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The head of South Korea’s National Council of Churches has written to President Bush, urging that sanctions on North Korea be lifted and that a peace agreement be negotiated to replace an armistice signed on the Korean Peninsula in 1953.

When evangelical pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren announced that he would make a preaching mission to North Korea next year, it raised eyebrows in the conservative religious community.

North Korea, after all, is a keystone in President Bush’s “axis of evil” and is called by the State Department and human rights groups a gross violator of religious freedom.