Teaching East Asia: Korea Teaching East Asia: Korea | Page 232

Protestantism expanded rapidly for four main reasons. First, Protestant services were
conducted in vernacular Korean and not Latin as in the Catholic Church. Second, worship in the
Korean Protestant church is congregational, allowing for active participation on the part of lay
people. Third, the Christian belief in the essential equality of all human beings is a revolutionary
and appealing notion. And fourth, the nation was rapidly losing its independence to Japanese
imperialism. As a result, many Christians became involved in nationalistic, anti-Japanese
politics, such as the March First Movement and demonstrated against the demands that they
honor the emperor and the gods of Imperial Japan at Shinto shrines.
During the occupation (1910-1945), Christianity gathered strength and support from patriots
who used church institutions as havens from Japanese oppression. When Korea was liberated and
divided into a communist-controlled North and an anticommunist South, more than one out of
three Catholics and three out of every five Protestants lived north of the 38 th parallel; as a result,
many Christians fled to the South.
After the Korean War churches grew rapidly. Since the early 1960s, when there were fewer
than a million Protestants in South Korea, their number has more than doubled every decade.
One of the reasons for the spectacular growth is based on the fact that the Korean Protestant
community was determined to save as many souls as it could in the shortest amount of time
possible. Because it believed that Protestant Christianity offered the only sure route to salvation,
believers would have to convert non-Christians. By 1997, there were approximately 100,000
ministers representing more than 160 Protestant denominations. It was also the nation’s largest
denomination, with over ten million followers. Presently, Protestant Christians make up a larger
percentage of the population in South Korea than in any other Asian country. Korea is also the
most Christianized non-Western country in the world, with the exception of the Philippines. Tens
of