Korea sentences Canadian pastor to life in prison

Hyeon Soo Lim, who pastors the Light Korean Presbyterian Church in Toronto, was given the sentence Wednesday after a brief trial before the North’s Supreme Court. Relatives of Lim have claimed that his trips were about helping people and not political.

In July, Pyongyang’s KCNA news agency said that Lim had admitted to carrying out “subversive plots and activities in a sinister bid to build a religious state in the DPRK”, using North Korea’s official name. Lim pleaded to be given a chance and said if the court gave him a chance he would not do anything bad again.

The reports came after the Voice of America (VOA) said last Tuesday that Lim, who has been detained in the North for ten months, was being investigated by North Korean authorities.

The court held that he fabricated anti-North Korean propaganda as part of a US and South Korean-led “human rights racket” against the country, Xinhua said.

Although religious freedom is enshrined in the North’s constitution, it does not exist in practice and foreign missionaries arrested in North Korea can be given long sentences or used by Pyongyang as a way of securing concessions from their governments.

In the video released in August, South Korean-born Hyeon appeared to read from a script as he addressed a sparse congregation at the state-operated Pongsu Church in Pyongyang.

The Canadian government also declined to comment.

North Korea’s official KCNA news agency had not reported on the court’s decision.

Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American missionary, was released in November last year after about two years of detention in the communist nation.

In June, the North’s highest court sentenced two South Koreans accused of spying for Seoul to hard labour for life.

Both North Korea and neighbouring China have clamped down on Christian groups in recent years.

Mr Lim and his colleagues travelled to Pyongyang on 31 January as part of a humanitarian mission. The pair are among three South Koreans known to held by the North.