ISIS' Barbaric Executions Actually Mimic North Korea's Public Killing of Christians?

By Samuel Smith, Deputy Managing Editor Wednesday, September 28, 2016

A rally celebrating the success of a recent nuclear test is held in Kim Il Sung square in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency in Pyongyang September 13, 2016. | (Photo: KCNA via Reuters)

While much in the international news today is dominated by the utter barbarity and heinousness in how the Islamic State tortures and executes its victims, a look back in history shows that it's possible the jihadis have taken pages from the torturous playbook of the authoritarian North Korean government.

On Monday, the Iraqi News reported that IS (also known as ISIS or ISIL) killed six of its own members who fled the battlefield in Iraq by crushing them to death with a bulldozer in the group's largest Iraqi stronghold of Mosul.

This is not the first time that the terrorist group has crushed its victims to death under the weight of heavy machinery. In a video released last October, a Syrian soldier is shown being crushed to death underneath a battle tank.

While it might seem unique when IS executes people it accuses of going against their so-called caliphate by publicly crushing them underneath heavy construction machinery or battle tanks, the regime of former North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il used a similar tactic when it publicly executed five Christians in November 1996 because of their faith in Christ.

A 2005 report issued by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom detailed a witness account of how three pastors and two elders were crushed underneath a steam roller in South Pyongan Province after their names and the names of 20 other Christians were found in a notebook that laid next to a Bible in a house demolished by the North Korean army.

The execution of the five Christians was carried out by soldiers who also forced a public crowd to watch.

"This steam roller was a large construction vehicle imported from Japan with a heavy, huge, and wide steel roller mounted on the front to crush and level the roadway prior to pouring concrete," the report states. "[T]hey were told 'If you abandon religion and serve only Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, you will not be killed.' None of the five said a word. Some of the fellow parishioners assembled to watch the execution cried, screamed out, or fainted when the skulls made a popping sound as they were crushed beneath the steam roller."

While the the five Christians leaders were crushed to death, the other 20 Christians were believed to have been sent to a labor camp where they were likely tortured, forced to do hard labor, or killed.

The North Korean army giving the Christian leaders a chance to renounce their faith is a tactic that was also reportedly used by IS last October when the group executed 11 Christian missionaries and a child of one of the missionaries in Syria.

Men in orange jumpsuits purported to be Egyptian Christians held captive by the Islamic State kneel in front of armed men along a beach said to be near Tripoli, in this still image from an undated video made available on social media on February 15, 2015. Islamic State released the video on Sunday purporting to show the beheading of 21 Egyptian Christians kidnapped in Libya. In the video, militants in black marched the captives to a beach that the group said was near Tripoli. They were forced down onto their knees, then beheaded. Egypt's state news agency MENA quoted the spokesman for the Coptic Church as confirming that 21 Egyptian Christians believed to be held by Islamic State were dead. | (Photo: Reuters/Social media via Reuters TV)

Before their execution, IS sliced the fingertips off the child's hands and then told the father they would stop torturing his son if he just renounced his faith in Christ.

"When the team leader refused, relatives said the ISIS militants also tortured and beat him and the two other ministry workers," a report from Christian Aid Mission states. "The three men and the boy then met their deaths in crucifixion."

In May, it was reported that IS executed a number of its failed leaders by feeding them to ferocious dogs because they failed to "accomplish their chief duties."

The news of IS feeding its leaders to vicious dogs comes over two years after it was reported that dictator Kim Jong-un executed his uncle and a handful of others for treason by feeding them to hungry dogs.

Kim reportedly had his 67-year-old uncle and five of his uncle's aides stripped naked and placed in a cage where 120 dogs that hadn't been fed for five days killed the men.

It has also been reported in the last couple months that IS has used flamethrowers and welding tools to burn its victims to death.

Those reports also come about two years after North Korea's deputy public security minister, O Sang Hon, was "executed by flamethrower," as Kim was in the midst of purging dissidents with ties to his uncle from the government.

A girl dressed in a Hanbok, a Korean traditional costume, stands in front of a barbed-wire fence, as her parents prepare for a memorial service for North Korean family members, near the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, in Paju, February 19, 2015, on the occasion of Seolnal, the Korean Lunar New Year's day. Millions of South Koreans traveled to their hometowns during the three-day holiday which started last Wednesday. Seolnal is one of the traditional holidays when most Koreans visit their hometowns to be united with their families and hold memorial services for their deceased ancestors. | (Photo: Reuters/Kim Hong-Ji)

While IS is reportedly killing disabled babies and physically abusing infants born to religious minorities — such as one instance when a militant beat an 11-month-old infant and threw it against a wall — a former detainee in North Korea said in a 2012 Committee for Human Rights in North Korea report that a North Korean agent killed two newborn babies by stabbing them in the soft spot of the skull with forceps.

As IS has crucified Christians and other religious minorities who don't follow its brand of Sharia law, a report recently released by Christian Solidarity Worldwide noted that the North Korean government has executed Christians in the past by hanging them on crosses and setting them over a fire.