More Evil from North Korea

North Korea is known for being one of the most backward and horrible places to live. Misruled by megalomaniacs for over half a century, they routinely starve their own people to death so they can build a bigger army.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom has just put out its new report on religious persecution in North Korea (available here as a pdf). The New York Sun has a bried summary of the contents of the report if you're short on time. Here's a brief excerpt showing the brutality of the regime:

on a summer day in North Korea in 1997, a young woman was washing clothes in a tributary of the Tumen River when she dropped a small Bible she had hidden amid the laundry. Spotted by a fellow washerwoman, the girl was reported to North Korean authorities on the suspicion that she was engaging in an exercise of thought or religion condemned by the state. The girl, believed to be in her 20s, and her father, estimated to be around 60, were arrested by local national security police and imprisoned for three months.

One morning, they were taken to a public market area, where, after a brief show trial, the father and daughter were condemned as traitors to the North Korean nation and its communist dictator, Kim Jong Il. The father and daughter were then tied to stakes a few meters from where they had been "tried," and, before an assembly of schoolchildren, were riddled with bullets by seven policemen who fired three shots each into the pair.

Pray for the people of North Korea.