Korea Future cited in the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom Annual Report

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) annual report for 2021 has drawn on and cited many areas of our work to recommend that the Unites States Government redesignate North Korea as a Country of Particular Concern for engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations, as defined by the International Religious Freedom Act.

USCIRF is an independent, bipartisan, U.S. federal government commission created by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act that monitors the universal right to freedom of religion or belief abroad. USCIRF uses international standards to monitor religious freedom violations globally, and makes policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State, and Congress.

In its key findings, USCIRF cited our work on charges against religious adherents in North Korea and the ensuing human rights violations that were documented by our investigators and preserved in our North Korean Religious Freedom Database. We are particularly supportive of USCIRF’s highlighting of the significance of structural factors in the continuation of religious freedom violations in North Korea, and their referencing of internal Party materials that we acquired in 2020 to support and provide further evidence in our report, ‘Persecuting Faith: Documenting religious freedom violations in North Korea’. We thank USCIRF for their ongoing leadership and advocacy on international religious freedom issues, and particularly their long work on North Korea.

Our work has also been cited in Aid to the Church in Need’s Religious Freedom in the World Report 2021. We welcome the use of our work and data by other organisations, and we are committed to working with others to advance justice for victims of religious freedom violations and accountability for perpetrators of religious freedom crimes.