The Northern Region of Korea: History, Identity, and Culture

9. The Missionary Presence in Northern Korea before WWII: Human Investment, Social Significance, and Historical Legacy

The prevalence of Christianity in Korea, going back to the early twentieth century when the country was becoming known as a comparatively successful Christian mission field, is a much-discussed phenomenon. Today, Christianity has been established as a Korean religion, having adapted to the country’s spiritual environment. Although estimates vary, the percentage of Protestant and Catholic Christians in South Korea is at least 25 percent of the population . In North Korea, though the state tolerates carefully controlled religious organizations, the number of Christians is unknown but assumed to be just a small fraction of what it once was. Before World War II, the northern part of Korea, especially the western provinces of P’yŏngan and Hwanghae, was the heartland of Korean Christianity, with numbers far greater than any other part of the country. The history of Korean Christianity points to the northern region as the area of greatest gain for early missionaries. During World War II there was considerable attrition. During the early years of the Kim Il Sung regime, the government discouraged Christianity and then suppressed it during the Korean War. Many Christians from the northern regions moved south during that time, reestablished their churches, and invigorated the southern church. Their presence and fervor had much to do with the shape and growth of Christianity in South Korea during the period from 1960 to 1990. The strong presence of Christianity and the number of Christians in northern Korea before 1945 is a remarkable feature of modern Korean history. The question is obvious: What was it about the northern regions, particularly the 9 The Missionary presence in Northern Korea before wwII: Human Investment, Social Significance, and Historical Legacy donald n. clark The Missionary presence in Northern Korea 235 northwest that made people there so receptive to Christianity? The commonest answers have to do with the relative openness and social fluidity of the region and draw on: (1) the geography of the northwest acting as a corridor for communication between Korea and Manchuria, Liaodong, and China proper and as an area for the positioning of military personnel in connection with border defense; (2) the commercial traffic through the corridor and the high level of merchant activity on both sides of the Sino-Korean border crossing making for a certain tolerance for diversity; (3) the difficulty of agriculture in much of the region above the coastal plain, the small size of farms, and the corollary reliance on economic activity other than agriculture, namely mining, lumbering, handcrafting, and trading; (4) the isolation of the northwest from the political center of Korea in Seoul; and together with this (5) a simmering sense of discrimination borne out by the inability of northern literati, despite rapidly rising rates of examination passage, to gain significant membership among the nation’s aristocratic elite.1 At the turn of the twentieth century, the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), and the construction of the railroad that connected Seoul with Sinŭiju contributed even more to the social and economic climate that was ripe for change. In the 1890s, northwestern Korea “opened” for missionary work and teams of American Presbyterians and Methodists founded “stations,” first in P’yŏngyang and then in Sŏnch’ŏn, Yŏngbyŏn, Chaeryŏng, Haeju, and Kaesŏng (Songdo). Between 1905 and 1909, the main Protestant missions, seeking to avoid duplication of effort, assigned themselves various territories on the Korean peninsula within which to concentrate their work. The northeast coast north of Wŏnsan went to the Canadian Presbyterians, with the Southern Methodists getting Kangwŏn and all of Kyŏnggi north of Seoul. The Northern Methodists and Northern Presbyterians shared Hwanghae Province and South P’yŏngan up to the city of P’yŏngyang, and the remainder of the northwest was assigned to the Northern Presbyterians as far as the Chinese border. 2 In these territories, the missionaries worked to spread Christianity through the typical “triad” of evangelism, education, and medical work. A good example of the “triad” at work was the Canadian Presbyterian Mission in the Hamgyŏng provinces , where it established in each of its stations—Wŏnsan, Hamhŭng, Sŏngjin, Hoeryŏng, and Lungchingtsun (K. Yongjŏng) in Manchuria—a church, at least one school, and a clinic or hospital. The American Northern Presbyterians did likewise in locations like Sŏnch’ŏn. P’yŏngyang, naturally, Donald N. Clark...