Today as I was walking in the Korea-town in Flushing, I was accosted by the missionary who asked me "if I believed in Jesus Christ" to be saved. He went on tell me I could not only be saved but healed of all my physical ills by the power of faith. Its hard to bear that in Friday night when, your back is hurting and your balance is often shot to hell due to a long week.
I am Catholic. I came to peace with God some time ago.
The Missionary was Korean.
This posting will not link to any articles, but will be a musing from depth of my heart. Korea has many evangelicals. When the Christianity was introduced it found fertile ground in which to grow. The reigning Chosun dynasty was visibly failing to meet the needs of the its people, and rebellions and riots were showing that the internal contradiction of 500 years of Confucian Feudalism was coming to boil. Christianity quickly spread into the population, and by the 1900s the faith was well integrated into the life of Koreans. Unlike the Japan, where Shinto reignes supreme even now, the Confucian faith was compatible with the already existing belief systems and found little to be supplemented.
Moreover, it cannot be denied that for majority of time, the Church did its part. It had its place of honor against the Japanese Occupational era and later it fought against the military regime. But since than, the Church, especially the evangelical community has changed, for worse. Since 2003 the Evangelical community has openly embraced missionary tactics which will yield in damaging Korean interest and image.
The kidnapping of Korean Missionaries in Afghanistan in 2007 was merely the most embarrassing of the these events. All they manged to do was fatten the war chest of Taliban and marked out the converts for death (when Americans leave Afghanistan, the converts are essentially doomed). And since than they have also showed their faces in Iraq (in 2004 onward) and several non Middle Eastern nations, including Indonesia. I doubt they have converted any one. Koreans struggle to display their distinctive nature from our neighbors. This is one image I can do without
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