WASHINGTON – In a massive prayer vigil expected to be the largest gathering of Korean Americans in the country’s history, more than 15,000 Korean Christians and activists are expected to descend upon Los Angeles this weekend to demonstrate for human rights in North Korea. The rally will be headlined by one of the authors of the North Korean Human Rights Act, Senator Brownback, a Republican of Kansas, and, according to event organizers, will gather activists to “pray for the people of North Korea, who through no fault of their own, suffer from the repressive North Korean regime” and bring attention to their plight.

According to observers of the North Korean human rights movement, this weekend’s gathering is also an important part of a growing movement among Korean Americans to make the issue of North Korean human rights abuses more central to America’s foreign policy agenda.

As new reports emerge from the Hermit Kingdom documenting atrocities against North Korean Christians – including pastors being run over by steamrollers for practicing their faith, and a young woman’s execution for carrying a prohibited Bible – their fellow Christians in America are “on fire” with a desire to increase awareness of their brothers’ and sisters’ suffering in Asia, one of the leaders of the North Korea Freedom Coalition, Suzanne Scholte, said.

Ms. Scholte – a prominent activist who is also the North Korean Freedom Day chairman – pointed to the Korean Church Coalition for North Korean Freedom, the group organizing Sunday’s vigil at the Los Angeles Convention Center, as an example.

The coalition was formed last year, and now represents 3,000 churches and pastors in America and Canada. This weekend’s rally is the most recent in a series of similar prayer gatherings sponsored by the coalition, held in New York, Washington, Chicago, Seattle, Dallas, and Atlanta.

The coalition coordinates Korean churches around the country to advocate greater compliance with the North Korean Human Rights Act, passed by Congress and approved by the president last year. The coalition also provides escapees with material support and helps them integrate into American society.

According to Ms. Scholte, who will be joining Mr. Brownback to address the coalition at this weekend’s vigil, the activism among Korean-American Christians represents a level of participation surprising in a demographic traditionally quiet on political matters, both domestic and foreign.

As she was organizing the first North Korean Freedom Day last year, Ms. Scholte recalled, “People said, ‘There’s no way you’re going to get more than 200 Korean Americans, because Korean Americans are not involved – because they care too much about working hard or getting their kids into good schools.’

“But more than 1,000 people showed up at that rally,” she added.” There’s just this incredible awareness that’s just on fire in the Korean church community.”

A fervent belief in the liberating power of prayer, Ms. Scholte said, was prompting increased assertiveness on a matter many Korean Americans consider overlooked in America’s Korea policy.

“I absolutely think we should be leading on the human rights issue instead of the nuclear one,” Ms. Scholte said. “We are letting him set the agenda,” she added of Kim Jong Il.

The sentiment was echoed by the Washington representative of the Exile Committee for North Korean Democracy, Dong Chul “Daniel” Choi. Mr. Choi, 38, who escaped from North Korea in 1994, agreed with Ms. Scholte that calling out the Kim regime’s atrocities would hurt the dictatorship more than negotiations to dismantle its nuclear program.

“The most important thing to the Kim Jong Il regime is to maintain the regime,” Mr. Choi said. “Kim Jong Il fears that if the North Korean people realize what human rights are, and what democracy is … it means that Kim Jong Il cannot maintain his dictatorship.”

As a result, Mr. Choi said, Kim Jong Il “tried to raise the nuclear threat and nuclear weapons” as a distraction, staving off international efforts to loosen the stranglehold maintained by the dictator’s domestic propaganda machine.

Despite that control, “I think many North Korean people don’t believe in Kim Jong Il anymore,” Mr. Choi said. “They don’t believe the propaganda.

“But they fear that if they talk out against the Kim Jong Il regime, or they talk about freedom and democracy, they would be executed,” he added.

Mr. Choi cited his mother, who worked in a North Korean Communist Party supply facility, as an example. One day, without notice or reason, she was arrested by the North Korean authorities and accused of stealing from the facility, a charge Mr. Choi said was probably an attempt by thieving higher-ups to scapegoat a lower-ranking employee for their own crimes.

His mother, Mr. Choi said, was sentenced to 13 years in a prison camp, and Mr. Choi was pulled from Kim Il Sung University and sentenced to hard labor as punishment for his mother’s “offense.”

Before her imprisonment, Mr. Choi said, his mother was a loyal party member who bought the Kims’ propaganda. “But then when she was in the prison camp, she realized it’s not a paradise or a dream,” Mr. Choi said. Two years after their release, in the winter of 1994, he and his mother fled the North Hamgyung province – crossing the frozen Tumen River, which forms the province’s border with China.

Many North Koreans, Mr. Choi said, have had similar experiences of disillusionment, and need instruction about democracy from Korean exiles and free governments abroad in order to encourage resistance to Kim Jong Il and prepare for democratic reform.

Korean American churches, Mr. Choi said, play an important role, both by persistently raising the issue of North Korean human rights in America and by providing assistance to Korean exiles in China, South Korea, and Mongolia. They also secure funds to finance free radio programming into the Hermit Kingdom, he said. Ms. Scholte said such programming would find a receptive audience, citing reports indicating that many North Koreans have started breaking apart government-issued radios and reconfiguring them to pick up prohibited frequencies.

Korean churches’ advocacy also appears to be finding receptive audiences in Washington. In addition to Mr. Brownback’s participation in Sunday’s rally, members of Congress have recently called on the Bush administration to make North Korean human and religious rights more integral to negotiations with both Koreas and China.

America’s special envoy for human rights in North Korea, Jay Lefkowitz, also suggested last week that the issue would be garnering greater attention among federal officials. In remarks delivered to the Center for Religious Freedom, part of the human rights organization Freedom House, Mr. Lefkowitz said he is “presently in the final stages” of crafting his strategy for making North Korea more free.

The envoy, appointed in August, said the plan will call for “senior officials in the U.S. government to engage foreign officials in northeast Asia,” and will include efforts to raise the issue of North Korean human rights among governments and people in the free nations of Europe and Asia and to “seek their involvement and assistance.” Mr. Lefkowitz said he would begin coordinating the assistance to North Koreans provided for by the North Korean Human Rights Act, in partnership with nongovernmental organizations like Freedom House.