NORTH KOREA: WHAT HAPPENED WHEN A SECRET CHRISTIAN TOLD HIS WIFE ABOUT HIS FAITH?

Imagine having to keep your faith hidden from your best friend, your brother or sister, OR WHOLE FAMILY, knowing that being discovered as a Christian could have HORRIFIC CONSEQUENCES.

Where would you read your Bible, if you had one? How would you pray? How would you suss out whether it was safe to expose talk about faith, when even your closest loved ones could report you to the authorities?

This is the awful reality facing our brothers and sisters in North Korea – and it’s why one secret believer’s decision to let his wife in on his hidden faith was an astonishingly brave decision.

Sharing a secret

After his first wife had died at a young age, the secret believer remarried, but he kept his faith hidden from his new wife.

“It didn’t feel right,” he told an underground Open Doors fieldworker. “I wanted to be transparent to my wife. I contemplated and prayed, prayed and contemplated. Then I decided to gather all my courage and tell her my deepest secret.

“She started to cry,” he continues. “Because she had been a secret believer all her life too. She desperately wanted to tell me she followed Jesus.”

What an amazing discovery!

Open Doors fieldworkers outside North Korea are helping this couple practically and spiritually. “They are in need of so much, but they rarely ask for help,” says the fieldworker. “And I know for a fact that they help many, many people around them. Even the ones who have hurt them, even the ones who would lock them up if they knew about their true identity as Christians.”

• What’s it like to be a Christian in North Korea?

Worsening persecution

This remarkable story not only provides a glimpse into the everyday life of our North Korean family; it also gives an insight into how the Holy Spirit is moving in incredible and hidden ways in the country, and the vital role you’re playing when this happens.

North Korea is yet again ranked at number one on the Open Doors 2025 World Watch List. This is the 23^rd time that North Korea has topped the list since 1993, and persecution in the country has worsened in the past year. It makes your support for our North Korean family more crucial than ever.