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Korean-Canadian
pastor Hyeon Soo Lim. © Kyodo / Reuters
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North Korea’s highest
court has sentenced a South Korea-born pastor from Canada to life for his
religious activities, the North's official KCNA news agency has reported. Hyeon Soo-Lim, a pastor
at a Toronto church, has visited North Korea more than 100 times in the last 18
years, helping to set up an orphanage and a nursing home.
RT report continues:
According
to the court, Lim tried to topple the regime, and undermine North Korea’s
social system via “religious activities,” Xinhua reported.
The
court also stated that Lim had carried out propaganda against North Korea, in
the framework of a “human rights racket.”
He
allegedly admitted that he had assisted people in defecting through Mongolia,
meeting with the US ambassador to Ulan Bator to accomplish it.
Lim
has been detained since February, and appeared on state TV earlier this year,
confessing to crimes against North Korea.
He
said he went to the country under the pretext of social work and collected the
data he used in sermons outside North Korea to bring the regime to an end “with
the love of God.”
Lim
is in his early 60s, and his church said in March that he “has a very serious
heart problem” and “very high blood pressure,” and his relatives are “anxious
to send medicine.”
He
is the only Western citizen known to be currently behind bars in North Korea.
The
Canadian government refused to comment on the matter, while the 3,000-member
Light Korean Presbyterian Church in Toronto didn’t respond to Reuters’
inquiries.
North Korea has previously
dealt out harsh sentences for Western nationals: US-Korean missionary Kenneth
Bae was given 15 years of hard labor, but was freed in 2014 after two years in
jail.
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