Wednesday 4 December marks the tenth anniversary of South Korean businessman and missionary Choi Chun-gil’s arrest and imprisonment in North Korea. Like the two other South Korean missionaries detained in North Korea for over a decade, Kim Kuk-gi and Kim Jong Uk, Pastor Choi (65) is serving a life sentence with hard labour and is being held incommunicado, with no family contact since his arrest.
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom reports that Pastor Choi was involved in transporting religious and humanitarian goods for North Koreans and was arrested on 4 December 2014 after he was allegedly lured into going to North Korea.
His arrest was announced on 26 March 2015 by North Korea’s state news agency KCNA, along with the arrest of Kim Kuk-gi, a Presbyterian pastor and missionary. KCNA described them as “heinous terrorists” who operated from a base in the Chinese port city of Dandong, near the border with North Korea, and said they were spying for South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) and had brought in large quantities of forged currency. KCNA stated, “They zealously took part in an anti-DPRK smear campaign.”
South Korea’s NIS said the charge that the two men were working for it was “absolutely groundless” and a spokesman for South Korea’s Unification Ministry, Lim Byeong-cheol, also denied that they were engaged in espionage.
In May 2015 the North Korean authorities presented Pastor Choi and Kim Kuk-gi at a press conference in Pyongyang attended by journalists and foreign diplomats at which the two men “confessed” that they had been paid large sums of money over several years to steal state secrets for South Korea.
On 23 June 2015 the Supreme Court sentenced Pastor Choi to life imprisonment with labour for conspiracy to subvert the state, espionage, destruction and sabotage, and illegal border crossing. Kim Kuk-gi was also sentenced to hard labour for life.
In a broadcast that day, North Korea’s state news broadcaster Korean Central Television stated: “Kim Guk-gi and Choi Chun-gil, spies and agents for the puppet regime who were apprehended while plotting and spying against the Republic under the control of the Americans and their puppet regime in South Korea, were tried in the Supreme Court and sentenced to life in prison.”
Son appeals for international support
Pastor Choi’s son Choi Jin-young has travelled widely in Europe to draw attention to the plight of six South Koreans held in North Korea (including his father and the two other missionaries) and to appeal for international support.
He visited Brussels, Geneva and Berlin ahead of the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review on 7 November 2024. In Brussels, he met Olof Skoog, the European Union’s special representative for human rights, to seek assistance in delivering letters from families of the three missionaries and confirming their survival. Special Representative Skoog pledged to make every possible effort to address the matter. In Geneva, Choi Jin-young met senior officials from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN’s Working Groups on Arbitrary Detention and Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances to request international support.
South Korea’s Ministry of Unification issues “Statement on the 10th Year of the Arbitrary Detention of Choi Chun-gil in North Korea”
The Ministry of Unification of the Republic of Korea issued a press release on 3 December 2024 titled “Statement on the 10th Year of the Arbitrary Detention of Choi Chun-gil in North Korea”. The following is an extract.
“This month marks the 10th year of Missionary Choi Chun-gil’s arbitrary detention by North Korea. Missionary Choi Chun-gil was unlawfully arrested by the North Korean authorities in December 2014 and sentenced to lifelong “reform through labour” on June 23, 2015…
“North Korea’s practice of unjustly and arbitrarily detaining missionaries is a blatant attempt to oppress freedom of religion or belief and silence the voice of the international community calling for human rights for the North Korean people...
“North Korean authorities do not provide even minimal information, such as confirmation of life or death about our nationals who were illegally arrested and are currently detained, adding to the suffering of their families over the years.
“The ROK Government strongly urges the North, which is a party to major international human rights instruments, to immediately and unconditionally release our nationals who are illegally detained.”
(Church in Chains Prisoner Profiles, Christian Solidarity Worldwide North Korea Prayer Guide 4 December 2024, Korea Times, Press release from the Ministry of Unification, Republic of Korea, 3 December 2024: “Statement on the 10th Year of the Arbitrary Detention of Choi Chun-gil in North Korea”, UCA News, USCIRF)
Photo of Choi Chun-gil: Korean Ministry of Unification
Photo of Choi Jin-young: Willy Fautré/Human Rights Without Frontiers