US Watch Group Names NK No. 1 Persecutor of Christians

North Korea has topped the list of nations persecuting Christians for the sixth year in a row, a U.S. Christian watch group has claimed.

Open Doors, based in California and with branches worldwide including South Korea, stated in its annual watch list that "There is no other country in the world where Christians are being persecuted in such a horrible and relentless way."

The report did not cite specific sources, except to state that the list was compiled from answers to 50 questions on religious freedom from its indigenous contacts, field workers and persecuted believers.

Citing unidentified local sources, the organization estimated the number of underground Christians in North Korea to be at least 200,000. More Christians were arrested in North Korea last year than in 2006, and many were beaten, tortured or killed because of their beliefs, it said.

Second in the list for a consecutive year came Saudi Arabia, followed by Iran and the Maldives.

A Korean-Canadian pastor was released late last month after being detained for more than two months in North Korea. Kim Jae-yeol, who helped set up clinics in 1997 in the Rajin-Sonbong area, the communist country's north, was arrested by North Korean authorities last November and released after Ted Lipman, Canada's ambassador to South Korea who doubles as his country's representative to the North, traveled to Pyongyang for negotiations on his release.