Seventh-day Adventist Church leaders in Northern Asia held their mid-year Executive Committee meeting in the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea last month, the first such meeting there since the country closed its borders in 1953.

Meeting for one day in the city of Kumgangsan, church officers established Chinese theology education and examined implementation of the world church’s extraordinary tithe for this region of the world.

“We have no organized work in North Korea, so to have an official meeting is an historic occasion,” said Glenn Mitchell, a spokesman for the Adventist Church in Northern Asia.

Delegates also visited the North Korea Agricultural Project, a farm run by Adventist Pastor Kim Suk Man of the Yang Yang Jaeil Adventist Church in South Korea. For nine years, he has managed the farm in cooperation with the North Korean government and Hyundai Corporation, instructing farmers how to produce vegetables for those in need in North Korea.

More than 1.5 billion people live within the church’s Northern Asia-Pacific Division, making it the most populous of the church’s 13 world divisions.