Christians from around the world are joining in a 40-day fast and prayer chain in response to "spiritual attack" on North Korea's youth.

The second annual 40-day fast hosted by the mission group NK Missions will start June 1 and end on July 10. Christians from the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Kenya, Liberia, China, Japan, South Korea, North Korea and other countries have pledged to pray for North Korean children, according to NK Missions.

Youths in the reclusive communist state are the victims of "great spiritual attack," visibly manifested through malnutrition, systematic brainwashing with atheistic ideologies, and forced idolatrous worship, explained the mission group.

The regime forces its citizens to adhere to a personality cult which worships former North Korea leader Kim Il-Sung, "the father," and the current dictator Kim Jung-Il, "the son."
North Korea is also currently facing one of its biggest food shortages in the past decades with millions of people going hungry because of poor harvest and a 75 percent drop in donor aid, according to The Associated Press.

The famine in the mid-1990's resulted in the death of an estimated 2 million people from starvation. World Food Programme (WFP) spokesman Mike Huggins, after returning from a trip to North Korea late last year, reported that 37 percent of North Korean children under six were chronically malnourished and one-third of North Korean women were anaemic and malnourished.

The global prayer event will focus on Malachi 4:6 which reads:

See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse

Participants will pray reminding themselves of God's promise to "turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers," explains NK Missions.

"We are praying this promise into our lives, into our society, into North Korea, and even into our own families," organisers state in the NK prayer website. "And we do not pray hopelessly. Already God has been working and moving in families to bring healing and reconciliation for the sake of preparing a people made ready for Jesus and to make ready armies of families, children and parents, walking and moving together to bless the nations of this earth."

During the prayer and fasting period, participants will also pray for their country's own set of youth problems such as increase drug use, gang violence, sexual impurities, depression, and degeneration of the family unit.

NK Missions is a California-based evangelical Christian ministry dedicated to reaching the people of North Korea with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The group works through international and local networks to increase awareness, mobilise and coordinate efforts for North Korea missions.