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LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS OF ETHNIC CHURCHES IN THE KOREAN DIASPORA IN CANADA
To make the picture even more complex, even though Confucianism is not
considered a religion per se, "an overwhelming majority of Korean Buddhists
and Christians continue to identify their convictions and practices as charac¬
teristically Confucian" (Kim, Routledge Handbook 9).
Historically speaking, Catholicism was the first Christian religion to arrive
in the Korean peninsula through Chinese mediation in the eighteenth centu¬
ry. The figure of Peter Yi Seung-hun was central to the spreading of Catholicism
among scholars and commoners including women (Rausch and Park 12). In
the nineteenth century, Catholicism was perceived as a form of Western in¬
fluence potentially undermining the rule of the government, and as such, was
systematically persecuted (Rausch and Park 13).* Protestantism started to
spread in Korea in the last few decades of the nineteenth century, with the first
resident missionary, Horace Allen setting foot on Korean soil in 1884. Early
Protestantism “focused on medical and educational institutions [...] as a means
to encourage conversion and win state support” (Rausch and Park 13). Prot¬
estant missions enabled Koreans to start their own churches and to shape these
according to their own needs. They also represented a ray of hope against the
growing Japanese influence in the region, and allowed women to participate
and become missionaries, which certainly contributed to their popularity. By
1907, the number of Protestants in Korea surpassed 100,000 and they played
an important role in Korean resistance to the Japanese colonial rule (Rausch
and Park 13). The division of Korea following WWII was a blow to Korean
Protestantism as the North Korean regime was hostile to Christianity from
the beginning. The post-war military regimes in South Korea also caused a rift
among Protestants.* Yet, as Protestants were energetically involved in rebuild¬
ing the country, their numbers grew exponentially and reached 10 million by
1987 (Rausch and Park 14). Still today, Protestantism is the leading Christian
religion in the Republic of Korea: “Protestant churches and church-related
institutions considerably outnumber other religious organizations, with Prot¬
estants having 55,104 in 2017, compared to [...] Catholics at 2,028.13. Protes¬
tants also run the most religious broadcasting stations, newspaper and mag¬
azine publishers, clinics, schools, and social welfare organizations” (Rausch
and Park 15). They make up approximately 20% of the total South Korean
population (H. Choi, “The Sacred and the Secular” 279).
3 “Catholicism’s foreign connections, government fears that it would encourage rebellion, and
the Catholic rejection of ancestor rites led to violent state-sponsored persecution of Catholics”
(Rausch and Park 13). See also the film The Book of Fish/ Xt&tO|& (2021) telling the story of
Yak-Jeon Jeong and the Catholic persecution of 1801, in which Yi Sung-hun himself was exe¬
cuted.
* Essentially anti-Communist revivalists and evangelicals versus liberal Protestants and Minjung
Theology (Rausch and Park 14).
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