The North Korean study was published in the August 2004 issue of Choguk, a monthly run by Chaeilbon Chosŏnin Ch'ongryŏnhaphoe/Zainihon Chōsenjin Sōrengōkai (General Association of Korean Residents in Japan), cited in the Yonhap news outlet (2006). These are Protestants (13,000), adherents of the indigenous Tonghak Church (13,000), Buddhists (1,000), and Roman Catholics (3,000).

As to the religious population in North Korea, a 2004 study published in Japan finds that there are about 40,000 adherents of recognized churches. ( Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006), 330– 350 Google Scholar. On this point, see Lee, Timothy S., “Beleaguered Success: Korean Evangelicalism in the Last Decade of the Twentieth Century,” in Christianity in Korea, ed. The study also does not reflect that upward of 95 percent of the Protestants are evangelicals.

See the statistics on the website of the Korean Ministry of Culture and Tourism (2007). The study did not register the few thousand Eastern/Russian Orthodox members, nor did it register participants of amorphous religious traditions related to shamanism. The Christian population breaks down into Catholics (10.9% 5.15 million) and Protestants (18.3% 8.62 million). This religious population is divided into Buddhists (22.8% 10.73 million), Christians (29.2% 13.77 million), and new religionists such as believers of Wŏn Buddhism (0.3%: 0.13 million) and (institutionalized) Confucianism (0.2% 0.11 million). Of this population, 53.1% (24.97 million) identified themselves as religious. The National Statistics Office of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) finds that, as of November 2005, the country had a population of 47 million.

2 Freston, Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, 61, 64.

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