“North Korean authorities certainly don’t make these training videos for the sake of honoring the memory of underground Christians,” says Voice of the Martyrs Korea. “The purpose of the videos is to discredit practitioners of religion by portraying them as subversive agents seeking to overthrow the state. In this latest video, the names of the two North Korean Christians are not given in the video and their faces are concealed. Their mission is described in the most negative way: They confess to having received training in the ‘den of enemies’ in order to ‘entice soldiers acting individually to believe in God more than in the leadership’. But by deciphering the story told in the video we learn for the first time about two bold and courageous North Korean evangelists who received Christ in China and returned to evangelize North Korean soldiers instead of escaping to the South—at the cost of their lives.” 

According to Representative Foley, the North Korean government training videos reveal God at work, preserving North Korean Christian history and the stories of North Korean Christian martyrs even through Christianity’s fiercest persecutors—the North Korean government. She says that the videos also provide visual proof of at least some of the Christian materials that are circulating inside North Korea.  

Representative Foley says that this latest training video obtained by KBS is similar to one Voice of the Martyrs Korea obtained in 2018. That video documented the story of Cha Deok Sun, a previously unknown North Korean Christian martyr whose story is preserved in a North Korean government video used to train state security agents how to identify and silence proponents of religion inside North Korea. 

“The training video for state security agents documented how Missionary Cha received Christ in China and returned to North Korea instead of escaping to the South—just like the two Christians in the recently obtained KBS video.” 

According to Representative Foley, the video obtained in 2018 by Voice of the Martyrs Korea says that due to her poverty, Cha Deok Sun was given permission by the government to travel between towns in North Korea to provide for herself. “During her travels, Cha Deok Sun evangelized others,” says Representative Foley. “According to the video, she gave money to people who were poor, lower class, or suffering. She also found the descendants of several prominent Korean Christians and worshipped together with them. The video claims that these groups of underground Christians gathered every Sunday to worship, pray, sing hymns, and study the scripture—even during the busiest farming season. The video even contains photos of the Bibles and Christian materials Missionary Cha and other missionaries used.” 

The video describes Cha Deok Sun as a spy seeking to recruit other spies. “This is the typical definition of evangelism used in NK propaganda,” says Representative Foley.  

The video says that eventually, Cha Deok Sun was reported by “a good and awakened North Korean citizen.” But as Representative Foley notes, “The identity of that ‘good and awakened citizen’ has been lost forever, but the Lord made sure that the story of Cha Deok Sun would not be lost but would be preserved by the persecutors who martyred her.” 

Representative Foley believes that official North Korean government training videos like these are one of the ways that God preserves and spreads the stories of the underground North Korean Christians who are martyred because of their faithful witness to the Lord, while also providing visual evidence that Bibles and Christian materials circulate inside North Korea. 

“Scripture tells us that God’s ways are not our ways,” says Representative Foley. “We wrongly think that only Christians can be used to spread the gospel and to remember the stories of the martyrs. But through these training videos, God shows that he uses even the worst persecutors in human history to spread his word and the stories of his grace and mercy inside the most closed country on earth.” 

The video of Cha Deok Sun can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz831mqMd_I . Individuals interested in learning more about Voice of the Martyrs Korea’s North Korean ministry can visit https://vomkorea.com/northkorea/.