New evidence has shed more light on the murder of a Korean-Chinese pastor who helped North Korean refugees as one of his deacons was sentenced to 15 years hard labour.
Pastor Han Choong Yeol, well-known for helping North Korean defectors in his church in the border town of Chiangbai, was found dead on 30th April, 2016, with suspected knife and axe wounds.
Chinese police recently told his family that a surveillance video showed three men and a woman crossing the border before and after the murder. The four are suspected to be North Korean agents, reported Associated Press. The police said the North Korean government “did not respond to requests to extradite the suspects”, according to Ps Han’s sister.
Instead the regime arrested one of Ps Han’s church deacons, Zhang Wenshi, and sent him to a labour camp for 15 years “for conspiring with Han to evangelise North Koreans, smuggle them out of the country and subvert the North Korean regime”, AsiaNews reported.
Ps Han did not facilitate defections of North Koreans to South Korea, which is banned by China, Eric Foley of Voice of the Martyrs Korea, a Christian non-profit group that supported Ps Han’s work, told AP. He said he believed Chinese authorities allowed Ps Han’s proselytising because the “social service” he offered helped to prevent crime, unemployment and homelessness among the North Koreans in the area.
World Watch Monitor reported in February how 32 South Korean missionaries were expelled from China’s border region with North Korea. And in March two more were arrested by Chinese police for giving protection to North Korean defectors in China.
Some find other, creative ways of spreading the Christian message. The UK’s Guardian newspaper posted a video last month, showing how Christians filled bottles with rice and religious messages and sent them off across the ocean, from Gwanghwa Island to the shores of North Korea.
Meanwhile, North Korea remains a place where imprisonment, torture, and death are the potential risks – not only to oneself, but to one’s family – of deciding to be a Christian. The country heads the 2018 Open Doors World Watch List of the 50 countries in which it is most difficult to live as a Christian.
