In a rare moment of curiosity, a recent World Council of
Churches (WCC) visitor at a North Korean Potemkin-style
government-run church in Pyongyang apparently asked why no
children were present. Perhaps this WCC official felt like the
Dick Van Dyke character in Chitty Chitty Bang
Bang who, upon arriving in sinister
Vulgaria, wonders where all the children were, not yet realizing
that Baron Bomburst, at the behest of the child-despising
Baroness, imprisons all of them, with help from the royal
Childcatcher.
In the spirit of Vulgaria, the WCC delegation was assured
that the children “are involved in a broad range of other
activities and some will at a later age come to church.”
Evidently the WCC forgot that communist North Korea prohibits any
religious education for children, though the Potemkin churches
would have been a little more persuasive with some child
props.
By most accounts, North Korea’s Stalinist paradise is the
worst place to be a Christian or any kind of religious believer.
So naturally the Geneva-based World Council of Churches (WCC)
recently visited North Korea and has joined with the Christian
Conference of Asia to demand the lifting of international
sanctions against the dictatorship’s nuclear weapons
program.
Seemingly, groups like the WCC only worry about nukes if
they belong to the U.S.
“An effective way of working towards peace and
reconciliation on the Korean peninsula needs a multifaceted
approach,” WCC chief Samuel Kobia told an ecumenical gathering
afterwards in Hong Kong. Kobia and the head of the Christian
Conference of Asia had just visited North Korea for the first
time and evidently had a smashing time, courtesy of Kim Jong Il’s
nasty regime. “The WCC in its established polices has always
rejected any sort of confrontational approach to settle conflicts
and disputes. We called on member churches to use every effort to
overcome divisions and conflicts.”
Of course, the WCC was not always so non-confrontational.
In the 1970s and 1980s it actively funded violent Marxist
liberation movements fighting colonial regimes in southern
Africa.
If Kobia had any thoughts on how North Korea’s monstrous
regime likes to incarcerate, torture, and kill its Christians,
the WCC did not report it. Evidently, Kobia was received warmly
by the North Korean tyranny, which predictably showed him the
handful of government-run puppet church congregations in
Pyongyang. From North Korea, Kobia went to Hong Kong, where he
and other Asian church leaders strategized on how to remove
international pressure against North Korea and advocate Korean
unification. Naturally, the Korea Christian Federation of North
Korea, which is the communist regime’s puppet front group
for international diplomacy, was a high profile
participant.
“After my visit to North Korea, from my engagement with the
church leadership and my observations, I am now very convinced
that time has now come to end the economic sanctions,” Kobia told
Ecumenical News International (ENI), fretting that sanctions are
a “collective penalty.” Kobia enthused that WCC churches will
persuade their governments to end sanctions, which should take
priority over Six Party Talks (involving the U.S., Japan, China,
Russia, South Korea and North Korea) on North Korea’s
nukes.
Insipidly, the head of the Asian Christian Conference
rejoiced that in North Korea the “Church still has the freedom to
carry out its mission, but of course, still has some
limitations.” He suggested the “challenge” was for Christians to
operate in a “different societal system.” This was perhaps his
polite way of saying that in North Korea, Christians who talk
about their faith get thrown in a prison camp.
During their North Korean junket, the WCC-led delegation
was honored to meet for over an hour with North Korean President
Kim Yong-Nam. He told the fawning church delegation, no doubt to
vigorously nodding heads, that the Six Party talks are unfair
since they involve “all nuclear powers or enjoy nuclear
protection by the United States,” except for poor little North
Korea. Evidently, Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Il did not have time
for the visiting churchmen. But Kim Yong-Nam was able to boast to
Kobia et al., again undoubtedly to nodding heads, that North
Korea has generously rebuilt churches that the U.S. had bombed
during the Korean War. Of course, he was referring to the several
show churches that North Korea has flamboyantly erected primarily
for the benefit of naive global visitors.
Movingly, the North Korean President also told the
churchmen that creating a nuclear free Korean peninsula was “one
of the last instructions from the Great Leader,” the late North
Korean “eternal leader” Kim Il-Sung, whose “eternal” leadership
of the national prison camp he created apparently continues from
his new, post-death location. In response, Kobia told President
Kim that the WCC thinks “those who have nuclear weapons should
get rid of them and those wanting them should no longer seek
them.” And he assured his hosts that the WCC will continue to
“work for peace.”
Kobia’s delegation naturally was charmed by the three
churches they visited in Pyongyang A WCC photo shows every pew
filled with happily singing women clad in beautiful silks.
According to a WCC report, one church was “thoroughly modern with
a full sound system, balcony and music text on a large screen in
front of the church, a video camera system, a high-lofted ceiling
and an area for a large choir. Bibles and songbooks line the
seating areas for the congregations. Within the church compound
is a recently constructed theological seminary where 12 students
are now enrolled to earn degrees in evangelism.” How wonderful!
It sounds just like a suburban megachurch in the U.S.
Fortunately for the North Koreans, groups like the WCC are
easy to impress. At the Hong Kong meeting, Kobia sang the praises
of Korean reunification. During the Cold War, he regretted, there
were “deliberate and systematic efforts to create enemy
images which demonized the other.” He also noted that previously
in South Korea, national security restrictions had prevented
WCC-supported activism for “aspirations for justice, peace and
reunification.” Kobia did not comment on freedom of movement in
North Korea. Maybe that would have been impolite.
During the Hong Kong gala, the head of the South Korean
Council of Churches, itself left-leaning, expressed misgivings
about Kobia’s insistence that international sanctions over North
Korea’s nukes should be lifted. He cautiously suggested the need
for “more advice.” But Kobia and the WCC probably
have all the “advice” they need, after visiting the show churches
and communist palaces of Pyongyang.
