New God, New Nation: Protestants and Self-Reconstruction Nationalism in Korea, 1896-1937 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS157 diately available. On the American side there is probably no better account of what it was like to serve with the infantry, and his accounts of war at the sharp end clearly owe a great deal to interviews with former soldiers like Charles Bussey, whose own book is a classic.4 Moreover if he has achieved nothing else, he has retrieved the reputation of General Walton Walker, the forgotten man of the Korean conflict on the American side, crediting him with a potentially more effective if less spectacular plan, than MacArthur's Inch'ön landing and praising his skill at disengaging his army from the North in November/December 1950. In short, Toland writes well and expresses better than many others the combat experience of the ordinary American soldier. When he strays into Korean history, high politics, and international relations, however, his touch is much less certain. In the end his moments of insight cannot compensate for the weaknesses of a deeply flawed book. Callum MacDonald University of Warwick NOTES 1.Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, vol. 1, Liberation and the Origins of Separate Regimes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), vol. 2, The Roaring of the Cataract (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). See also John Merrill, Korea: The Peninsular Origins of the War. (Newark, Delaware: University of Delaware Press, 1989). 2.Joseph Goulden, Korea: The Untold Story of the War (New York: Times Books, 1982), Max Hastings, The Korean War (London: Michael Joseph, 1987). 3.Allen E. Goodman, ed., Negotiating While Fighting: The Diary of Admiral C. Turner Joy at the Korean Armistice Conference (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1978), p. 355. See also Rosemary Foot, A Substitute for Victory : The Politics of Peacemaking at the Korean Armistice Talks (Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 1990). 4.Charles Bussey, Firefight at Yechon: Courage and Racism in the Korean War (Washington, New York, and London: Brassey's, 1991). New God, New Nation: Protestants and Self-Reconstruction Nationalism in Korea, 1896-1937, by Kenneth M. Wells, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990. The Protestant movement in Korea has been an unparalleled historical phenomenon in the church history of the nonwestern world. In just one century, for example, Protestants grew to number some twenty-five percent of South Korea's population; they established churches in nearly all 158BOOK REVIEWS the larger villages—to say nothing of towns and cities—as well as churchrelated schools, publishing houses, and other outreach institutions in the major cities. Seoul, filled with church buildings and signs of the cross, has been called a "city of churches," and Korea "one of the most Christianized countries" in the nonwestern world. Protestant Christianity has not been just a religious and cultural phenomenon, but has also become a sociopolitical force to be reckoned with in South Korea. The rapid spread of this western religion and its influential social and political position in a land steeped in Confucianism have indeed brought revolutionary change to the peninsula. Moreover, if one glances at the history of modern Korea, one easily discovers the intriguing fact that without understanding Protestant Christianity, one would not be able to conduct meaningful research on some of the most important developments in modern and contemporary Korea, events such as the Tongnip hyöphoe (Independence Club) Movement , the Shinminhoe (New People's Society) Incident, the March First Movement, the Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence, the birth of the Syngman Rhee regime in the south, the Pro-Democracy Movement under Park Chung-hee's authoritarian rule, modern educational and cultural movements, the fall of the feudal structure, sexual equality, new political ideas and ideologies including socialism and communism , the Korea-U.S. relationship, and so forth. The impact of Protestant Christianity in Korea is an intriguing and important historical phenomenon that requires serious scholarship. Surprisingly, however, most scholars have ignored the topic. The publication of Kenneth M. Wells's New God, New Nation is itself therefore a long-awaited and very valuable addition to the slowly, but steadily growing literature on this topic. The book is well-organized, well-argued, and well-written. The author has used important historical documents, official and private memoranda, and many published...