A prayer campaign focusing on Christians living in North Korea seems to be making an impact, according to an official for Open Doors USA. More than a year ago, Open Doors USA began the North Korea Prayer Campaign -- an effort to encourage Christians throughout the world to pray for those living in the oppressive communist nation.

Ron Boyd-MacMillan, a writer-at-large for Open Doors International, has visited North Korea four times and says the prayer effort makes a difference. Christians in that country who are being persecuted for their faith, he shares, believe that prayer is their "lifeline."

"They literally feel better when they know we're praying," says Boyd-MacMillian, "because the biggest problem always when you're persecuted is that you think you're on your own." Especially with a place like North Korea, he says, where the Church has to be quite deep underground. "We have evidence that there's even some thousands of Christians in labor camps where they're actually forbidden to look up at the sky," he adds.

"Any persecuted Christian will tell you [what] they want the most from their Western believer, their Western friend, is for them to pray for them."

To do that effectively, Boyd-MacMillan says Christians must know the harsh conditions faced by believers in North Korea. "As soon as you become a Christian [there], you have to face the question of 'Should I stay, or should I flee?'" he reveals. "It's very hard to practice the faith in the country because they're trying to make sure that you're never Christian." In some cases, he says, authorities will even play tricks on believers' children at school to find out if their parents are Christian or not.

More than 1,000 Christians in the United States have signed up with Open Doors to pray for North Korean believers. Those who register for the North Korea Prayer Campaign can sign up for a weekly ten-minute timeframe to pray. Since the campaign began, more than 563,000 minutes of prayer for North Korea have been logged.

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