North Korea is the world's "most dangerous place to follow Jesus", where Christians are thrown in prison camps and executed for their faith, according to a global report released today.
Timothy Cho, who works as a spokesperson for Christian charity Open Doors UK, told the ABC he escaped North Korea at age 17.
Children in North Korea were subject to brainwashing in the state ideology to "believe, regard, speak and act as if Kim is god," Mr Cho said, referring to the autocratic Kim dynasty who have ruled the country since the mid-20th century.
"North Korea often says Christianity is an American religion, and they try to use Christianity to destroy North Korean society," he said.
One's Christian faith is thus considered treasonous and a "crime of all crimes", punishable by being sent to a gulag or execution, he said.
The World Watch List by Open Doors International — now in its 31st year — has again named the isolated North Asian dictatorship as the most oppressive country to be a Christian on earth.
Open Doors undertakes international Christian missionary work, including the distribution of bibles, as well as being a rights watchdog.
Its findings on the persecution of Christians in North Korea accord with the findings of other Christian and human rights organisations, Western governments and the United Nations.
A report on North Korea by the UN Secretary-General's office in 2022 found that: "The right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion … continues to be denied, with no alternative belief systems tolerated by the authorities."
The US Commission on International Religious Freedom said in its 2024 annual report that religious freedom in North Korea "remained among the worst in the world", with Protestant Christians particularly vulnerable to state persecution.
Call for greater humanitarian assistance
North Korea has faced severe food shortages in recent decades often worsened by natural disasters and that were further intensified by isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We can just get a bit numb to the fact that people are dying," Open Doors Australia CEO Adam Holland told the ABC.
He said Open Doors was calling upon the international community to review the civilian impact of economic sanctions on North Korea — and to use the UN Security Council's exemption mechanism to provide greater humanitarian assistance to the country.
"I understand that some of the concern is that the food might be used for military purposes, but there's monitoring mechanisms that exist."
Mr Holland said he had written to Foreign Minister Penny Wong and the Minister for International Development Pat Conroy asking them for a meeting on the issue.
"Australia's autonomous sanctions on North Korea are highly targeted and directed at North Korea's weapons of mass destruction and missile programs," a spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade told the ABC.
"They are carefully designed to limit impacts on humanitarian assistance and impose costs on the regime rather than civilian populations," they said.
"Neither Australia's autonomous sanctions or UN Security Council sanctions target humanitarian supplies or food in North Korea."
The World Watch List 2025 report tells the story of Joo Min, a defector who escaped North Korea into China and met Christian missionaries, before deciding to return to North Korea to run an underground church.
"If I am caught, I could end up in a labour camp paying a heavy price for being a Christian," it quotes her as saying.
Church groups often assist people to flee from North Korea into China and onto South-East Asian countries, where they generally seek refuge at a South Korean or other international embassies.
In Mr Cho's case, he sought resettlement in the UK and moved there in 2008.
He has since become a human rights activist, has run as a Conservative Party candidate and works with the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea.
Christians persecuted across Asia, Africa and Middle East
Most nations listed on the 2025 World Watch List have a mostly Muslim population, with North Korea followed in the top five by Somalia, Yemen, Libya and Sudan.
Many among the top 50 countries identified by the list are located in Africa and the Middle East.
Asian nations also featured prominently on the list as being hostile environments for Christians, including Hindu-majority India, Buddhist-majority Myanmar and communist one-party states China, Laos and Vietnam.
Indonesia and Malaysia did not feature in World Watch List's top 50 this year, owing to less violence against Christians than in previous years.
Yet ongoing civil conflict in Myanmar meant it rose four places to number 13, with researchers citing violence between the military junta and opposition forces putting Christians — estimated to be between 6 and 8 per cent of the population — at risk of persecution and violence.
Instability in Myanmar had meant that already marginalised groups, including Christians, had been further pushed to the margins, Mr Holland said.
The World Watch List said more than 100,000 Christians were in displacement camps in Myanmar's northernmost Kachin State alone, where they were trying to "avoid being killed or detained by regime forces or the Kachin rebels".
Mexico, meanwhile — which is 91 per cent Catholic — ranked number 31 on the World Watch List because of organised criminal violence against those affiliated with the church.
The report said rival cartels were targeting church leaders and Christian organisations, "particularly those attempting to broker peace or help victims of violence and intimidation".
