WHAT NORTH KOREA TEACHES HER CHILDREN ABOUT CHRISTIANITY

“Man makes religion. Religion does not make man. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people”, said Karl Marx in 1844, whose socialist writings eventually inspired Communist movements all around the world.

This quote is still a cornerstone of North Korea’s ideology and a crucial reason why North Korean children are indoctrinated about Christianity from the day they are born. When I grew up in North Korea, I also believed that Christianity was evil and that the cross was a symbol of the devil.

All North Korean children learn about Christianity is that it’s an evil, American religion. Even in nursery, we had to bow for the pictures of the leaders, Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il. Nowadays children learn about and bow for Kim Jong-Un, too.

One thing children are taught is that Kim Il-Sung, because of his ‘majestic powers’, was able to catch a double rainbow with one hand. And, according to North Korean legend, his son Kim Jong-Il was born on the mythical mountain and ‘birth place of Korea’, Mount Paekdu. (Actually, his birthplace was in Vyatskoye, in Russia, and his Russian name was Yula Kim.)

Everything in North Korea revolves around the Kim family. At nursery, the teachers prayed to the leaders at lunch time. We had to give thanks to them for our ‘daily bread’. Now I realise that they stole this prayer from the ‘Lord’s Prayer’.

CHILDREN DON'T LEARN HOW TO LOVE THEIR NEIGHBOURS

Children are still being brainwashed so they will honour the leaders. There’s a (Santa Claus inspired?) story of Kim Il-Sung bringing gifts if you follow him.

The North Korean state wants you to only love the Kim family and hate the ‘American imperialists’ and ‘South Korean puppets’. What happens is that children don’t learn how to love their neighbours, something the Bible commands us to do.

When you don’t love, hate grows in your heart. Where there’s hate, there’s distrust. It’s an important reason why so few people in North Korea are able to truly trust others. North Koreans look at each other, always trying to guess the other person’s intentions or next move.

To increase the hate for North Korea’s enemies – which are the Americans (and all Americans are Christians in their view) – North Korea has produced films, musicals, paintings and cartoons to portray Americans / Christians in a bad light. They ‘show’ how the enemy has exploited and killed North Koreans.

Take this story from a North Korean textbook.

"A boy lived with his mother at a village in Korea. One day he was carrying the firewood from the mountain. He was passing by the missionary man’s apple orchard. All of a sudden, a strong wind blew to the orchard and apples dropped on the floor. He picked up one apple and the missionary man saw it. He yelled at the boy and called him a robber. The punishment was that the man also tied the young boy up and wrote with a chemical acid on his forehead. The acid spelt the word ‘Robber’. The boy died because of the poison."

'SO MANY LIES'

This story always scared me when I was younger. The purpose of this children’s cartoon was to instill hatred of foreign missionaries in them. It stressed the state’s message: “Don’t trust the imperialists, but think that these enemies always aim to conquer our socialist world.” The cross became an evil image to North Korean children from these untruthful cartoons.

North Korea has made hundreds of these propaganda films and cartoons for education. Another example film was ‘Choi Hak-sin’s family.’ Most North Korean people both inside and outside remember this shocking story of a family who trusted Christian pastors during the Korean War. But finally the daughters of the family were raped by the pastors and the enemy soldiers. The whole family’s life was ruined.

Children in North Korea are being brought up with so many lies. There are between 30,000 – 50,000 monuments in North Korea to honour the Kim family. Some big, some small, but all are important. And the children think it’s their duty and honour to keep these monuments clean.

But the more total the lie, the more total the rejection of the liar when the lie is exposed. The truth can’t be buried forever. North Korea has so long tried to conceal it. I firmly believe North Korea will change.

In fact, it is already changing. Children are not so gullible as they used to be. Perhaps yesterday’s North Korean children were simply unaware of the different ways of life or forms of democratic government in the world. Today’s children are able to find out through escapees’ disseminated information, smuggled items like USB drives and DVD players, and foreign radio broadcasts in the Korean language.