Geographically it makes sense, but in every other respect, it’s news to me.

A delegation of North Korean Orthodox clergy has come to Vladivostok from Pyongyang. The four North Korean clerics will be trained for three months at St. Nicholas’s Cathedral, mastering practical skills of conducting the Orthodox liturgy in Church Slavonic.

The delegation is led by Peter Kim Chkher, deputy chairman of the Orthodox Committee in North Korea. It includes two Korean deacons, Theodore and Ioann, and a graduate of the Gnesiny Music School, Kim En Chang, who will study church music in Vladivostok.

The Orthodox Committee has been created in 2002: fr. Dionisy Pozdnyayev, a Russian Orthodox priest from the Moscow Patriarchate invited by the North Korean government to minister to foreign nationals in the North Korean capital said that the creation of an Orthodox Committee “marks the official recognition of Orthodoxy”.

Archbishop Veniamin of Vladivostok and Primorye at his meeting with the North Korean brothers talked about the problems the Orthodox clergy have to tackle in their country and was invited to come for the consecration of the Church of the Trinity in Pyongyang. The construction of this church is planned to be completed next August.