NORTH KOREA: THE NEXT CHRISTIAN NATION IN ASIA

2008.  That's the number that dooms North Korea's lunatic tyrant Kim Jong-il. 

If there's one thing the Chicoms in Beijing are not going to let anyone screw up, it's their coming-out party to the world, the 2008 Olympics.  They are not about to tolerate some nuclear fruitcake causing a million-death war on their doorstep.  That's why they are studying Romanian history, circa 1989.

That was the year that communist generals in the Securitatae (secret police) staged a putsch and seized power after executing Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena.  Their death by machine-gun was videotaped.  Baby Kim has a copy, and is requiring all his subordinates to view it.  It's to teach them a lesson, but you'd think that it would give them ideas instead.

It's a good bet that the Chicoms will soon be instigating a Romanian-type overthrow of Baby Kim and installing a new regime in Pyongyang.  It won't be a pro-West democracy promising disarmament and union with South Korea – but it will be far less belligerent and far more peaceful.

Such a regime will be a colony of China and will resist demands for genuine democratic elections.  What it won't be able to resist is its being rapidly Christianized.

Christianity's success story in South Korea is well known.  Protestant Christianity is the country's largest religion with 160 denominations, 60,000 churches and 11 million followers, over 20% of the population of 48 million.  Roman Catholicism has 1,100 churches and five million followers.  Together, fully one-third of South Koreans are Christian.  Most are passionately and devoutly so.

What is less well known is that until the Soviet Union seized northern Korea after World War II and established a Communist regime, North Korea was the primary stronghold of Korean Christianity, evangelical Protestant Christianity in particular.

Kim Il-sung himself (1912-1994, father of current ruler Kim Jong-il), the Communist guerrilla leader whom the Soviets placed in power, was born into a Protestant family.  His father, Kim Hyong-jik, graduated from the Sungshil Christian school run by American missionaries.  His mother, Kang Pan-sok, was a prominent Protestant activist in the Pyongyang region and together, the couple founded several Protestant churches.

It was northern Korea's tragedy that their son rejected his parents' beliefs and became a fanatical Communist instead.

By 1945, there were some 3,000 Protestant congregations with over a quarter-million members in northern Korea.  Then in came the invading Soviets, divided Korea at the 38^th parallel where the Americans stopped them, and turned northern Korea into a communist-atheist hellhole.

Accusing them of disloyalty to his regime, Kim Il-sung launched a campaign of extermination against North Korea's Christians.  Those that weren't slaughtered escaped to the South.

There are only three predominately Christian countries in Asia:  East Timor, the small ex-Portuguese and thus Roman Catholic island in the Moslem sea of Indonesia; the Philippines, 85% Roman Catholic due to its Spanish heritage;  and South Korea. 

The difference between them is that so many South Korean Christians are fervently evangelical.  They can hardly wait to evangelize their northern brethren – and soon may have the opportunity.  Every contact they have already been able to establish in the North gives them assurance that their message will be hungrily received.

Count on it:  North Korea will be Asia's next Christian country.  And once it does, freedom and prosperity for this tragic land will not be far behind.