Your comments about being English teachers is strangely irrelevant. Was it an attempt at a joke?

As for the percentage of Korean Christians, it is important for newspapers to get their facts correct. That is a basic rule of journalism.

You would probably have a different opinion of Korea’s religious inclinations if Buddhist temples and shrines also advertised with a red neon symbol at night. There is a visible, vocal and sometimes even aggressive Christian minority in Korea, but don’t be fooled into thinking they represent the entire country’s religious attitude.

(Apologies for being off-topic again.)

From the NYTimes piece: “In 2004, eight Korean missionaries in Iraq were kidnapped but released after they pretended to be doctors and nurses…The government and Saemmul Presbyterian Church, to which the hostages belong, have emphasized that the captives, who are nurses, English teachers and homemakers, went to Afghanistan, an Islamic country, to provide aid at hospitals and schools, not to spread Christianity.”

Perhaps they were pretending to be English teachers, too. (A Korean English teacher–not exactly the best person to learn English from.) I assume they were all licensed teachers with real degrees.

Lastly, who cares about the exact percentage of Christians in Korea. Your own eyes will tell you the pervasiveness of Christianity in Korea. If you simply walk down a street in Seoul, churches and red neon crosses are abound and you won’t have too much trouble running into a missionary either.

Sorry if I’m getting caught up in the numbers, but according to a 1995 Korean National Statistical Office survey, 49.3% of Koreans had no religion, 26.3% were Christian (19.7% Protestant and 6.6% Catholic) while 23.2% were Buddhist, with 1.2% being other religions.

I have never seen these figures in official Korean publications. They always seem to count the number of believers only so that they come up with a 100% religious population. (51.9% Christian, 45.7% Buddhist, 2.4% Confucian, Chongdogyo and others)

Source:
http://kosis.nso.go.kr/cgi-bin.....p;SELITEM=

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08.....ei=5087%0A

May need subscription to view…

State Department has it at around 29% based on Korean government figures ( http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2006/71345.htm ).

PBS has it at 51% ( http://www.pbs.org/hiddenkorea/religion.htm ). I suspect that those numbers are the difference between strict adherants and identifiers. So 31% is a pretty reasonable number.

Based on the same kind of comparisons, the USA is between 43% and 85% Christian.

BTW, A 1985 report lists Christians as being 21% of the population ( http://www.photius.com/countri.....o~197.html ). Most of the growth has since 1985 has been among Catholics (who are now over 10% of the population).

> Korea was a Buddhist country 120 years ago

Jeez, even fresh-off-the-boat English teachers know that Korea was predominantly Neo-Confucian then, and Buddhism was quite weak.

> Christians now make up 31 per cent
> of South Korea’s population

That depends very much on how you count religious membership here — 31% is at the extreme upper edge of possible estimates.