The US says North Korea has sentenced a 2-year-old boy to life in prison

According to a report shared this month by the US government, in 2009 North Korea has reportedly sentenced a 2-year-old boy to life in prison.

The report, released by the State Department, focuses on each country’s “religious freedom” status and covers “government policies that violate the religious beliefs and practices of groups, religious denominations, and individuals, and U.S. policies to promote religious freedom around the world.”

And you may be wondering: And what does this have to do with the harsh sentence for the 2-year-old boy? Well, it has to do with why the minor and his entire family would have been sentenced to life imprisonment for having a Bible in the house.

prisoners for life

The report, which bases its claims on research by the Korea Future organization, says there are between 200,000 and 400,000 undocumented Christians in North Korea.

The research is based on interviews conducted by Korea Future between 2007 and 2020 with 244 victims of religious persecution.

“One case involved the arrest of a family in 2009 due to their religious practices and possession of a Bible. The whole family, including a two-year-old boy, was sentenced to life imprisonment in political prison camps.”, states the report.

Victims were reported to have been subjected to arrest, detention, forced labour, torture, denial of due process or right to life, and sexual assault, for practicing shamanism or Christian beliefs.

The persecution is a consequence – according to the State Department report – of the paranoia of Kim Jong-un’s regime towards anyone who does not have absolute devotion to him and his family.

The interviews were mainly conducted with defectors from the regime. They would have revealed the cases of tortured, murdered and imprisoned Christians and affirmed that the few existing Christian churches in the country are “show churches”.

The US Department of State filed reports pursuant to the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998.”

The one that calls us here, entitled “International Religious Freedom Report 2022: Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)”, was compiled using data from Korea Future, a non-governmental organization that documents human rights violations in North Korea.