Солтүстік Кореядағы дін және ұлттық идеологияның эволюциясы

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There are no known official statistics of religions in North Korea. Officially, North Korea is an atheist state, although its constitution guarantees free exercise of religion, provided that religious practice does not introduce foreign forces, harm the state, or harm the existing social order. Based on estimates from the late 1990s and the 2000s, North Korea is mostly irreligious, with the main religions being Shamanism and Chondoism. There are small communities of Buddhists and Christians. Chondoism is represented in politics by the Party of the Young Friends of the Heavenly Way, and is regarded by the government as Korea's "national religion" and developed into distinctive Korean forms. At that time, the Korean peninsula was divided into three kingdoms: the aforementioned Goguryeo in the north, Baekje in the southwest, and Silla in the southeast. Buddhism reached Silla only in the 5th century, but it was made the state religion only in that kingdom in the year 552. In the same period, the influence of Chinese Confucianism penetrated the country and led to the formation of Korean Confucianism that would have become the state ideology and religion of the following Joseon state. The Joseon kingdom (1392–1910), strictly Neo Confucian, harshly suppressed Buddhism and Shamanism. In this environment, Christianity began to rapidly gain foothold since the late 18th century, due to an intense missionary activity that was aided by the endorsement at first by the Silhak and Seohak intellectual parties, and then at the end of the following century by the king of Korea himself and the intellectual elite of the crumbling Joseon state, who were looking for a new social factor to invigorate the Korean nation. In the late 19th century, the Joseon state was politically and culturally collapsing. The intelligentsia was looking for solutions to invigorate and transform the nation. Protestant missionaries set up schools, hospitals and publishing agencies. The king of Korea and his family tacitly supported Christianity. As a result, Pyongyang was called the "Jerusalem of the East". At the dawn of the 20th century, almost the totality of the population of Korea believed in the indigenous shamanic religion and practiced Confucian rites and ancestral worship. Buddhism was nearly dead, reduced to a tiny and weak minority of monks, despite its long history and cultural influence, because of 500 years of suppression by the ruling Neo Confucian Joseon kingdom,

During the absorption of Korea into the Japanese Empire (1910–1945) the already formed link of Christianity with Korean nationalism was strengthened, as the Japanese tried to impose State Shinto and Christians refused to take part in Shinto rituals. as did Chondoism which aimed to counter Christian influence. North Korean revolutionary leader Kim Il Sung's writings address religion in the context of the national liberation struggle against Japan. Kim argued stated that if a religion "prays for dealing out divine punishment to Japan and blessing the Korean nation" then it is a "patriotic religion" and its believers are patriots and that in the context of a struggle for national salvation against Japan, religionists who share the agenda of liberation must be welcomed into the ranks. Kim criticized the protestant Christian creed, stating that while "[t]here is no law preventing religious believers from making the revolution," the lack of action led to "non resistance" and psalms alone could not block the Japanese guns when "decisive battles" were necessary.

The Korean Peninsula was divided into two states in 1945, the communist north and the capitalist south. Most of the Korean Christians, that had been until then in the northern half of the peninsula, fled to South Korea. By contrast, most of Korean Chondoists remained in the newly formed North Korea. They participate to the politics of North Korea through the Party of the Young Friends of the Heavenly Way. North Korean leader Kim Il Sung attributed the relative lack of religious practice the north in part as a result of the bombing campaigns of the United States in the Korean War, which destroyed places of worship, crucifixes, icons, and Bibles: "believers were killed and passed into the world beyond." Kim recounted that believers saw their places of worship destroyed by Christians, and that Koreans in the north found their faith "powerless in shaping the destiny of human beings." In the 1960's, the government permitted two hundred informal congregations in former centers of Christianity. According to some estimates In 2007 there were approximately 800 Chondoist churches throughout the country and a large central building in Pyongyang, 60 Buddhist temples (maintained more as cultural relics than places of worship), and 5 Christian churches—three Protestant churches, one Catholic church, and one Russian Orthodox church, all of which located in Pyongyang. In 2014, the Korea Conference of Religions for Peace held an inter Korean meeting at Mount Kumgang, North Korea, and another took place in 2017 in Pyongyang.

