Christian leaders of South and North Korea will meet in Pyongyang next month to discuss how to bring peace to the Korean Peninsula and promote exchanges of churches, the South Korean organizer said Friday.
  
Delegates from the World Council of Churches (WCC), a worldwide inter-church organization, and South Korea's National Council of Churches in Korea (NCCK) will make a seven-day trip to Pyongyang from Oct. 24, the NCCK said.
  
They will hold an executive committee meeting of the "Ecumenical Forum for Peace, Reunification and Development Cooperation on the Korean Peninsula" with the North's Korean Christian Federation, it said.
  
The WCC will be represented by Chang Sang, president of Asia, and Peter Prove, director of international affairs, while the NCCK will be led by its general secretary Kim Young-joo.
  
The forum was launched in 2006 by the three parties under the original name "A Consortium for the Development of North Korean Society." It was rechristened to the current title to encourage participation from world churches in inter-Korean peace and reunification.
  
"This meeting, a follow-up to a statement adopted during the WCC Busan assembly in 2013, will discuss ways to settle peace on the Korean Peninsula and promote exchanges and cooperation with North Korean churches," a NCCK official said.
  
North Korea claims it guarantees religious freedom, and it has a Catholic church and two Protestant churches, as well as a Russian Orthodox church in the country, but critics say they are for propaganda and open only when foreign visitors attend services.
  
North Korean defectors in South Korea say North Korea severely cracks down on any religious activity, viewing it as a challenge to leader Kim Jong-un's rule. (Yonhap)