NORTH KOREA: Russian clergy inaugurate Orthodox church in Pyongyang, North Korea.

The Russian Orthodox Church on Sunday (August 13) inaugurated a church in the North Korean capital, built with the help of the Communist state's leader Kim Jong-il. The Russian Orthodox Church's foreign relations chief Metropolitan Kirill, led the consecration ceremony at the Trinity church in Pyongyang. During the ceremony that lasted several hours, Metropolitan Kirill read sacred texts and sprinkled holy water on the walls of the church. Officials said the church was built with Kim's initiative, who had proposed the project as a monument to the Russia-Korea friendship. The North Korean government paid most of the construction costs, estimated by church officials to be 30 million roubles ($1.12 million), while the Orthodox Church prepared in its Moscow academy four North Koreans to serve there as priests. The Russian Orthodox Church aggressively expanded in Korea at the end of the 19th century as part of Russia's competition with Japan for influence in the region. But in 1949, Koreans expelled Russian priests and confiscated the church's property. In recent years, Russia has worked to re-establish Soviet-era ties with North Korea. North Korea's Kim visited Russia twice in 2001 and 2002, after Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the country in 2000. It is not clear how many Orthodox Christians there are in North Korea, whose leadership is accused of suppressing any public or spiritual activities apart from official ideology. Refugees from the secretive state have told human rights groups that some people who tried to practise their religion were imprisoned with their families, tortured and, in some cases, executed. The U.S. State Department last year placed North Korea alongside China and Myanmar on a list of countries that "regard some or all religious groups as enemies of the state".

ITN Source | August 15, 2006

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