Cruel and unusual punishment

National: A rare glimpse into remote North Korea uncovers new stories on persecution—300 people a year killed for their faith—amid an unbending communist regime | Priya Abraham

To get to Sonbong, North Korea, a remote city tucked into the country's northeast, Julian Dobbs crossed a bridge from China slung across the Tumen River. On the other side, the icy blue-painted block that served as North Korea's border post blended well with the snow-swept hills.

In Sonbong to open a new bakery, Dobbs is U.S. director of the Barnabas Fund, a charity that helps persecuted Christians around the world. His two-day trip last month into North Korea provided a rare Westerner's glimpse at Kim Jong Il's totalitarian society outside Pyongyang, the capital of a starving country that prohibits even the World Food Program from working in every district.

Dobbs worked to blend in, and soon noticed that the city's residents also took care to blend into their physical and political landscape. Dobbs also heard fresh stories of crackdowns on dissenters and Christians similar to those that have trickled out of the Hermit Kingdom for years. In the last few months, U.S. diplomacy has focused increasingly on nuclear deal-making, offering aid concessions in exchange for shaky Pyongyang promises to disarm. On the eve of Washington's annual North Korean Freedom Week, April 22-29, human-rights defenders feel a new urgency to emphasize instead Kim's wrongs against his people.