Remarks by Rev. Lim Hyeon-soo from International Religious Freedom Summit 2021: One Korea Network’s virtual event “Korean Religious Freedom and Human Rights: The Path to Reconciliation, Justice, Prosperity and Unification”
By Rev. Lim Hyeon-soo
Even if we talk for ten hours, the reality of North Korea cannot be explained.
The conclusion I have come to after visiting North Korea 150 times over the past 20 years is not that it is socialist, communist, or a Kim Il-sung dynasty dictatorship, but that North Korea is a horrible pseudo-religious political group.
40% of the national budget is spent on idolizing Kim Il-sung.
There are tens of thousands of statues of Kim Il-sung, thousands of towers of eternal life, the Kumsusan Memorial Palace, and tens of thousands of revolutionary historical halls. Tens of millions of pictures of Kim Il-sung and his son are hung from door to door.
In North Korea, only the Kim Il-sung religion is allowed. There are two official churches, which are operated under the guidance of the Workers’ Party of Korea and are only used as a means of making money (foreign currency).
I sacrificed 18 years to feed the starving people, but they found one of my sermons that said a statute of Kim Il-sung should be brought down and sentenced me to death. They sentenced me to life in a labor prison and I spent two years, seven months, and nine days there.
They forced me to do 8 hours of hard labor every day there. My palms were covered in blood, my toes were blackened with frostbite, and in two months I lost 50 pounds (23 kilograms).
My intestines were damaged, and I had nonstop diarrhea for three months and stomach pain that continued for a month. I was taken to a hospital for full body anesthesia and surgery that lasted for more than eight hours.
Despite this situation, they forced me to do hard labor for 8 hours a day when I came back to prison.
Then, after 949 days, I was released by God’s grace.
People are blatantly forced to believe that Kim Il-sung is the God of North Korea. Thus, there is no such thing as freedom of religion.
Underground Christians suffer like martyrs, or they are taken to political prison camps where they are abused worse than animals.
The sin of defaming the highest honor in North Korea constitutes an unforgivable crime subject to death penalty.
There are 8 million people who died in prison and of hunger during the war and the North Korean famine in 1990s, or the Arduous March, caused by Kim Il-sung. They ended up being murdered.
North Korea has become a vicious religious group that should not exist on earth. Human rights are nonexistent.
Even now, the people are moaning in a prison without bars under hunger, wealth, oppression and surveillance.
Now, the whole world must join forces to free the North Korean people from evil. Don’t turn a blind eye as they are dragged to death.
I ask the international community to do its best to liberate the people of North Korea with all the capabilities they have available to them.
Rev. Hyeon-soo Lim is the senior pastor of the Light Korean Presbyterian Church in Mississauga, Canada, and the chairman of the Total Mission Training Center. He was involved in providing tens of millions of dollars in aid to the people of North Korea and visited the country more than 150 times since 1997. Pastor Lim, who went to North Korea on January 27, 2015, was arrested there. He was sentenced to life with hard labor for crimes against the North Korean regime in December 2015. Lim served 31 months in North Korea, the longest term for a foreign national, before North Korea released him on August 9, 2017. Shortly before his release, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sent a 14-member delegation to Pyongyang to discuss the case. Lim was born in South Korea in 1955 and moved to Canada in 1986. He studied theology at Knox College.
