The next time you find yourself on the verge of complaining that the Church music is too loud or the preaching too long, think about your brothers and sisters in North Korea. As you are reading these words, North Korean Christians are experiencing emotional, mental and physical suffering far beyond anything that we Christians in the United States can even imagine.

Missionary Patricia Kim and I recently stood on the banks of the Tuman River where the borders of China, North Korea and Russia come together. As we faced each nation, we prayed for their freedom, for their human rights and for their spiritual needs.

We praised God for the religious liberties now enjoyed by so many Christians in Russia, and we thanked Him for the doors that are beginning to open, to some degree, in China. But when we turned toward North Korea, we both broke down in tears.

North Korean Christians, who have successfully escaped North Korea, report that those captured by Chinese border guards are detained until North Korean officials can transport them back to North Korea. They are then deported with wire passed through, rather than around their wrists, or secured to each other with wire passed through their noses.

Terrifying stories abound of North Korean saints living in hand-dug tunnels beneath the earth and entire underground Churches put to death after being tried and found guilty of being "Christians". Converts as young as eight years old are ordered, "Deny Christ, or you will die."

Families are confined in "Public Security Ministry Detention Houses" where they endure beatings, forced labor, and starvation. The fortunate ones are executed immediately. No wonder President Bush included North Korea in the "evil axis."

I wept for days after viewing a video of a young mother and her six-year-old daughter attempting an unsuccessful run for freedom. Her daughter could only look on while the mother cried and screamed for help as soldiers wrestled her to the ground.

I will never forget the sight of that mother’s pleading eyes, begging for someone, anyone, who saw this video, to tell the free world and the Church, about her faith and the plight of suffering Christians who are living in this most godless, isolated and oppressive regime on earth. Oh, the horrendous tortures and mass killings of the Body of Christ … Oh, the brutal and inhumane treatment of men, women, boys and girls, all in the name of "suppressing superstition" … Oh, the expression of fear on that little girl’s face.

Pray, Christians! Pray! "Remember the prisoners, as though in prison with them, and those who are ill-treated, since you yourselves also are in the body." (Heb. 13:3)

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