In case you haven’t seen it yet, the NYT’s Norimitsu Onishi wrote a very interesting piece on the relationship between North Korean defectors and South Korean Christian missionaries, especially after they arrive in Seoul. Read the piece in its entirety–here’s just a sampling:
Behind these movements, though, are personal ties between defector and missionary, complicated by a balance of power tipped in the South Korean’s favor and the inevitable mix of religion, politics and money.
To the North Korean defectors, some South Korean missionaries seem more concerned about brokering deals to smuggle them out of China and using them in Seoul as publicity tools against North Korea. To South Korean missionaries, who have risked their lives to evangelize in China, some North Korean defectors appear ungrateful. Although no precise figures exist, only a fifth to a third of North Korean defectors ultimately convert to Christianity, according to most South Korean missionaries interviewed.
And let it not be said that Korea’s missionaries lack ambition:
For the South’s missionaries, converting people from the North, where Christianity first spread before the peninsula’s division, dovetails with their dream of a reunified peninsula. "Oh Lord, please send us, for our brethren up North," reads a verse in the most popular hymn among missionaries working with defectors, "Evangelical Song of Unification." It is also part of a larger dream of spreading the Gospel along the Silk Road back to its source.
"Only when we open up China, with South and North Korea as one, will we be able to go back to Jerusalem," said the Rev. Cho Gi Youn, the manager of missions at the Christian Council of Korea, whose missionary school graduates 300 students a year.
Anyway, like I said, it’s a very good read–look at it on your own.
(Hat tip to commenter)
Oh, and on a slightly related note, Dutch Christians are reportedly praying for their North Korean brothers.
24 Comments
Behind these movements, though, are personal ties between defector and missionary, complicated by a balance of power tipped in the South Korean’s favor and the inevitable mix of religion, politics and money.
People like to question the ulterior motives of the Christians doing this, but I think this is largely unfair.
There are clergy and laypeople who engage in corruption and worse, all while smiling and talking about God and Jesus. But it is not fair to tar every Christian with the same brush.
These Christians are among the few risking their very lives to get people out of the North or out of China (Onishi gives it a one-sentence mention out of his entire article). And if they need money, it’s because crossing borders and running an underground railroad isn’t cheap.
And damn those Christians for actually giving a f*** about educating and assimilating the people they bring to the South. I have met some of them in various forums. I met a now 20-year-old woman who came over a few years ago and the “missionaries” helped her to finish her education and now she is enrolling in one of those missionary universities. How dare they!
An uncle of mine was teaching history at one of these places, and he is no religious nut. I met some of the people there and they are genuinely good people who see a need to help the people trying to escape the North.
Just the same as the people who run Freedom House. It’s no coincidence that a number of these “missionaries” — both Korean and non-Korean — were present at the Seoul Summit. I met an Australian minister there who does some of this work, and the idea that this guy is engaging in a power struggle bent on greed is ludicrous.
Christianity has a pretty good record of social and political activism here. From the first modern medical care to the Samil Movement to helping orphans during the war, and now this. It seems a better way to spend energy than the Schiavo case or blocking gay rights.
i totally agree Kushibo. What i also think deserves a mention is the problem with peoples perceptions that you can seperate religion and politics. Political decisions are based on value judgements which are in turn based on religious beliefs. NK is clearly a very hostile country to any form of religion for which the god is not the dear leader. Taking a political action against NK from the position of a religious group is natural.
“Here I’m just a follower, but over there I was a leader,” the defector said. “It’s not because I was a party member, but because capitalism is creeping into North Korea, if you have a lot of money, you can have power.”
Grateful, indeed. On the other hand, he’ll be right at home in Seoul, as he’s got the core belief down pat: money is power…
I can’t write too much on this at the moment, but I just want to say that the assertion that the laws of modern civil societies are based on and inseparable from religious dogma is not tenable. The Golden Rule and other basic ethical principles that underly the laws of civil society were thought about and debated long before Christianity ever existed, and do not actually disappear if people stop believing in god.
JYCE, Rowan is making the connection between value judgements and religious beliefs, not suggesting that Christianity invented the Golden Rule. Christianity itself makes no bones about being borne from a much older tradition, Judaism.
