Christianity, Shamanism, and Modernization in South Korea

In South Korea there is no modernization without Christianity and no Christianity without shamanism.

There is no "official," nor one dominant, religion in South Korea. Shamanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Christianity, as well as a whole spectrum of new religious movements, coexist peacefully in one of the most religiously pluralistic countries in the world. Nonetheless, there are also more than 160 Protestant denominations and nearly 60,000 churches, as well as 1,100 Catholic churches, which supposedly make South Korea "the most Christianized" non-Western country, excepting the Philippines, in the world.

Since its introduction in 1884, Protestant Christianity has proceeded to become the nation's largest religion with over nine million followers, representing more than one fifth of the total population. The rise of Roman Catholicism in South Korea has been equally remarkable. Introduced in 1784, it had been subjected to severe persecutions for nearly a century -- more than eight thousand Catholics were martyred -- but has steadily grown to be the country's third largest religion after Buddhism. With nearly four million followers, Roman Catholicism has been the fastest growing religion since the late 1980s. Together, Protestants and Catholics thus make up close to a third of the total population in the nation. The rapid growth of Christianity in South Korea is all the more astonishing given that the imported faiths successfully penetrated and took roots in a land dominated by traditional religions, including Shamanism, Buddhism and Confucianism. The country's Christian "success story" is also remarkable in lig ht of the fact that only about 4 percent of the Asian population is Christian and that Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, has failed to strike roots in Japan and China -- neighboring countries with strikingly similar social organization and shared cultural traditions -- where less than 1 percent of the population has converted to Christianity.

This strong religious impulse has been sustained in a vastly modernized and urbanized society. Indeed, Christianity remains vital in a society that has been swept into much that are associated with modernization and Western materialism. Upon closer examination of this fascinating development, it becomes clear that such vitality of Christianity in South Korea has been due to the Church's role as a principal agent of the economic, political and social modernization. Also integral to the dynamism of Christianity has been its indigenization or "Koreanization," whereby the key aspects of indigenous religious beliefs and practices have been incorporated by the imported faith. These two factors have combined to ensure Christianity's preeminence in South Korea in spite of rapid modernization, manifesting the continuing relevance and importance of religion in the lives of people in a contemporary setting, while challenging the notion that modernization inevitably leads to the decline of religion.

A Christian Worldview and the Spirit of Modernization

From early on, Christianity, both Catholicism and Protestantism, provided the first and most continuous impetus to modernization in Korea (see Y. Park 1975; J. Kim 1984). In education, the missionaries were the first to establish a complete system of education, from kindergarten to college, and they were the first to implement modern curriculum, including modern science and medical science, in schools. Taking over from the missionaries, both the Protestant and Catholic Churches have been committed to enriching the educational life of South Koreans, operating dozens of schools at all levels, including some of the nation's top universities. Politically, Koreans first became acquainted with several key values that mark modernity, such as freedom, human rights, democracy and equality, largely through Christianity. The prominence of Christians in politics throughout the last hundred years, either in the independence movement or in the democratic movement, have added further impetus to such a connection. Economical ly, the postwar relief aid, much of which was channeled through missionary agencies, included not only modern goods that were distributed to the needy, but also modern technologies that were subsequently utilized in the government's major economic drives of the 1960s and 1970s. Socially, it was the missionaries who introduced institutional philanthropy by founding the nation's first orphanages and schools for the blind; the Korean churches have followed in their footsteps by maintaining an extensive network of social services, including those for the poor, the elderly, and the mentally or physically challenged, that were in line with the process of modernization.

Because the Church provided the basic tools of modernization and assumed a central role in the economic, political, and social modernization of South Korea, many Koreans viewed the acceptance of the Gospel not only as a means of entry into modern society but also as an access to what is believed to be a more advanced civilization. In this way, Christianity held out a vision of how things might or ought to be, and in due time, conversion to Christianity came to mean enlightenment, inspiring the proselytized to do away with many superstitious or backward aspects of their traditional worldview and behavior. The identification of Christianity as a gateway to modernity and success, both personal and national, acquired even more impetus during the period of rapid economic development from the early 1960s and the end of 1980s. Koreans' admiration of Western culture and its economic achievements played a decisive role in encouraging such identification.