Members of Canada’s North Korean diaspora are speaking out against Kim Jong-un’s regime, demanding Pyongyang safely return their beloved Mississauga pastor.

“In the past when our families were starving, freezing and beaten to death under the North Korean dictatorship, we had only one choice, of escaping the despotic country for there was no other way to resist,” Rocky Kim, of the Canada Federation of North Korean Defectors, said in a statement. “Today, we no longer remain silent and helpless.”

Kim said the Korean community appreciates Rev. Hyeon Soo Lim’s humanitarian work in their homeland, including his support to a nursing home, a nursery and an orphanage. Lim, who was arrested in Pyongyang in February, was sentenced to life in a prison labour camp this week.

“The North Korean state has not only failed to feed its own people but also abandoned them to death, yet it condemns Rev. Lim’s humanitarian aid mission for so-called crimes against the state,” said Kim. “Our organization strongly condemns the despicable action of (the) North Korean government.”

According to an international rights group that monitors Christian persecution around the world, North Korea has been ranked No. 1 on its world watch list for 13 years straight.

Open Doors’ annual report said more than 50,000 Christians are imprisoned by Pyongyang in labour camps. The popular pastor of Mississauga’s Light Korean Presbyterian Church is the latest victim, sentenced to life at hard labour on charges of harming the dignity of the supreme leadership, also known as dictator Kim Jung-un.

“There is no God for communists in North Korea,” said Paul Johnson, executive director of Open Doors’ Canadian branch.

“If you believe in God, you believe there is a higher authority than the communist leadership. You are deemed a threat if you question the leader’s authority.”

On Friday, Global Affairs Canada would not say if Canadian diplomats have established contact with Lim or reveal the government’s next course of action. A prayer vigil is planned at the Mississauga church Sunday evening.

Johnson said there is one public church in Pyongyong sanctioned by the regime, but most Christians practise their faith privately. Many Christians who flee to China and are sent back to North Korea are either sentenced to life in prison or executed, he said.

While missionary work is forbidden, religious groups are allowed to deliver humanitarian aid in North Korea. However, decision-making by the regime can be arbitrary and sometimes officials punish those deemed overstepping the boundaries, Johnson said.

Lim was not the first foreign religious worker to be arrested, convicted and sentenced in North Korea, but the sentence he was handed was the harshest.

“It’s a way to say to the world that we are in control, the state is in control,” said Johnson.

However, what baffled many observers is why Lim, who came to Canada from South Korea in 1986, was being punished only now, having led more than 100 humanitarian aid missions to North Korea since the mid-1990s.

To Kyung B. Lee of the Toronto-based Council for Human Rights in North Korea, its randomness simply reflects a regime that is “brutal, irrational and impervious.”

“North Korea considers Lim a North Korean citizen overseas or an honorary North Korean citizen, even though he is a Canadian citizen,” Lee explained. “As an honorary citizen, you have some privileges like what Lim enjoyed, but responsibility as well, to be loyal to the state and the regime.”

Lee, whose group is active in public education and rescues North Korean refugees from China to Thailand, likens Lim’s imprisonment to hostage-taking. He believes the regime is likely after ransom money from Ottawa — a demand he said Canada should not heed.

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“North Korea ignores and disparages Canada. Not allowing even a consular access is the proof. It thinks itself mightier than Canada, at least militarily, because it is a nuclear-armed state,” said Lee.

Lee did suggest a somewhat unusual tactic to Ottawa to campaign for Lim’s release by banning North Korea’s supreme leader from travelling to Canada and getting other major world powers to do the same.

“The people in North Korea consider Kim Jong-un as God, and they would ask why our God couldn’t travel to Canada and Europe,” said Lee. “It’s about the naming and shaming.”

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