Although its constitution guarantees freedom of religion in Article 68, the principle is limited by the requirement that religion may not be used as a pretext to harm the state, introduce foreign forces, or harm the existing social order.

Chondoism (천도교 Ch'ŏndogyo) or Cheondoism (South Korean spelling) is a religion with roots in Confucianised indigenous shamanism. It is the religious dimension of the Donghak ("Eastern Learning") movement that was founded by Choe Je u (1824–1864), a member of an impoverished yangban (aristocratic) family, in 1860 as a counter force to the rise of "foreign religions", which in his view included Buddhism and Christianity (part of Seohak, the wave of Western influence that penetrated Korean life at the end of the 19th century). Choe Je u founded Chondoism after having been allegedly healed from illness by an experience of Sangje or Haneullim, the god of the universal Heaven in traditional shamanism. The Donghak movement became so influential among common people that in 1864 the Joseon government sentenced Choe Je u to death. The movement grew and in 1894 the members gave rise to the Donghak Peasant Revolution against the royal government. With the division of Korea in 1945, most of the Chondoist community remained in the north, where the majority of them dwelled. because of its identity as a minjung (popular) and "revolutionary anti imperialist" movement.

Korean shamanism, also known as "Muism" (무교 Mugyo, "mu [shaman] religion") or "Sinism" (신교 Singyo, "religion of the shin [gods]"), is the ethnic religion of Korea and the Koreans. Although used synonymously, the two terms are not identical: Jung Young Lee describes Muism as a form of Sinism – the shamanic tradition within the religion. Other names for the religion are "Sindo" (신도 "Way of the Gods") or "Sindoism" (신도교 Sindogyo, "religion of the Way of the Gods"). In contemporary Korean language the shaman priest or mu is known as a mudang (hangul=무당) if female or baksu if male, although other names and locutions are used. Korean mu "shaman" is synonymous with Chinese wu, which defines priests both male and female. The role of the mudang is to act as intermediary between the spirits or gods, and the human plain, through gut (rituals), seeking to resolve problems in the patterns of development of human life. Central to the faith is the belief in Haneullim or Hwanin, meaning "source of all being", and of all gods of nature, the utmost god or the supreme mind. The mu are mythically described as descendants of the "Heavenly King", son of the "Holy Mother [of the Heavenly King]", with investiture often passed down through female princely lineage. However, other myths link the heritage of the traditional faith to Dangun, male son of the Heavenly King and initiator of the Korean nation. Korean Muism has similarities with Chinese Wuism, Japanese Shinto, and with the Siberian, Mongolian, and Manchurian religious traditions. As highlighted by anthropological studies, the Korean ancestral god Dangun is related to the Ural Altaic Tengri "Heaven", the shaman and the prince. The mudang is similar to the Japanese miko and the Ryukyuan yuta. Muism has exerted an influence on some Korean new religions, such as Chondoism in North Korea. According to various sociological studies, many Christian churches in Korea make use of practices rooted in shamanism as the Korean shamanic theology has affinity to that of Christianity. In the 1890s, the twilight years of the Joseon kingdom, Protestant missionaries gained significant influence, and led a demonisation of the traditional religion through the press, and even carried out campaigns of physical suppression of local cults. The Protestant discourse would have had an influence on all further attempts to uproot Muism. Many northern shamans, displaced by war and politics, migrated to South Korea. As of 2009, the leader of the Korean Buddhist Federation is Yu Yong sun. There are only 60 Buddhist temples in the country, and they are viewed as cultural relics from Korea's past rather than places of active worship. Also, there is a three year college for training Buddhist clergy. A limited revival of Buddhism is apparently taking place. This includes the establishment of an academy for Buddhist studies and the publication of a twenty five volume translation of the Korean Tripitaka, or Buddhist scriptures, which had been carved on 80,000 wooden blocks and kept in the Buddhist temple, Pohyonsa which is located at Myohyangsan in central North Korea. Recently, South Korean Buddhist leaders have been allowed to travel to North Korea and participate in religious ceremonies or give aid to civilians. Despite the North Korean government's official stance on religion, Buddhism along with Confucianism both still have an effect on cultural life in North Korea as they are traditional religions of traditional Korean culture.

