Christianity in Korea

The practice of Christianity is marginal in North Korea, but significant in South Korea, which has a population of 8.6 million Protestants, mostly Presbyterians, and 5.8 million Catholics. Christianity in the form of Catholicism was first introduced during the late Joseon Dynasty period by Confucian scholars who encountered it in China. In 1603, Yi Su-gwang, a Korean politician, returned from Beijing carrying several theological books written by Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit missionary to China. He began disseminating the information in the books, introducing Christianity to Korea. In 1787, King Jeongjo of Joseon officially outlawed Catholicism as an "evil practice," declaring it heretical and strictly banned. Catholicism was reintroduced in 1785 by Yi Seung-hun and French and Chinese Catholic priests were soon invited by the Korean Christians.
Joseon royalty saw the new religion as a subversive influence and persecuted its earliest followers in Korea, culminating in the Catholic Persecution of 1866, in which 8,000 Catholics across the country were killed, including nine French missionary priests. Later in the 19th century, the opening of Korea to the outside world gradually brought more religious toleration toward Christians.
Sorae Church, which was the first Protestant church in Korea, was established by Seo Sang-ryun on 16 May 1883. Lee Soo-jung, one of the first Protestants in Korea, was baptized in Japan on 29 April 1883, and wrote an English article on the Missionary Review of the World to urge more American missionaries to enter Korea on 13 December 1883. Robert Samuel Maclay and Horace Newton Allen entered Korea one year later in 1884. Horace Allen was a North Presbyterian missionary who later became an American diplomat. He served in Korea until 1905, by which time he had been joined by many others. The Anglican Church of Korea can be traced back to 1890, when Charles Corfe, the first bishop of Joseon landed in Korea; the first Anglican church in Korea was established in 1891 at Nae-dong, Jung-gu, Incheon.
The growth of Christian denominations was gradual before 1945. In that year, approximately 2% of the population was Christian. Rapid growth ensued after the war, when Korea was freed from Japanese occupation by the Allies: by 1991, 18.4% of the population was Protestant, and 6.7% was Catholic. The Catholic Church has increased its membership by 70% in the ten years leading up to 2007. Meanwhile, Eastern Orthodoxy accounts for about 4,000 adherents in South Korea, or 0.005% of the total population. Numerous unorthodox sects, such as the Unification Church founded in 1954 by Sun Myung Moon, have also developed in Korea. As of 2024, 31% of the South Korean population is Christian.
The influence on education has been decisive, as Christian missionaries started 293 schools and 40 universities including three of the top five academic institutions. Christianity was associated with more widespread education and Western modernization. Catholicism and Protestantism are seen as the religion of the middle class, youth, intellectuals, and urbanites, and has been central to South Korea's pursuit of modernity and westernization after the end of World War II and the liberation of Korea. In the early 21st century, however, the growth of Protestantism has declined, perhaps due to scandals involving church leadership, fundamentalism, and conflict among various sects. Some analysts also attribute this to overly zealous missionary work.

Cultural significance

Christianity has been a dynamic force in Korean life, and had a positive influence on other religions. Buddhists compete for loyalty and attention, and it inspired numerous smaller sects. They adopted many of the methods pioneered by the Protestants. The influence on higher education in Korea has been decisive, as Christians founded 293 schools and 40 universities, including 3 of the top 5 academic institutions.
Prior to the Korean War, two-thirds of Korean Christians lived in the North, but most later fled to the South. It is not known exactly how many Christians remain in North Korea today. There is uncertainty about the exact number in South Korea. By the end of the 1960s, there were an estimated half a million Catholics and one million Protestants in South Korea, but during the "Conversion Boom" period ending in the 1980s, the number of Catholics and Protestants increased faster in South Korea than in any other country. The 2005 South Korean census showed 29.2 percent of the population identifying as Christian, up from 26.3 percent ten years previously. Catholics tend to be better educated than most other religious groups in South Korea, in the sense that they have a high number of college graduates and post-graduate degrees per capita. The Presbyterian Church has the highest number of members of any Protestant denomination in South Korea, with close to 20,000 churches affiliated with the two largest Presbyterian denominations in the country. The Orthodox Christianity under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople is a small minority religion in South Korea with about 4,000 official members in 2013.
South Korea provides the world's second-largest number of Christian missionaries, surpassed only by the United States. GMS, the missionary body of the "Hapdong" General Assembly of Presbyterian Church of Korea, is the single largest missionary organization in South Korea.
South Korean missionaries have been serving in 10/40 Window nations, which are more hostile to Westerners. In 2000, there were 10,646 South Korean Protestant missionaries in 156 countries, along with an undisclosed number of Catholic missionaries. According to a 2004 article, "South Korea dispatched more than 12,000 missionaries to over 160 countries in comparison to about 46,000 American and 6,000 British missionaries, according to missionary organizations in South Korea and the West". According to a 2007 article, "Korea has 16,000 missionaries working overseas, second only to the US". In 1980, South Korea sent 93 missionaries and by 2009, some 20,000 Korean missionaries.

