Word: north
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...most North Koreans, Christmas has long been a nonevent, in part because the government keeps a tight rein on information about religious holidays from entering the country, and in part because Christians can be arrested for celebrating it. Though the country's constitution does grant freedom of religion to all citizens, North Korean authorities don't seem to pay the idea much heed. The government also monitors other religions - such as Buddhism and Cheondoism, a popular Korean belief system that combines elements of several faiths - but underground churches are particularly feared by authorities because they're estimated to have helped...
...where aid organizations provide food aid to some six million people, the Western notion of a gift-giving holiday does not translate very well, particularly after Kim Jong Il's regime effectively stripped most of the nation of any personal savings three weeks ago. Each year underground worshippers in North Korea receive an array of presents from the outside world, including foreign-made clothes and candy, smuggled in by defectors like Jeong...
...Meanwhile, the communist regime has placed a slew of nationalistic holidays around Christmas, though their timing is probably a coincidence. On December 24, many North Koreans observe the birthday of Kim Jong Suk - the deceased mother of dictator Kim Jong Il and a revolutionary hero - by making pilgrimages to her birthplace of Hoeryong, a town in the northeast. Three days later, they are given a day off work for Constitution Day. Even New Years' Day is more about revolutionary zeal than ushering in 2010, when thousands of North Koreans will walk in a yearly procession to the Kumsusan Memorial Palace...
...Life in the North wasn't always so rank-and-file. In the early 1900s, Pyongyang was widely known as the "Jerusalem of the East" for its vibrant milieu of Christians. American Protestant missionaries arrived as early as the 1880s (Catholics arrived centuries earlier but the religion didn't catch on as widely), building religious schools and universities across the capital. Later, as Christianity gained popularity, worshippers held group prayers in public every Christmas. But after the Japanese government took control of Korea in 1910, the new administration began suppressing religious gatherings, and by the 1950s, - after the Korean...
...following years, though critics maintain they're facades to show the world that it supports freedom of religion. "[Foreign missionaries] are allowed to come for relief or other purposes, only if they promise not to spread the word," argues Kim. (See pictures of the key moments in North Korea's history...