Yes, even if people do not believe in God, they might follow the Golden Rule, but that doesn’t make the Golden Rule any less of a value judgement.
And so ultimately Rowan’s point stands: political views often stem from value judgements, which often stem from religious views (and isn’t non-theistic humanism itself, looselyspeaking, a value system?).
In other words, for many people, their religious views inform their political views. And in this case, it is leading people to help those that few others are really seeking to help.
Erm, i dont want to impute views to Rowan that he doesnt hold, but i think he said (1) that separating religion from politics ultimately doesn’t work, and (2) politics are based on value judgments which are necessarily based on religion. Neither of which I think holds, because while principles like the golden rule might be value judgments as you say, they don’t necessarily arise out of religion or have anything to do with the supernatural.
What Rowan said implies that unbelievers are almost by definition going to be lawless, immoral, and unethical, and I’m just saying that it isn’t necessarily so.
JYCE,
what i was trying to say was close to your first point. Although you can seperate political and political institutions to a certain degree, you can never seperate the judgements that are made one them. People will make political judgement based on their religious beliefs (or other moral foundations). I didn’t want to talk about the origins of particular belief systems, but i think mean to say that i think political decisions will be more likely to follow religious beliefs, but not the other way. This is not always the case, but it will always be the case to a certain extent.
Kushibo was right in what i was trying to say, sorry it wasn’t more clear, that goes for this post. i’m in a hurry and have to go anyway.
Does anyone know of any organizations that does work with defectors? I’m feeling in the mood for handing out free Anglish lessons.
Bah, such bad grammar… how am I gunna teach anyone this dang language.
Contact Handong University’s English Department. They’re down in Pohang, but they probably have connections all over the country. If nobody gives any more specific information in a couple days, I’ll post something here.
North Koreans should ignore those nasty South Korean Christian fanatics and rely exclusively on the rescue efforts of South Korean Buddhists. What? There aren’t any South Korean Buddhists doing this kind of thing? North Koreans should just stay put - starvation is preferable to being rescued by Christian nutjobs.
I probably shouldn’t start writing excessively long posts about this issue, but really, let’s not attack strawmen that nobody believes in. Nobody, not even the most longstanding liberal secular-humanist/atheist is going to say that Christians are wrong for helping North Korean refugees, or that Christians are inherently evil people.
What bothers me about Christianity in Korea isn’t some nationalist rejection of foreign influence, as some tragically dumb people have misconstrued. It’s that Korea has imported mindless Calvinist Christianity, including the anti-intellectualism, conformity, dreary/joyless work ethic, etc., without importing the secular, Enlightenment thinking that makes it tolerable and easy enough to ignore. AFAIK there isn’t a single Unitarian church in the entire country, even though many of the founders of the United States were Unitarian, deists, or actively dismissive of religion. Christianity, even the fundamentalist kind, exists in the United States and Europe in a context of several centuries of Englightenment skepticism towards religion, from Voltaire onwards. Even if you’re unfortunate to be born into a fundo Christian family, you can’t help but be well aware of alternatives.
You don’t yet have the same skepticism to the claims of Christianity here, and IMO it’s long overdue. In that sense, Onishi’s somewhat skeptical attitude towards Christian missionaries and their attitude towards North Koreans is justified. Nobody, including Onishi, is saying that it’s a bad thing that Christian missionaries help North Koreans who are in a very bad situation. What would you say, though, if these were Wahhabist Muslims from Saudi Arabia trying to convert them?
There are actually Christian denominations, Quakers for example, that provide assistance to those living in distressed circumstances without emphasizing conversion. Quakers, unfortunately, are not big in Korea, and I for one think that’s too bad.
“starvation is preferable to being rescued by Christian nutjobs.”
Self-destruction would be preferable than being under Chinese dominion which will never happen.
JYCE, I think you’re mistaken to think that most Christians in Korea are some version of fundamentalists. Certainly some are, but as is the case back home (Canada) there are plenty of people who have a variety of views on the subject. There may not be any United churches, but there are many Christians with a moderate view. Anyway this is my opinion, though as a foreigner, I know I’m on the fringes of the Christian ’scene’ here.
