Where the church stands in North Korea
Before 1945 Pyongyang was the centre of Korean Christianity — so full of churches and revival history that it was nicknamed the Jerusalem of the East. The 1907 Pyongyang revival shaped the entire Korean church.
Today North Korea ranks among the most repressive nations on earth for Christians. Possessing a Bible can mean the labour camps, for a whole family across three generations. And still, estimates suggest a few hundred thousand believers survive underground, some in families where faith has been passed down silently since before the division.
Signs of hope
An underground church that has survived three generations of the harshest repression on earth.
The honest difficulty
Faith is treated as a political crime; discovery can mean the labour camps for an entire extended family.
What "Frontier" means
The least-reached category: fewer than 1 in 1,000 follow Jesus and there is no indigenous Gospel movement large enough to grow on its own. Most people here will never meet a Christian.
In North Korea the majority religious context is State ideology (Juche); religion effectively prohibited. The largest population still considered without meaningful Gospel access is the Korean (~26 million).
How to pray for North Korea
Prayer is not a substitute for going; it is how going begins. Take one of these for a week rather than all of them for a day.
- Pray for North Korean believers whose faith has been secret for three generations.
- Ask God to sustain Christians in the labour camps.
- Pray for North Korean refugees in China, often reached by Korean-Chinese churches.
- Pray that Pyongyang would again be a city known for prayer.
Questions people ask about North Korea
Is North Korea an unreached nation?
North Korea is classified as frontier. The least-reached category: fewer than 1 in 1,000 follow Jesus and there is no indigenous Gospel movement large enough to grow on its own. Most people here will never meet a Christian. Roughly 1.5% of the population identifies as Christian and about 1.2% as evangelical, with an estimated 5 of its 6 people groups still considered unreached. Figures are rounded estimates and vary by source and year.
How many Christians are there in North Korea?
About 1.5% of North Korea's roughly 26 million people identify as Christian — approximately 390,000 people. Around 1.2% are evangelical. The largest group still without meaningful Gospel access is the Korean (~26 million).
How can I pray for North Korea?
Pray for North Korean believers whose faith has been secret for three generations. Ask God to sustain Christians in the labour camps. Pick one of these, pray it for two minutes a day for a week, and ask one other person to pray it with you.