Simply owning a Bible could get you executed in North Korea.

"You can get away with murder if you have good connections. However, if you get caught carrying a Bible, there is no way to save your life," said a person identified only as Interviewee 27.

Interviewee 27 was one of almost 40 refugees and security agents interviewed for "A Prison Without Bars: Refugee and Defector Testimonies of Severe Violations of Freedom of Religion or Belief in North Korea," a new report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

A commission delegation recently returned from a trip to Seoul, South Korea, where it released a Korean-language version of the report.

The commission is an independent, bipartisan agency mandated by Congress to track religious freedom around the world and to advise the president and secretary of state about countries that violate religious freedom.

"A Prison Without Bars," released in May, is a follow-up to a 2005 report titled "Thank You Father Kim Il Sung: Eyewitness Testimonies to Severe Violations of the Freedom of Thought, Conscience, and Religion in North Korea."

According to the new report, little has improved in the country in the last three years.

The country has a Catholic church and two Protestant churches, but religion is not practiced publicly. Reportedly, those churches exist to give visitors an impression the country has religious freedom. Religious activity, considered a security threat, is punishable with anything from imprisonment and torture to public execution.

Despite this, clandestine religion is fairly common in the country. However, Scott Flipse, the commission's director of the East Asia and Pacific regions, recounted a particularly disturbing instance of an underground church that was discovered and its members subsequently placed under a road grader.

North Koreans are indoctrinated to revere the country's deceased former leader, Kim Il-sung. The country is now ruled by his son, Kim Jong-il.

Juche, or KimIlSungism as it's called, mandates that citizens attend weekly meetings espousing Kim Il-sung's school of thought. Families are even required to hang a picture of the leader in their home. In years past, unannounced home inspections ensured those pictures were in fact hanging up and were clean. Homes found to be in violation were fined.

"It's like your religion," said an interviewee in the commission's report, referring to KimIlSungism. "When people jump into a burning house or a flooding coal mine to save the portrait of Kim Il-sung, they shout a slogan, 'For the great General Kim Il-sung.' When people experience miraculous happenings ... they come first in a race or don't get hurt from a fall, we ... say, 'Thank the General Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.'"

Security agents interviewed in the report once enforced KimIlSungism, but have since defected. They reported that repatriated refugees --- those who fled to China for asylum or economic opportunity but subsequently returned or were sent back to North Korea --- are often tortured for contact with South Koreans or religious groups. Longtime citizens are punished if there's any indication they're Christian. The country uses concentration camps and human trafficking as punitive methods.

The report also found fortunetellers and exorcists were popular in the country. Authorities rarely act against traditional folk practices, though they are illegal in the country, because it's believed military and high-ranking officials frequently take part in them.

In Seoul, Flipse, commission chair Felice Gaer, commission vice chair Michael Cromartie and commissioner Imam Talal Y. Eid met with government leaders, media and academics to discuss how to improve religious freedom conditions.

The U.S. commission designates countries with the most severe religious freedom violations as "countries of particular concern."

Under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, such countries are punished by any of 15 presidential actions including limiting or suspending security assistance to them, not exporting technology to them and refusing them loans or credit. North Korea was first designated a country of particular concern in 2001. As a result the U.S. secretary of state designated a sanction with restrictions on normal trade relations.

"This is one of those things that needs to continue to be a global issue. We need to talk to our representative groups and make sure human rights issues are negotiated in agreements with North Korea," Flipse said in an interview with Catholic News Service.

---CNS