The South Korean Catholic Church’s Attitude towards North Korea: from Antagonism to Development of Dialogue and Cooperation

Since the liberation of the Korean peninsula in 1945, the South Korean Catholic Church’s relationship with North Korea has been characterized by several types of attitudes, ranging from the Church’s historically strong antagonistic position toward communism to the more recent development of dialogue and cooperation with North Korea. The purpose of this article is to present and analyze chronologically several key periods that reveal the different kinds of relationships the South Korean Catholic Church has sought to build with North Korea. This paper will focus on three periods: the period of the foundation of the two Korean states when the Korean Catholic Church’s relationship with the emerging North Korean state was strongly antagonistic; the period of South Korean military dictatorship when the South Korean Catholic Church’s anti-communist ideology began partly to erode; and the period after the democratization of the South Korean state when some South Korean governments entered into a period of dialogue and cooperation with North Korea, a movement in which the South Korean Catholic Church participated.