In the privacy of North Korean society

By: Geneviève Delrue

Publicity

World Religions - Sunday June 14, 2020 - 11:10 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. (Paris time)

North Korea on a daily basis told through Mijin's testimony. A model citizen of the communist regime to whom everything seemed to succeed thanks to her family, her networks, and an iron will, Mijin had to flee with her daughter to escape from a labor camp. Arrived in South Korea in 2012 after having passed through China, she discovered the Christian faith and converted to Catholicism which she has practiced ever since, with great fervor. Life in the country of the Kim dynasty: social organization in three main classes, family piety inherited from Confucianism, arranged marriages, widespread corruption, surveillance, denunciation, but also the rise of women within a society that opens up to the market economy, and finally the place of shamanism for the great moments of existence when religions have been eradicated: it is this rare story that Dorian Malovic and Juliette Morillot  gathered from Mijin (1) journalist in Seoul. "Mijin: Confessions of a North Korean Catholic" ( Bayard )

Dorian Malovic is head of the Asia department at La Croix.
Juliette Morillot, our guest, is a specialist on the Korean peninsula where she has been going since the 1980s.
She has written two other books with Dorian Malovic: " The world according to Kim Jong –Un  " ( Robert Laffont ) and "  North Korea in 100 questions  "( Tallandier )

On the occasion of this recording, we are broadcasting extracts from an interview with  Thimothy Cho , a young North Korean who was able to flee in 2004 with the help of Protestant missionaries. He converted to Christianity during a stay in prison after the failure of his second attempt to flee to South Korea. He testified, during the presentation to the press at the beginning of 2020, in Paris of the annual world index of persecution of Christians of the Protestant NGO  "Doors Open" . Index which, once again, placed in 2019 North Korea at the top of the ranking of the countries where Christians are the most heavily persecuted. 

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• Religion
• North Korea

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