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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 characteristically 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 century. 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 influence 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). Protestant 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 rebuilding 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 Protestants having 55,104 in 2017, compared to [...] Catholics at 2,028.13. Protestants also run the most religious broadcasting stations, newspaper and magazine 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 executed. * Essentially anti-Communist revivalists and evangelicals versus liberal Protestants and Minjung Theology (Rausch and Park 14). «129 »
