INTRODUCTION This report demonstrates that the North Korean government poses an acute challenge to its citizens’ enjoyment of their right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, or belief. Violations of this right in North Korea are ongoing, egregious, and systematic, and they are perpetrated and overseen by the active mobilization of organs of the North Korean government. For this reason, we find that the state is the source, the rationale, and the tool for the religious freedom violations documented in this report. Our investigators undertook in-person interviews with survivors, witnesses, and perpetrators of religious freedom violations in 2020 and 2021. The majority of interviewees had escaped North Korea in 2019. We identified 68 cases of the state prosecuting individuals for their religion or belief or for their association with religious persons. Shamanic adherents accounted for 43 cases, 24 cases were related to Christianity, and one case was related to Cheondogyo.1 Victims suffered distinct human rights violations, including arbitrary arrest and detention; torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment; and the denial of life. All names and personal identifying details have been changed in this report to safeguard individuals’ privacy. This report first assesses the organizational structure of religious freedom violations and the associated methods of enforcing compliance. The report then assesses specific forms of violations widely experienced by religious and belief adherents, namely arbitrary arrest and detention, and the 1 absence of due process and fair trial rights; torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; and the denial of religious freedom. We find that the denial of religious freedom is absolute. Our findings establish that the persecution of individuals exercising their right to religious freedom in North Korea goes well beyond a government neglecting its duty to respect, protect, and fulfill the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, or belief. It also extends beyond a government persecuting one or more social groups for their religion or belief. Rather, the situation that exists is one where the state enforces the absolute denial of religious belief through the active mobilization of organs of the government. This reality offers opportunities for the international community to identify those persons and organizations responsible for documented religious freedom violations and to hold those violators accountable and modify their behavior. Cheondogyo, or Cheondoism, is a pantheistic religion native to the Korean peninsula. It was founded in the mid-19th century by the leaders of the Donghak religious movement. Cheondogyo combines religious elements of Korean shamanism, Buddhism, Daoism, and Christianity to form its egalitarian religious doctrine. For more information on Cheondogyo, refer to Carl Young, Eastern Learning and the Heavenly Way: The Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo Movements and the Twilight of Korean Independence (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2014). For further information on the role of Cheondogyo in North Korea and the persecution of its adherents, refer to Korea Future. Persecuting Faith: Documenting religious freedom violations in North Korea (Volume 1). Accessed July 22, 2021. https://www.koreafuture.org/nkrfd Organized Persecution: Documenting Religious Freedom Violations in North Korea 5