Except for South Koreans and some U.S. citizens, ordinary tourists are permitted to visit the country. Even North Korean VIPs are given more freedom to travel abroad now. The leading question is centered on whether the church has survived. First, because the vast majority of Christians fled from North Korea during the civil war in the early 1950s, and second, because all vestiges of Christianity were annihilated with a ruthlessness unmatched in the history of communism. All churches were closed, known Christians shot, and the Bible banned and burned.
Sources confirm that the church is alive and well in North Korea.
The first source is officials of the DPRK government. When an official delegation from the WCC visited Pyongyang in November 1985, they were told that the Federation was modeled after China's Three-Self Patriotic Movement. A second source of factual information about Christians in North Korea are the Korean Christians in Manchuria, some of whom have traveled to North Korea and met with fellow believers. They can travel in and out of North Korea to visit relatives and it is know that some North Koreans are allowed into China to pay return visits. Although at first reluctant to divulge information, in 1986 China's Korean Christians revealed that individuals among them had traveled to North Korea and worshipped with fellow believers.