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CANADIAN LANDSCAPES/ PAYSAGES CANADIENS
CHRISTIANITY IN THE KOREAN DIASPORA IN CANADA
As Noh, Kim and Noh observe, a “significant feature of the Korean[-Canadian]
community is the Korean Protestant Church and other religious institutions”
(xii). Given the status of Protestantism in the Republic of Korea, this may not
be surprising. Similarly, the importance of Christianity in the home country
is congruent with the fact that more than half of Korean-Canadians (57.2%)
reported a Christian religion in the 2021 Census (Statistics Canada 2023),
altogether 124,530 people out of 217,650. Within the community, first gen¬
eration Korean-Canadians boast the highest percentage of Christianity (58%)
followed by second and third generation Korean-Canadians with a respective
56% and 45%.
Korean immigration to Canada started to increase in the mid-1960s due to
Pearson’s introduction of the “points system” and Canadian-South Korean
immigration agreement, negotiated by Trade Minister Jeon Take-bo, who “was
directly responsible for the first wave of Korean immigrants into Canada, many
of them hand-picked from among the families Jeon had known through Chris¬
tian circles connected to the UCC Korea Mission” (Kim-Craigg 183). Ties
between the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea (PROK) and the
United Church of Canada were conducive to the establishment of Korean
ethnic churches. Sang Chul Lee, the founder of the first Korean-Canadian
congregation was hired by Steveston United as a missionary to cater for the
English-speaking Canadians and members of the Japanese minority in Van¬
couver in the 1960s. He soon became engaged in serving his fellow-Koreans
in Canada:
Lee was motivated [...] by a need to provide a supportive community for the new
immigrants. Koreans faced many challenges upon their arrival: from communicat¬
ing in a new language, to learning new customs, to knowing what clothes to wear,
to dealing with racist attitudes, to finding work in a society that did not recognize
their expertise, to raising children in a new school system. The church was one of
the only places where Koreans could understand what was said, and be understood
in return. This sense of being understood had as much to do with shared experi¬
ences of migration as it had to do with language and cultural background. The fact
that the church was an organization run by and for fellow Korean immigrants in
the new land drew people in (Kim-Craigg 181-182).
Bearing the name Toronto Korean United Church (TKUC), the first Korean
church in Toronto was established at St. Luke’s United Church downtown
Toronto on the corner of Sherbourne and Carlton Street in 1967 (Kim-Craigg
181-185).
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