WASHINGTON — Efforts to save the life of Son Jong Nam, a North Korean evangelist who faces a death sentence from the communist regime for practicing Christianity, will reach the State Department today, when Mr. Son’s younger brother is scheduled to meet with administration officials and plead for their intervention.

The brother, Son Jong Hoon, met yesterday with members of Congress to request their help in freeing his sibling.

Son Jong Nam fled North Korea for China with his wife, daughter, and nephew in 1998 after his pregnant wife was severely beaten by North Korean government interrogators, resulting in a miscarriage. She would later die from her injuries.

Mr. Son was converted to Christianity by Chinese missionaries and returned to North Korea to evangelize — a criminal act under the regime of Kim Jong-il. In 2001, Mr. Son was arrested by Communist Chinese authorities and extradited to North Korea. He was released in 2004, but then arrested again in 2006 and sentenced to public execution by the Kim regime.

Although the charges against Mr. Son — illegal border crossing, meeting with enemies of the state, and disseminating anti-state literature — are vague, advocates for him said he is essentially being executed because he is a Christian.

“The reality of much of his interrogation, and much of what he has to endure, has to do with his being a Christian,” said Todd Nettleton, a spokesman for Voice of the Martyrs, a Christian human rights group that helped to arrange for Son Jong Hoon’s appearance in Washington. “They didn’t ask questions about being in China and getting across the border. They didn’t ask questions about talking to so-called enemies of the state. The questions they asked had to do with Christianity and his religious work. The interrogation was about his faith, and his Christian work.”

Son Jong Hoon told The New York Sun through an interpreter that the fact that his brother was arrested while in the middle of a study session with a Chinese missionary, combined with the fact that the much of the evidence used against him consisted of a documentation of his Christian evangelical activities, strongly suggests that he is being executed simply for being a Christian.

The Korean Church Coalition, an international, non-denominational Christian organization made up of over 3,000 Korean churches that is involved in pushing for human rights in North Korea, expressed their outrage over this incident, and demanded the release of Mr. Son, in a letter to Secretary of State Rice. The church group also blamed the Communist government of China for the repatriation of Mr. Son that led to his imprisonment in North Korea.

“China is equally responsible for the murder of many North Koreans who were forcibly repatriated back to North Korea,” the church group said in their letter to Ms. Rice. “The blood is on the hands of the Chinese Government as well.”

The director of the U.S-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University, Jae Ku, who is the former director of Freedom House’s North Korea program, said that persecution of North Korean Christians began with the Kim Jong-il’s father and predecessor, Kim Il-sung.

“Christianity at the turn of the last century was thriving in the Korean Peninsula,” said Mr. Ku. “Pyongyang was called ‘the Jerusalem of the East.’ … It was only after Korean independence in 1945 that Christians began to be persecuted.”

An official from Voice of the Martyrs said that there was talk earlier this year of Mr. Son being released, but lack of public pressure contributed to the fact that, as of now, Mr. Son is slated for execution.

The North Korean representative at the United Nations could not be reached for comment.

As part of an effort to secure Mr. Son’s release, his brother met today with Senator Brownback, a Republican of Kansas who is a candidate for president. He also met with the third-ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma. He also met with top aide to Senator Lugar of Indiana, who is the senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.