The head of the World Council of Churches, the Rev Samuel Kobia, is to lead a delegation to North Korea, in the latest of several recent visits from Christian groups to the communist-ruled State.
"We will be meeting with the churches, government officials and learning about the life and witness of churches in North Korea," said Mathews George Chunakara, director of the WCC Public Witness programme, in a 15 October 2009 statement announcing the visit.
The WCC said Kobia, a Kenyan Methodist who steps down at the end of 2009 as General Secretary of the world's biggest church grouping, would preach at the Bong Soo Church in Pyongyang.
The WCC visit is at the invitation of the Korean Christian Federation of North Korea, a government-sanctioned Protestant body, and will take place from 17 to 20 October.
The son of US evangelist Billy Graham met with officials on 14 October in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the state-run agency of the Democratic People's Republic of [North] Korea (DPRK), reported.
The Rev Franklin Graham, who heads the relief agency Samaritan's Purse, "said he would make all efforts to develop the relations between the US and the DPRK", KCNA reported in a dispatch relayed by the Korean News Service in Tokyo.
Samaritan's Purse said this was Graham's third visit to North Korea and that in 2008 he had visited the DPRK to oversee several aid operations.
In September, a delegation from the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), spent four days in North Korea, a country that restricts Christian activity.
Churches there are involved in social development and humanitarian aid assistance, the Geneva-based WCC stated. It said WCC members have offered support to the KCF in recent years.
It said that after making a pastoral visit to North Korean churches, Kobia would travel to Hong Kong for an international consultation on peace, reconciliation and reunification of the Korean peninsula.
The WCC said it began a process in the early 1980s to promote peace, reconciliation and the reunification of the Korean peninsula, bringing church leaders from the two parts of Korea together. The then WCC General Secretary, the Rev Dr Konrad Raiser, visited North Korea in 1999.
The current WCC visit takes place at a time when multilateral diplomatic efforts are under way on issues related to de-nuclearisation of North Korea and the resumption of Six Party Talks, which were stalled for some time after North Korea withdrew.
The Korean peninsula has been divided since 1950 when South Korea and a US-led United Nations force fought against North Koreans backed by Chinese ground troops and aided by the Soviet Union. Hostilities came to a halt in an armistice signed at Panmunjom on 27 July 1953, but a formal ceasefire has yet to be signed.
[With acknowledgements to ENI. Ecumenical News International is jointly sponsored by the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Conference of European Churches.]
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