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA); • Urge the North Korean government to grant international human rights monitors unfettered access to document human rights conditions, including religious freedom, inside the country; and • Fill and maintain the position of Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights Issues as a fulltime, independent position at the U.S. Department of State, and ensure religious freedom is a priority for that office; • Integrate security and human rights as complementary objectives in U.S. policy toward North Korea, including considering the lifting of certain sanctions in return for concrete progress in religious freedom and related human rights. KEY USCIRF RESOURCES & ACTIVITIES • Policy Update: Can Human Rights Advocacy Resolve the North Korea Nuclear Impasse? • Op-Ed: There Shall Be No God But Kim Jong Un (in The National Interest) 34 U S C I R F | A N N U A L R E P O R T 2 0 2 1 The U.S. Congress should: • Work with the administration to clarify the conditions under which Congress would approve the partial or complete lifting of certain sanctions under the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act of 2016 in return for significant progress on denuclearization and commitments to improve religious freedom conditions.