The most persecuted church in the world
Christianity in North Korea and the persecuted church today
Before the Korean War divided the peninsula, Pyongyang was known as the Jerusalem of the East — a city with more churches per capita than anywhere else in Asia, a center of Christian revival, home to a church that had been growing for fifty years.
North Korea today has, according to its official statistics, zero Christians. According to defectors and underground intelligence: between two hundred thousand and four hundred thousand believers, practicing in complete secret, at the cost of prison camp or death if discovered.
They have no Bibles. They have memorized scripture passed down through families. They have no church buildings. They meet in groups of three or four — small enough to avoid detection. They have no ordained clergy. They baptize each other with whatever water is available.
They have been doing this for seventy years.
North Korea is the most extreme example of what the twentieth century has produced: a global church under active persecution that is not diminishing but growing — in China, in Iran, in Eritrea, in Nigeria, in India, in country after country where following Jesus carries a cost that the Western church has not been asked to pay.
The Open Doors World Watch List documents the fifty countries where Christians face the most severe persecution. In 2023, over three hundred and sixty million Christians live in places where they face high levels of persecution or discrimination.
The church of the martyrs is not the early church. It is the current church.
“They can have our buildings. They cannot have our faith. They can have our bodies. They cannot have our Lord.”
— North Korean Christian, attributed, c. 21st century
“Blessed are you when people reproach you, persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
The church of the martyrs is not the early church. It is the current church — meeting in secret in North Korea, in house churches in Iran, in villages in northern Nigeria, in places where following Jesus is the most dangerous decision a person can make.
The comfortable Western Christian reads the martyrs of the early church as history. They are also reading the news.
Three hundred and sixty million Christians under active persecution. Memorizing scripture because there are no Bibles. Meeting in groups of three because larger groups are too dangerous.
They are the church. You are the church. The communion of saints is not a theological abstraction — it is a living community that includes people who will be arrested this week for what you do freely.
Pray for them. By name if you can find them. By category if you cannot. They are your brothers and sisters and they are paying a price you are not currently paying.