Growth of Christianity

Appeal in the North

Christianity, especially Catholicism and Protestantism, had a special appeal to Koreans in the North. Between 1440 and 1560, there were migrations to the northern provinces, which were designed to strengthen the border. This created a society of mixed backgrounds without an aristocracy and without long-standing religious institutions. However, it did have a strong and ambitious merchant class, as well as a strong military tradition. Local elites gained administrative positions and adopted Confucian literati lifestyles but were not easy to attain high-level positions. During Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945, the North became the more industrial region of Korea. The area was highly receptive to Catholic and Protestant missionaries in the late 19th century, who brought Western knowledge, and established hospitals and Western-style medical care, schools, and a window to the wider world. The middle-class elites sent their sons to the Catholic or Protestant schools. In turn the sons became strong nationalists who considered the United States a rallying point in opposition to Japanese colonial imperialism. In a reversal of previous Southern dominance, the North produced many influential figures in Korean history. After 1945, North Korea's Soviet-influenced state policy of atheism as a major facet of Juche caused most Christians to flee to South Korea in pursuit of religious freedom.

Academic sympathy

's books, which he created to use Chinese ideograms and concepts to introduce Catholicism, provoked academic controversy when Yi Gwang-jeong brought them into Korea. Academics remained critical of the new thought for many years. Early in the 17th century, Yi Su-gwang, a court scholar, and Yu Mong-in, a cabinet minister, wrote highly critical commentaries on Ricci's works. During the next two centuries, academic criticism of Catholic beliefs continued, as it overturned Confucian veneration of elders and tradition. Some scholars, however, were more sympathetic to Catholicism. Members of the Silhak school believed in social structure based on merit rather than birth, and were therefore often opposed by the mainstream academic establishment.
Silhak scholars perceived Catholicism as providing an ideological basis for their beliefs and were therefore attracted to what they saw as the egalitarian values of Catholicism. When Catholicism was finally established in Korea in the 18th century, there was already a substantial body of educated opinion sympathetic to it, which was crucial to the spread of the Catholic faith in the 1790s. An 1801 study indicated that 55% of all Catholics had family ties to the Silhak school.

Lay leadership

As a result of the influence of the Silhak school, Catholicism in Korea began as an indigenous lay movement rather than being largely organized by a foreign missionaries. The first Catholic prayer-house was founded in 1784 at Seoul by Yi Seung-hun, a diplomat who had been baptized in Beijing. In 1786, Yi proceeded to establish a hierarchy of lay-priests. Although the Vatican ruled in 1789 that the appointment of lay-priests violated Canon law, in Korea indigenous lay-workers rather than foreign prelates carried Catholicism to many. Since Christianity began as largely a grassroots effort in Korea, it spread more quickly through the population.

Hangul, literacy and education

, a phonemic Korean alphabet invented around 1446 by scholars in the court of Sejong the Great, was little used for several centuries because of the perceived cultural superiority of Classical Chinese. However, the Catholic Church became the first Korean religious organization to officially adopt Hangul as its primary script. Bishop Siméon-François Berneux mandated that all Catholic children be taught to read it. Christian literature printed for use in Korea, including that used by the network of schools established by Christian missionaries, mostly used the Korean language and the easily learned Hangul script. This combination of factors resulted in a rise in the overall literacy rate, and enabled Christian teachings to spread beyond the elite, who mostly used Chinese. As early as the 1780s, portions of the Gospels were published in Hangul; doctrinal books such as the "Jugyo Yoji" appeared in the 1790s and a Catholic hymnal was printed around 1800.
John Ross, a Scottish Presbyterian missionary based in Shenyang, completed his translation of the New Testament into Korean in 1887, and Protestant leaders began a mass distribution effort. In addition, they established numerous schools, the first modern educational institutions in Korea. The Methodist Paichai School for boys was founded in 1885, and the Methodist Ewha School for girls followed in 1886. These, and similar schools established soon afterward, helped the expansion of Protestantism among the common people. Protestants surpassed Catholics as the largest Christian group in Korea. Female literacy rose sharply, since women had previously been excluded from the educational system.