Tag Archives: North Korea

News

If militant atheists could form a country, what would it look like?

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Consider this story about North Korea from the UK Telegraph on Facebook, and I think it’s well worth looking at, because we need to be thinking about how big government impacts our ability to do our jobs as Christians.

Excerpt:

Christian missionaries have set up an extraordinary network of front companies – including tour agencies, bakeries, factories, farms, schools and orphanages – in order to spread the Gospel inside North Korea.

For nearly two years, Kenneth Bae, a father of three and an American citizen, ran a successful travel company offering tours of North Korea.

But as the 44-year-old passed through the Wonjong border crossing in November 2012, he was suddenly arrested. Convicted of “hostile acts” towards North Korea, he is currently serving 15 years in a labour camp.

What exactly happened remains a mystery. Mr Bae had taken at least 15 other tour groups into North Korea without incident. However, it seems clear that his mission to spread the Christian gospel was at least one major factor that landed him in trouble.

Mr Bae is not alone in using his company, Nations Tour, to evangelise inside North Korea. While precise numbers are impossible to pin down, the network of well-financed front companies, missions operating as businesses, is extensive.

North Korea, the most hostile country in the world to organised religion, has a strong pull for a certain stripe of evangelical Christians, and the 288 sq mile “Special Economic Zone” outside the city of Rason, where Mr Bae was detained, is Ground Zero for these modern apostles.

[…]According to one American who once travelled with Mr Bae, but who asked to remain anonymous, their group was able to carry bibles with them into the zone. Possession of bibles by North Koreans can lead to imprisonment, torture and perhaps even death.

The source said a delicate dance had played out on their arrival, with their bibles being counted by the border guards on their way in and then again when they left to make sure none had been distributed.

At the final inspection, the guards even flipped through each copy to make sure no pages had been ripped out and left behind.

Before arriving at the border, the 15-member group was told by Mr Bae not to discuss politics or carry out any overt proselytising. The two or three pastors travelling with them were not to be addressed by their titles.

Once inside North Korea, they were accompanied by government minders at all times. On group hikes with these “tour guides”, the source said they sang Christian songs, but hummed key verses to avoid saying “God” out loud.

“That was our way of worshipping and praising in our hearts, even if we could not say it,” the source said. “Talking about God directly, that would be asking for a death sentence.”

North Korea has an official state religion of atheism. Is that a factor in their horrible record for human rights? Well, according to the The Black Book of Communism, published by Harvard University Press, over 100 million innocent people were killed in atheistic, communist regimes like North Korea in the last century.

I have been working on a theory about what militant atheists mean when they say that religion causes a lot of wars. My theory is that they are actually talking about themselves. They mean their religion. They are boasting that they are number one at killing innocent people. A person can justify killing very easily if you believe that no one is watching you and no one will hold you accountable when you die for what you’ve done.

Of course there are lots of atheists in the Judeo-Christian West who live more peacefully, because they are living in a background of objective morality and human rights provided by Western religions. But in countries like North Korea, with a state religion that cannot ground free will or objective morality or human rights or judgment after death, there are fewer restraints.

Even here, we have already seen over 50 million unborn children killed since abortion became legal. And I can guarantee you that it’s not authentic Christians who are having these abortions. As a group, atheists tend to be among the most radical in favor of abortion rights. The Secular Census of 2012 found that 97% of atheists vote for abortion.

The idea of the strong killing the weak for pleasure is the law of the jungle, and it’s not surprising to me that those who think that humans are just animals would act this way with vulnerable children. If you only have 80 years to be happy in an accidental universe, then anything goes. No one is there to hold you accountable. If the weak get in your way, kill them all. That’s atheist morality. You don’t have to go to North Korea to see it.

News

North Korea reactivates nuclear reactor that was closed in 2007 deal

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CNS News reports on a disturbing story.

Excerpt:

While the international community has been focused on the crises in Syria and Egypt, North Korea evidently has been quietly preparing to resume operations at a nuclear reactor which it agreed under an international deal eight years ago to shut down, before warning amid heightened tensions last April that it would restart.

Commercial satellite images captured in late August show columns of steam rising from a building alongside the five-megawatt plutonium-based reactor at Yongbyon, prompting experts at the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies to say it will likely be operational shortly.

“The white coloration and volume are consistent with steam being vented because the electrical generating system is about to come online, indicating that the reactor is in or nearing operation,” said analysts Nick Hansen and Jeffrey Lewis.

They said the reactor is capable of producing six kilograms of plutonium a year, which the North Korean regime can use “to slowly increase the size of its nuclear weapons stockpile.”

In a separate analysis, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) noted in addition to the reactor developments that the North Koreans has also recently expanded a building housing a centrifuge plant for uranium-enrichment.

Pyongyang has said this is to obtain low-enriched uranium to fuel a separate light-water reactor under construction at the complex, although one of many unknowns in the North Korean program is whether it has also produced weapons-grade uranium, and if so, how much.

The Yongbyon complex, some 60 miles north of Pyongyang, houses both the five-megawatt, graphite-moderated reactor and an associated reprocessing plant and nuclear fuel rod fabrication facility.

Under an agreement at China-hosted at “six-party” talks, first hammered together in Sept. 2005 and then formalized in Feb. 2007, North Korea pledged to shut the facilities in exchange for economic and diplomatic concessions. Among them, the Bush administration agreed to unfreeze $25 million in North Korean funds, frozen in its account at a Macao-based bank.

