SEOUL, South Korea — Far East Broadcasting Company-Korea, a Christian radio network whose signals have reached listeners in North Korea, China and Russia for decades, is marking its 70th anniversary with a series of events running through December. During a press briefing Wednesday at its headquarters in Mapo district, the broadcaster reviewed a history built largely around what Korean churches call the "Northern Mission," Christian Daily Korea reported.
The term refers to outreach toward North Korea and the communist and formerly communist countries beyond it, where sending missionaries wasn't possible during the Cold War. FEBC-Korea says its programs served believers in underground churches in North Korea, China, Russia and Mongolia throughout that period. FEBC-Korea says its AM signal carries farther at night, reaching all of North Korea as well as northeastern China and parts of Siberia.
The broadcaster said many North Koreans secretly kept radios and listened to its sermons and hymns "with blankets pulled over their heads." It said accounts from Christians who later left North Korea have confirmed the practice. After China began its economic reforms in the late 1970s, the station reportedly received tens of thousands of letters a year from listeners abroad.
FEBC-Korea said those included handwritten notes from ethnic Koreans living in China and messages from Siberia. The broadcaster described its role as "laying the foundation for a spiritual and peaceful reunification" of the Korean Peninsula despite political and ideological division. American missionary Tom Watson founded the station, which first went on the air Dec. 23, 1956, from Incheon, west of Seoul. It was then known as the Korea Evangelical Broadcasting Station and later moved to Seoul.
FEBC-Korea says it was the country's third terrestrial broadcaster, after the public Korean Broadcasting System and the Christian Broadcasting System. It also describes itself as the first broadcaster