Christian Case for Engaging North Korea

The Trump Administration’s strategy to isolate North Korea includes a ban on Americans traveling there. The 2017 ban especially impacts nearly seventy, Christian, faith-based organizations (FBOs), which in the past two decades legally channeled hundreds of (mostly volunteer) workers and thousands of tourists to North Korea. Since the travel restriction, these faith-based workers and tourists have publicly joined the debate over the United States’ North Korea policy. They acted as “norm entrepreneurs” shaping an alternative, cognitive frame for engagement. This frame includes three claims: 1) foreign Christian workers and tourists have been tolerated by the regime, so long as they obey existing laws and regulations; 2) these workers and tourists have meaningfully contributed to socioeconomic development and religious freedom in North Korea; and, 3) the US government should not violate the rights of Americans to travel and practice their faith as long as they do safely and meaningfully. The faith-based frame for peaceful engagement resonated among mainstream and evangelical Christian media, the latter a critical constituency of the Trump Administration. The engagement frame linked with America’s individualist and evangelical normative traditions of social change through grassroots, personal relationships. We narrate and assess this frame through our communications and interviews with over twenty workers and tourists (mostly US citizens) linked with FBOs.