Four South Korean missionaries were arrested in the cities of Dandong and Dalian in May this year and were later deported.
Kim Eunseoung and Wang Sukyeong (both are pseudonyms) were apprehended in Dandong city, where they were conducting missionary work. The police reached Ms. Wang Sukyeong by wiretapping the cellphone of the former and later fined her 2,000 RMB or 300 USD approximately. Both were then forcibly deported back to their country.
The Dalian city police arrested two other Korean preachers on May 12 and forcibly deported them after interrogations. They were put on a no re-entry list.
Since April, Chinese authorities have been implementing the Plan for the Special Campaign on Legal Investigation and Prosecution of South Korean Christian Infiltrations, directed at the house churches established by South Korean Christian groups in China. The plan requires that all authorities on different levels must suppress and crack down on South Korean Christian groups and regularly report their progress.
Reported by Piao Junying
Piao Junying (uses pseudonyms for security reasons), born 1970 in Jilin Province, China, graduated from Jilin Normal University. Following graduation, he was engaged in educational work for ten years. In early 2009, after noticing the serious human rights situation in China, he changed his career and became a journalist who independently reports on human rights issues. He has also conducted an in-depth investigation about China’s deportation of North Korean defectors and published a series of reports on the topic. Since the foundation of Bitter Winter in May 2018, he has been a special correspondent of Bitter Winter in Northeast China.