NK Investigative Report 2001

North Korea Investigative Report

Part 1 - What is North Korea? (cont)

Purpose of North Korea Investigative Report

North Korea is a country shrouded in mystery. Foreign access to the country is heavily restricted and official information is often grossly inaccurate. In order to hear first-hand accounts of life in North Korea, our team traveled to northeast China to interview North Korean refugees who are fleeing into China by the thousands. Our goal is to compile their stories and provide insightful information that will help equip and mobilize Christians for North Korea missions.

The Worst of the Worst

Recently a Newsweek article highlighted North Korea as the worst country in the world. Christopher Hitchens writes, "On the one hand, the country is marked by rigid and fanatical militarization, complete censorship and total party control. On the other, it continues to be plagued by galloping underdevelopment, scarcity and social implosion. No food and no culture. No future and no past. Just an unbearable present, both predictable and unstable. It can't get any worse than this, except that it will."

Though we agree with the Newsweek writer that North Korea is the worst of the worst, we believe that things will get better. There will be a day when God brings healing to the people of North Korea.

About North Korea

North Korea is the world's last unreformed Stalinist state, ruled by the communist party, the Korean Workers' Party (KWP). Kim Il Sung was the leader of North Korea until his death in 1994. After a hiatus of three years, his son, Kim Jong Il, was proclaimed KWP general secretary in 1997, and in 1998 reconfirmed as chairman of the National Defence Commission (NDC) - now the highest state position.

Brief History

Japan's surrender in August 1945 marked the end of World War II and its occupation of Korea. The U.S. proposed a "temporary" division of the peninsula at the 38th parallel to the Soviet Union, for the limited purpose of accepting Japan's surrender. That division hardened into two separate states, which were declared in 1948: the Republic of Korea in the south and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north.

The Korean War (1950-1953) devastated the peninsula, especially in the North, where US saturation bombing wiped out cities, industries and dams. The armistice left the two Koreas separated by a demilitarized zone (DMZ) near the 38th parallel, which remains today.

Rapid industrialization in the early 1970s put North Korea ahead of the South economically, . However in the 1980s, South Korea's economy took off, greatly surpassing that of the North. Since the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s, the North Korean economy has come to a virtual standstill.

Source: The Economist Intelligence Unit, Country Profile 2000, North Korea

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picture from the NK embassy in Beijing