Article September 13, 2004 Issue

A MINISTER'S VIEW OF CHRISTIANITY IN NORTH KOREA

Toshi Morikawa with contributions from Bartholomew K. Takeuchi

Toshi Morikawa, the translation coordinator of the Japanese edition of The Herald of Christian Science, recently spoke with The Reverend Bartholomew K. Takeuchi, a priest of the Angelican-Episcopal Church in Japan. When he was the moderator of the National Christian Council of Japan, Reverend Takeuchi was deeply involved in Japanese humanitarian work in Korea. Toshi asked him to tell about his experiences with North Korean churches.

Under Japanese colonial rule, the larger part of Korean Christians lived in the North, but during the Korean War, most of them moved south. About 60 percent of the Christians in South Korea came from the North. Overall, Christians make up about 25 percent of the South Korean population. In the North, Christians or churches have become practically nonexistent since the war.

But after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the fall of the Soviet Union, the North had no choice but to improve ties with the West. So the North suddenly built a Protestant church and a Catholic church in Pyongyang. An Orthodox church is scheduled to open in 2005. And in 1992, they invited the Japan Christian Council, of which I am chairman, to attend a service at the Protestant church. I have never seen a church so perfectly filled. It had a strange, artificial look.

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