I’m going to disagree on the basis of abundant personal experience about the penchant of most Korean Protestants for fundamentalism and obscurantism, but I’ll concede that this doesn’t itself prove anything. However, I think one can look at things like the fact that Korea sends the second largest number of missionaries after the United States, and then look at which Christian denominations send out the lions share of missionaries, and then make a fairly good guess as to how much Korean Christianity endorses ideas of religious pluralism and tolerance. One can also point to the fact that every quack variety of American pentecostalism is warmly welcomed and represented here, but liberal varieties of Christianity, like Unitarianism, equally American and with a quite respectable and important role in American history, are totally unknown.
Anwyway, as Onishi mentioned, how quack/fundo crazy is the notion that “Only when we open up China, with South and North Korea as one, will we be able to go back to Jerusalem?” I think it speaks for itself.
Zhang Fei has an excellent point about how and why
fundo-christians in the U.S. are (to the extent they are) tolerable– by way of lots of the salt of skepticism.
I cannot help but view the actions of christians in China and South Korea critically. Aside from the fact that their help to N. Koreans is soaked in the context of conversion (and so much anti-regime rhetoric) that it seems their work is heavily front-loaded with politics, not humanitarianism.
It seesm those N. koreans are best off laying low and making a good living in China, where the economy is light-years ahead of the North.
The Chinese, moreover, are way cool with them being there as long as they don’t cause any trouble. And the reports of abuse of immigrants i am sure are somewhat true, but immigrants get abused in South korea, too. If one doesn’t have legal status one is bound to get abused. That does not make it right, but it is just the way it is.
If people want to give them stuff, they can, but they should not condition their help with political or religious conversion, which is exactly what these missionaries do.
Thus, they are rightly criticized for it.
At least these Christian missionaries are trying to help North koreans and often take great personal risks in doing so. Why is there such a hatred and mistrust of Christians? Certainly fundies have their own agendas, but most ‘aid groups’ throughout the world have their own (often anti-capitalistic) agendas (and are often very destructive themselves).
If the Christians are causing more damage than they’re helping, certainly criticism is warranted, but otherwise, I think alot of it is out-and-out anti-Christian bias. Certainly anti-fundamentalist bias (I’m not a fundie, but I know people who are, and I get tired of seeing their views constantly maligned).
These missionaries will refuse to help those who won’t convert to Christianity? Maybe a few missionaries are like that, but I highly doubt that most are like that. These missionaries are far from perfect, but at least they are trying to help!
“The Chinese, moreover, are way cool with them being there as long as they don’t cause any trouble.” No, China is not a cool place for N.K. refugees–the women in particular are sold as brides or into prostitution.
China is obligated under a treaty to repatriate the N. Koreans, and doesn’t want them in the first place because they compete with Chinese for work.
If “their work is heavily front-loaded with politics,” then so is the S. Korean gov’t refusal to aid N.K. refugees in China–the difference is that these missionaries are trying to save people’s lives, which is far more than we can credit the S.K. gov’t for.
The prostelytizing aspect is troubling to me, but these people are active in rescuing people in limbo, who have no status in China and are oppressed in N.K. To say “N. koreans are best off laying low and making a good living in China” shows a real lack of understanding.
And what is Onishi doing to help North Korean refugees? His criticisms remind me of when Christopher Hitchens savaged Mother Theresa. Give me a break.
Christians are doing the most to help NK refugees, and the refugees will remember that.
To nokcha,
How they are “rightly” criticized? Are you pro-China?
North Koreans should ignore those nasty South Korean Christian fanatics and rely exclusively on the rescue efforts of South Korean Buddhists. What? There aren’t any South Korean Buddhists doing this kind of thing? North Koreans should just stay put - starvation is preferable to being rescued by Christian nutjobs. Far better for North Koreans to bathe themselves in the warm sunshine of the New York Times’s approval - for choosing death rather than be rescued by Christians.
North Koreans should ignore those nasty Chinese communists fanatics and rely exclusively on the rescue efforts of South Korean Buddhists. What? There aren’t any South Korean Buddhists doing this kind of thing? North Koreans should just stay put - starvation is preferable to being rescued by disgusting Chinese. Far better for North Koreans to bathe themselves in the warm sunshine of the New York Times’s approval - for choosing death rather than be rescued by Chinese.