A Canadian pastor who has reportedly gone missing in North Korea was invited to the capital Pyongyang just before his disappearance, a prominent Seoul activist said yesterday.
The Reverend Lim Hyeon-soo, of the Light Korean Presbyterian Church in Toronto, has not been heard from since Jan. 31, just after he arrived in North Korea via China, according to media reports in Canada and South Korea.
Reverend Chun Ki-won, the director of Durihana, a South Korean Christian missionary organization helping North Korean refugees, said Lim was one of the most influential Christian missionaries operating in the North.
The 60-year-old Lim had led many aid missions there involving work with orphanage houses, nursing homes and food plants, the reverend said.
“As far as I know, he was asked by officials to come to Pyongyang on Jan. 31 before he went incommunicado,” said Chun, a personal acquaintance of Lim.
Chun said the information had come from other members of the close-knit circle of ethnic Korean missionaries in the US and Canada who are involved in aid projects in the North.
Lim’s lack of communication was initially attributed to the 21-day quarantine imposed on all foreign visitors to North Korea to prevent any outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus.
However, that period would have ended on Feb. 21, after which there was still no news, Chun said.
Chun said that some of the food-related projects Lim was involved in — ranging from noodle plants to flour mills — were linked to associates of Jang Song-thaek, the purged uncle of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Jang is known to have led many joint economic projects before he was dramatically arrested and executed for treason in December 2012.
“We’re worried the invitation to Pyongyang was somehow related to his ties to Jang,” Chun said, adding that Lim had rarely traveled to the capital on previous trips.
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