Government sources say that currently there are about 13.7 million practicing Buddhists in the DPRK. Buddhism is practiced under the auspices of the official Korean Buddhist Federation. There are some 300 Buddhist temples in the country (e.g. Pohyonsa), but they are viewed as cultural relics from Korea's past rather than places of active worship. Officially, there is a three-year college for training Buddhist clergy. Whether or not these institutes teach traditional Buddhist values has not been verified, however. Religious freedom observers assume the places are used to instruct students to deploy Buddhist teaching merely as a vehicle for the juche ideology.
A limited revival of Buddhism is apparently taking place. This includes the establishment of an academy for Buddhist studies and the publication of a twenty-five-volume translation of the Korean Tripitaka, or Buddhist scriptures, which had been carved on 80,000 wooden blocks and kept at the temple at Myohyang-san in central North Korea. A few Buddhist temples conduct religious services; 62% of North Korea is buddhist.
[edit] Chondogyo
Chondogyo ("Heavenly Way") religion grew out of the Tonghak movement during the 19th century. It stresses the divine nature of all people and contains elements found in Buddhism, shamanism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Catholicism. It is the only religion in North Korea which has a corresponding party representing it: the Chondoist Chongu Party.[edit] Shamanism
Main article: Korean shamanism
Shamanism is the oldest religion in Korea still around. Since the arrival of Buddhism and Taoism in Korea, shamanism has been influenced by both.[edit] Christianity
The first Christian missionary (a Catholic) arrived in Korea in 1785. Because the spread of Christianity was prohibited by the government, the number of Roman Catholics did not rise beyond 23,000 by 1863. Korean Christians were persecuted by the government until the country launched its Open Door Policy with Western countries in 1881. By that time, Protestant missionaries began entering Korea during the 1880s. They established schools, universities, hospitals, orphanages, and played a significant role in the modernization of the country. Before 1948 P'yongyang was an important Christian center, one-sixth of its population of about 300,000 residents were Christians.In the first half of the 20th century, Pyongyang was the centre of Christianity on the Korean peninsula. A spiritual revival took place in 1907 (following the 1903 Wonsan Revival), and by 1945, 13% of the population was Christian. Because of these figures, the city used to be called the Jerusalem of the East. Japanese occupation suppressed Christian activity, but did not wipe it out. The effect of the 1948 communist revolution was more drastic.
Between 1945, when Soviet forces first occupied the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and the end of the Korean War in 1953, many Christians, considered "bad elements" by North Korean authorities, fled to South Korea to escape the socialist regime's antireligious policies. By the late 1980s, it became apparent that North Korea was beginning to use the small number of Christians remaining in the country to establish contacts with Christians in South Korea and the West. Such contacts are considered useful for promoting the regime's political aims, including reunifying the peninsula. In 1988, for the first time since the Korean war, Christian communities were allowed to hold worship services in the open in churches. In this year three new churches, the Protestant Pongsu and Chilgol Churches and the Roman Catholic Changchung Cathedral, were opened in Pyongyang.
Other signs of the regime's changing attitude toward Christianity include holding the International Seminar of Christians of the North and South for the Peace and Reunification of Korea in Switzerland on November 1988, allowing papal representatives to attend the opening of the Changchung Cathedral in that same year, and sending two North Korean novice priests to study in Rome. A Protestant seminary in Pyongyang taught future leaders of the DPRK.[4] A new association of Roman Catholics was established in June 1988. A North Korean Protestant pastor reported at a 1989 meeting of the National Council of Churches in Washington, D.C., that his country has 10,000 Protestants and 1,000 Catholics who worship in 500 home churches. In March–April 1992, American evangelist Billy Graham visited North Korea to preach and to speak at Kim Il Sung University.[citation needed]
The North Korean government considers Christianity (especially Protestantism) to be closely connected with the Western world and heavily suppresses it. The facts and figures concerning Christianity published by the DPRK's government,[2] like those concerning Buddhism [3], are disputed by almost all foreign observers. Although independent verification is impossible, it is assumed[who?] that there are a large amount of underground Christian groups. Many defectors from North Korea have attested that any form of adherence to the Christian faith, even the mere possessing of a Bible, can be considered a reason for arrest and deportation to a DPRK prison camp.
In Pyongyang there are four church buildings. One of them (the Changchung "Cathedral") is officially said to be Catholic although it has no functioning priest, and the other two are Protestant. Two of these churches were inaugurated in 1988, in the presence of South Korean church officials. A Russian Orthodox church was consecrated in August 2006 (see [4]).[5] Religious freedom advocates say the buildings were constructed for propaganda purposes only. Foreigners, always guarded by state minders, can attend religious services. Eye-witnesses report that the sermons mix political and religious messages glorifying the DPRK, and that some of the pastors seem to have had no genuine religious training [5]. Christianity in North Korea is officially represented by the Korean Christian Federation, a state-controlled body responsible for contacts with churches and governments abroad.
