WASHINGTON, July 9 (UPI) -- Several times every summer, North Korea's military display extraordinary frenzy. "They are chasing balloons imprinted with the Gospel of Mark," Michael Weygandt, an executive of the worldwide Voice of the Martyrs organization, told United Press International Monday.

VoM sometimes sends as many as 50,000 of these orange vinyl bags filled with helium from China into this most rigid Communist country, where Christians are routinely hanged, burned or beaten to death, according to Weygandt.

"Sometimes entire underground congregations are rounded up and executed en masse. Still, Christianity seems to be growing due to returning refugees. These are people who fled to China, became Christians there and then went home to spread the Gospel, knowing well that they would probably be martyred."

By low-tech means, the VoM's balloons contribute to this evangelization effort. They manage to reach all regions of the country, which is about the size of New York State.

"If you poke a hole into a balloon only once, it can fly as far as the South Korean border because the helium escapes very slowly," said Weygandt, VoM's director for Asia.

"With two holes, it will reach the center of North Korea, and with three it will come down in the area bordering China." How does he know that every such launch mobilizes the People's Army? "Well, we know that military communications become very hectic."

The object is to shoot the balloons down.

People are prepared to risk their lives picking up these flying Gospels as soon as they touch ground. Missionaries in China report that North Korean soldiers can shoot "offenders" who dare to pick up these balloons, or even slay them with crowbars or hammers.

Still, this prospect does not seem to daunt everybody.

"We have a report of a little girl bringing one of our balloons home to her mother who wept and said, 'Thank God, they haven't forgotten us,' meaning the world's Christian community," Weygandt said.

"The grandmother buried the balloon but dug it up every night to read and interpret its inscription to her family."

Pyongyang, the nation's capital, once had a reputation for being the most Christian city in Asia.

Even though article 68 of the North Korean constitution guarantees freedom of religion, a VoM report states that "all religions are severely repressed and many are persecuted for attempting to worship in any fashion other than the governmental cult of the Great Leader Kim (Jong-Il)."

"Christianity is perceived to be a dangerous threat with the potential to undermine the Kim family's deity."

Kim's late father, Kim Il-Song, had virtually all Christian leaders murdered or imprisoned, even though his own mother had been a believer. He then replaced all religions with his own philosophy of Juche, meaning self-reliance. This ideology teaches that man is the master of his own destiny and Koreans must look to themselves to create paradise on earth.

Today, the state-recognized Korean Christian Federation claims to have a mere 12,000 members among a population of 23 million. "There are three churches in Pyongyang, two Protestant, one Catholic," Weygandt reported.

"When I was there, one of these churches was filled to capacity, and the choir was excellent, but it was clear to me that these 'congregants' had been commanded to attend this 'service,' and the choir was made up of professional singers. All of this was a put-up show for the benefit of foreign visitors."

Klaus-Rainer Latk, executive director of VoM's German branch, told UPI the story of a missionary courier who had gone to one of these churches with a stack of New Testaments.

"He put the books down at a table and for a few minutes turned his back on them to talk to the 'pastor,' who also called himself bishop and freely admitted to being a secret police officer. During his brief conversation, his New Testaments simply vanished."

Yet Bibles, New Testaments, religious tracts or just prints of the Gospel of John keep coming by the thousands due to an extraordinary phenomenon: Famine, disease and persecution are driving North Koreans to flee into China.

"Curiously, they often head for homes displaying the cross," said Weygandt. "They don't know what the cross signifies, except that it is a sign of trustworthiness."

"On the Chinese side of the border there are many Christians, some of them Chinese, others ethnic Koreans, plus Europeans and Americans. Under their tutelage, 40 to 60 percent of the refugees come to Christ, and of those even a higher percentage go home to bring the Gospel to their families and friends," Weygandt said.

"Hundreds of those go home every month. They know that they are likely to get killed or sent to prison camp, which essentially amounts to the same. But they also know that in this world they are already dead but that eternal life is waiting for them."

Weygandt told UPI that, risking arrest by Chinese authorities, clandestine Bible schools trained North Koreans to plant new congregations in their country, where Christians are known to have suffered excruciatingly painful deaths. In one instance a group of Christian steel mill workers had molten iron poured over them.

Said Weygandt: "What is happening over there is absolutely incredible. Believe it or not, these North Korean Christians have even sent out queries about Holy Communion. They wanted to find out how to celebrate this sacrament correctly."