A fragment of Korean tradition: Christianity in Korea

Ana Drevenek, 18121275 February 2014 Thinking about Korean tradition I came up with a thought about phenomena that have changed Korean tradition and created new currents within it. One of those phenomena is the appereance of Christianity in Korean and especially the huge success that it has there. According to some people, Christianity deeply changes Korean society and was even responsible for some major economical transformations of the country. In this essay I would like to explore, within my own knowledge and imagination, why Christianity was so successful in Korea. We can think about success of a religion only because the goal of this religion is expansion and accumulation of new followers. If a movement is not ambitious in these terms, then success or failure are irrelevant to it and have no meaning to it. But Christianitys goal from the very beginning was to expand and each community converting to Christianity can be regarded as Christianitys success. The percentage of Christians among the Korean population is drastically higher thatn the percentage of Christians in other Asian countries. The numbers are striking and mean that in Korea, circumstances were especially favourable for Christianity to flourish. After one century of missions, the membership of the Korean Protestant churches has grown today to an amount of ten million, thereby constituting 20% of the entire population of South Korea. Korea has at present 60 thousand Protestant churches, 100 thousand ministers and 12 thousand overseas missionaries, ranking second after the USA. In the meantime it has also earned a name as a missionary country. Considering that there are only 2% Christians among the population of Asia, Christianity in Korea may be recognized as a remarkable success story with growth unparalleled in church history. In my opinion the reasons for the success of Christianity in Korea lie in the dynamics of Korean Christianity itself, since it has adjusted to traditional religions and culture without being mixed with traditional culture, and transformed it through moderation and adaptation, though having also certain conflicts with it. (Kim 2004) Why did Christianity have such a big success in Korea? Samuel Moffer, an American Missionary and church historian, who dedicated his lifelong carrier to mission in Korea, formulated this explanation: Korean Protestantism taught social justice, respected science and learning as high values like Confucianism, sought for purity, and promised a next life like Buddhism. It taught prayer will be answered and miracles will happen like Shamanistic religion. (Kim 2004) However, I would like to add my remark here. The notion of Protestantism as being the source of modern capitalism is well known. It is said the Protestantism promoted the market economy. We discussed in class how market economy is a very important value for modern Koreans and how whether something brings profit or not has become an important criteria for everything. So if we look at it from this perspective, it is no wonder that Christianity had such

success in Korea it matched Korean attraction towards market economy, expansion and development in Western model. In my view the success of Christianity in Korea is caused by Christianity's going hand in hand with nationalism, becoming an instrument of modernization, whereas in the Western colonial time in South-East Asian Christianity co-operated with the Western colonial governments, thus becoming its collaborator. So, in India, China, and Japan, Christianity was rejected as a Western religion. However, in Korea, it became a dynamic ground for enlightenment and modernization and a centre for its national movement. In this situation, Western missionaries, who came into Korea in 1884, tried to protect nationalists by making their residences, which possessed the status of extraterritoriality, safe havens. For that reason, Christianity became naturally associated with nationalism by supporting the enlightenment campaign. (Kim 2004) This passage clearly shows that Christianity was linked with nationalism in Korea. In all other countries it was rejected as something negative as everything Western was rejected as something negative, especially in China that suffered hardly because of this attitude. It was rejected, because the interference from Western countries in their own economy, politics was for them something outrageous and showing disrespect to their integrity. However, Korea did not perceive it in this way, maybe because of its desires for everything that the West had achieved and had been. Christianity was introduced into Korea as an instrument of national enlightenment. Christian missionaries started an indirect, educational and medical mission rather than a direct Gospel mission in order to infiltrate into the closed Confucian society. The setting up of educational and medical bodies became the cornerstone of Korean modernization. (Kim 2004) As stated in the quote, Christian missionaries in Korea understood what Korean desires were and built their power on them. They did not try to impose foreign ideas to Korean people but served them with what they wanted to achieve in this particular time. Maybe this is the key to Christianitys success in Korea. In this essay I tried to combine several ideas and notions about Korea that I have learned so far. I combined the Korean inclination towards market economy, the success of Christianity in Korea and features of Korean society/tradition that made this success possible. I believe that tradition is a man-made product and it is especially flexible in Korea as it is very opened to foreign ideas. Korea was very opened to Confucianism and political and social models from China and later in was eager to adapt Western models. This is, in my opinion, a very important feature of Korean tradition. Works cited
Kim, Yung Han. CHRISTIANITY AND KOREAN CULTURE: THE REASONS FOR THE SUCCESS OF CHRISTIANITY. Brill, 2004: 132-152.