The Scottish Catholic Observer newspaper has posted video obtained from North Korean state television depicting what appears to be anti-Christian propaganda. In a very strange stage performance, a very sinister looking priest with an oversized crucifix terrorizes a mother and child.

A video has emerged online which allegedly shows anti-Christian propaganda broadcast on North Korean state TV. The video, posted on the website Reddit, contains more than one hour of often bizarre news reports, musical performances and dance acts. One nine minute section features a ballet in which a sinister caricature of a priest with a large oversized crucifix around his neck terrorises a mother and her child. Reddit user ‘braunheiser’ said on the website that he recorded the footage from a ‘hacked feed’ he found online.

The writer goes on to explain North Korea’s horrible record with regard to Christian persecution, which should surprise no one. Human rights in general are obviously not a high priority for the communist regime.

North Korea is one of the worst countries in the world for Christian persecution. Charity Open Doors estimates that at least 25 per cent of Christians in the dictatorship are interned in Labour camps. According to Pontifical charity Aid to the Church in Need, the Vatican has declared the three North Korean dioceses – Pyongyang, Hamhung and Chunchon – to be vacant sees, under the administration of South Korean diocesan bishops appointed by Rome. The last Bishop of Pyongyang, Francis Hong Yong-ho, was disappeared by the government in 1949, with his death acknowledged by the Vatican in 2013. Prisoners in labour camps are subject to torture, murder, rape, medical experimentation, forced labour, forced abortion and execution, the charity says.

An hour’s worth of the North Korean television programming remains on YouTube.