The Christinization of Korea: Religious and Non-Religious Factors for the Remarkable Growth of Christianity
| Andrew Eungi Kim | |
| |
| Name in Latin Alphabet: | Andrew Eungi Kim |
|---|---|
| Nationality: | Canada |
| Affiliation: | Korea University |
강연 소개
South Korea has no “official” religion—like the Anglican Church in England—nor is there one dominant religion. Shamanism, Buddhism, and Christianity as well as a whole spectrum of new religious movements co-exist peacefully in one of the most religiously pluralistic countries in the world (see Table 1). It is not hard to find expressions of shamanism in contemporary Korea: many ordinary Koreans patronize a shaman ritual called goot for good fortune and an estimated three million Koreans regularly consult modern-day shamans (fortune-tellers) whose establishments reportedly number more than 300,000 in South Korea. Confucianism, albeit more revered and practiced as a set of moral precepts, still attracts a considerable number of devotees: nearly 200,000 Koreans identify Confucianism as their religion and there are some 200 Confucian shrines that serve as the place of worship. Buddhism is the country’s largest religion with nearly eleven million adherents. There are 39 Buddhist orders with more than 11,000 temples and the number of monks total over 26,000.
Protestantism, which was introduced to Korea in 1884, is the second largest religion with almost nine million followers or about 20 percent of the country’s 48 million people. Its growth had been particularly pronounced from the early 1960s to the end of the 1980s, the period of the country’s remarkable modernization. Since the early 1960s, when South Korea’s Protestants scarcely topped the one million mark, the number of Protestant Christians increased faster than in any other country, nearly doubling every decade (see Table 2). The dynamism of Protestantism in Korea is attested to by the fact that the nation now sends more missionaries abroad than most other countries. The number of Korean overseas missionaries at the end of 2008 was 19,413 in 168 countries, which was second only to the United States, which had 46,000 missionaries worldwide. Britain was third with 6,000 missionaries stationed abroad. Also, five of the ten largest churches in the world, including the world’s largest Yoido Full Gospel Church (with reportedly over a half million members), are found in Seoul, a “city of churches.” In addition, there are more than 170 denominations and 60,000 churches. The largest denominations in terms of membership are Presbyterian (33%), Methodist (22%), Holiness (16%), Baptist (11%), and Full Gospel (8%). About ten percent of the total number of Protestant churches comprises independent churches. Adding to the Christian presence in Korea is a large number of Catholics whose total now exceeds 5.1 million or about 11 percent of the population. Catholicism has enjoyed the largest increase in membership of all the religions in the last decade, soaring from 2.9 million in 1995 to over 5 million in 2005.
Together, Protestant and Catholic Christians comprise roughly 30 percent of the population, and Christianity as a whole is the largest religion in Korea. This is all the more astonishing given the fact that Korea is the only country in all of Asia, except for the Philippines, that has embraced Christianity en masse. Also, the Christian success in Korea contrasts sharply with the failure of Christianity to make any impact in Japan—the neighbouring country with markedly similar religious and cultural traditions—where a mere 600,000 or about .5 percent of the Japanese population (130 million) has converted to the new religion. The Christianity had not fared any better in China even when it had religious freedom until the communist takeover in 1949.
The question is: What are the factors that facilitated this tremendous growth of Christianity in Korea, particularly that of Protestantism? There are both religious and non-religious factors.
강연 영상