In July 2007 the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that the Yongbyon shutdown was complete, and in 2008 the main cooling tower at the site was demolished in a dramatic supposed symbol of Pyongyang’s commitment to the denuclearization deal.

But after that the six-party talks – involving the U.S., the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia – ran into more difficulties. In late 2008 they stalled amid disagreements over how to verify North Korean compliance with its commitments, and the talks have not reconvened since.

Pyongyang tested a nuclear device for a second time in 2009, and again early this year.

Last April, it announced plans to restart the Yongbyon reactor. It also vowed never to abandon its nuclear capability for political or economic benefits, and reiterated demands that the international community accept it as a nuclear weapons power.

Has our performance in Syria been a trigger for their decision?

Heritage Foundation scholar Bruce Klingner in an analysis Thursday said Pyongyang was likely encouraged by the Obama administration’s policy on Syria and its chemical weapons use – “a dizzying array of contradictory U.S. statements, crossed redlines, and reticence to fulfill declarations of intent.”

“To the degree that North Korea can penetrate this confusing political morass, the regime is probably heartened by signs of a declining American willingness to intervene overseas even when confronted by evidence of the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD),” he wrote.

“Pyongyang will conclude that President Obama’s bold rhetoric, including that directed against North Korea, was unlikely to be backed with significant military action,” said Klingner, a senior research fellow for Northeast Asia at Heritage’s Asian Studies Center.

“The regime will incorporate this perceived American passivity into its decision-making in future confrontations with Washington and Seoul.”

The Heritage Foundation is against a strike, so I think what they are saying is that you don’t make threats unless you intend to carry them out. If you say there’s a red line, then don’t follow up on that threat, you look weak. And when you look weak, bullies are emboldened to be aggressive. That’s the way the world is.

News

Intelligence reports show Islamic extremists dominate Syrian opposition

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Reuters reports on it with the headline “Kerry portrait of Syria rebels at odds with intelligence reports”.

Excerpt:

Secretary of State John Kerry’s public assertions that moderate Syrian opposition groups are growing in influence appear to be at odds with estimates by U.S. and European intelligence sources and nongovernmental experts, who say Islamic extremists remain by far the fiercest and best-organized rebel elements.

At congressional hearings this week, while making the case for President Barack Obama’s plan for limited military action in Syria, Kerry asserted that the armed opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “has increasingly become more defined by its moderation, more defined by the breadth of its membership, and more defined by its adherence to some, you know, democratic process and to an all-inclusive, minority-protecting constitution.

“And the opposition is getting stronger by the day,” Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday.

U.S. and allied intelligence sources and private experts on the Syrian conflict suggest that assessment is optimistic.

While the radical Islamists among the rebels may not be numerically superior to more moderate fighters, they say, Islamist groups like the al Qaeda-aligned Nusra Front are better organized, armed and trained.

Kerry’s remarks represented a change in tone by the Obama administration, which for more than two years has been wary of sending U.S. arms to the rebels, citing fears they could fall into radical Islamists’ hands.

As recently as late July, at a security conference in Aspen, Colorado, the deputy director of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, David Shedd, estimated that there were at least 1,200 different Syrian rebel groups and that Islamic extremists, notably the Nusra Front, were well-placed to expand their influence.

“Left unchecked, I’m very concerned that the most radical elements will take over larger segments” of the opposition groups, Shedd said. He added that the conflict could drag on anywhere “from many, many months to multiple years” and that a prolonged stalemate could leave open parts of Syria to potential control by radical fighters.

U.S. and allied intelligence sources said that such assessments have not changed.

As an aside, the mainstream media has not been reporting on these intelligence reports.

Excerpt:

A new survey of the coverage of the Syrian civil war and the U.S. response to it by the big three networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC, shows that 94 percent of their stories have not mentioned that some of the rebel forces include America’s enemy, al Qaeda.

The survey, reported by the Media Research Center’s Dan Gainor, finds that since August 21, 171 stories about the conflict have aired on the networks. Of those, only 11 stories mentioned the al Qaeda element of the war.

ABC, for instance, has aired 51 stories about the Syrian conflagration but only mentioned al Qaeda in 3 of those reports. NBC was worse: out of its 64 stories, only 3 mentioned the notorious terrorist group. NBC was a little better, mentioning al Qaeda 5 times in its 56 stories.

Al Qaeda is not yet ubiquitous among the rebel forces, but its presence is growing, something the networks should be warning their viewers about.

Now, I was initially in favor of a targeted strike aimed at the leadership of the Syrian regime, assuming two things were cleared up first. 1) We had to be sure that Assad was responsible for the use of the chemical weapons. Despite what the Obama administration says, we are still not sure who used the chemical weapons. 2) We had to be sure that there were moderate elements in the leadership of the Syrian opposition. Well, we now know that this is not the case. So, my position has changed, and now I am in favor of not launching a strike at the leaders of the Assad regime. (Note: this option was not what Obama was suggesting, anyway – his strike was not targeted at the leaders).

I do think that it is important to deter the use of chemical weapons. That is a valid concern, and a strike at leaders who use chemical weapons is a valid way of achieving that goal of saving civilians from future attacks. But we have to be sure that we don’t do more harm, and right now it doesn’t look like that will happen.