Christianity (hangul=그리스도교) became very popular in northern Korea from the late 18th century to the 19th century. The first Catholic missionaries arrived in 1794, a decade after the return of Yi Sung hun, a diplomat who was the first baptised Korean in Beijing. He established a grassroots lay Catholic movement in the peninsula. However, the writings of the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci, who was resident at the imperial court in Beijing, had been already brought to Korea from China in the 17th century. Scholars of the Silhak ("Practical Learning"), were attracted to Catholic doctrines, and this was a key factor for the spread of the Catholic faith in the 1790s. The penetration of Western ideas and Christianity in Korea became known as Seohak ("Western Learning"). A study of 1801 found that more than half of the families that had converted to Catholicism were linked to the Silhak school. Largely because converts refused to perform Confucian ancestral rituals, the Joseon government prohibited the proselytisation of Christianity. Some Catholics were executed during the early 19th century, but the restrictive law was not strictly enforced. Protestant missionaries entered Korea during the 1880s and, along with Catholic priests, converted a remarkable number of Koreans, this time with the tacit support of the royal government. Many Korean Communists came from a Christian background; Kim Il sung's mother, Kang Pan sok, was a Presbyterian deaconess. He attended a mission school and played the organ in church. In his memoir With the Century, he wrote: "I do not think the spirit of Christianity that preaches universal peace and harmony contradicts my idea advocating an independent life for man". In 1945, with the establishment of the communist regime in the north, however, most Christians fled to South Korea to escape persecution. In the 1980s, North Korea produced its own translation of the Bible, which has since been used by Southern missionaries attempting to evangelize the North. By the late 1980s, it became apparent that Christians were active in the governmental elite. The number of churchgoing North Korean Christians more than doubled between the 1980s and the early 2000s, with a total of thirty ministers and 300 church officials. In 1992 and 1994, American evangelist Billy Graham visited North Korea. He met Kim Il sung, giving him a Bible, and preached at Kim Il sung University. In 2008, his son Franklin Graham visited the country. In 2018, the government invited Pope Francis to visit. In late 2018, Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev of the Russian Orthodox Church visited North Korea, meeting with officials and leading a service at the Church of the Life Giving Trinity in Pyongyang. North Korean Christians are officially represented by the Korean Christian Federation, a state controlled body responsible for contacts with churches and governments abroad. In Pyongyang there are five church buildings: the Catholic Changchung Cathedral, three Protestant churches inaugurated in 1988 in the presence of South Korean church officials, and a Russian Orthodox church consecrated in 2006. The internationally supported Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, which opened in 2010, operates with a Christian ethos. Christian aid groups, including the American Friends Service Committee, the Mennonite Central Committee, the Eugene Bell Foundation, and World Vision, are able to operate in the country, but not allowed to proselytize. In 2016, Christmas was celebrated in North Korea, but with the religious overtones downplayed. In 2018, the North Korean Council of Religionists sent a Christmas message to South Korea that expressed the wish that believers on both sides "go hand in hand towards peace and unification, filled with blessings by Christ the Lord". North Korea is number one on Open Doors’ 2023 World Watch List, an annual ranking of the 50 countries where Christians face the most extreme persecution.

The Pew Research Center estimated that there were 3,000 Muslims in North Korea in 2010, an increase from the 1,000 Muslims in 1990. There is a mosque in the Iranian embassy in Pyongyang called Ar Rahman Mosque, the only mosque in the country. The mosque was likely built for the embassy staff, but visits by other foreigners are deemed possible, too.