S Koreans take cross to lands of crescent

A South Korean missionary talks of introducing Jesus in a ‘‘low voice and with wisdom’’ to Muslims, the most difficult g...

A South Korean missionary talks of introducing Jesus in a ‘‘low voice and with wisdom’’ to Muslims, the most difficult group to convert. In Baghdad, South Koreans plan to open a seminary even after Iraqi churches were bombed. In Beijing, they defy the Chinese government to smuggle North Koreans to Seoul while turning them into Christians.

South Korea has rapidly become the world’s second largest source of Christian missionaries, only a couple of decades after it started deploying them. With more than 12,000 abroad, it is second to US and ahead of Britain and the Koreans have joined their Western counterparts in more than 160 countries, from West Asia to Africa, from Central to East Asia. Imbued with the fervour of the born-again, they have become known for aggressively going to the hardest-to-evangelise corners of the world. Their actions are at odd with the foreign policy of the government, which is trying to rein them in here and elsewhere.

It is the first time that large numbers of missionaries have been deployed by a non-Western nation, one whose roots are Confucian and Buddhist, and whose population remains two-thirds non-Christian. Unlike Western missionaries, whose work dovetailed with the spread of colonialism, South Koreans come from a country with little history of sending people abroad, until recently. They proselytise, not in their own language, but in the local one or English.

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‘‘There is a saying that when Koreans now arrive at place, they establish a church; the Chinese establish a restaurant; the Japanese, a factory, ’’ said a South Korean missionary.

Roman Catholicism first came to the Korean Peninsula in the late 18th century, followed a century later by Protestant missionaries from US. Christianity failed to strike firm roots in Japan and China, where 19th century missionaries were seen as agents of Western imperialism. But it spread on the Korean peninsula, where US missionaries helped Koreans fight against Japanese colonial rulers.

It was only in the last two decades, with growth of the economy and its newly democratic government’s decision to allow its citizens to travel freely overseas, that South Korean Christianity took on a missionary gloss.

Because religious visas are difficult to obtain in West Asia, many come on student visas or set up computer or other businesses and evangelise discreetly. Muslims who have converted to Christianity are never identified as such—a necessary precaution in a society where some families engage in so-called honour-killings of relatives who have left Islam.

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‘‘North Korea, which is occupied by the devil Kim Jong Il, is the biggest target of our missionary work,’’ said Kim Sang-chul, president of the Commission to Help North Korean Refugees, a Christian organisation. He said in his posting in the Philippines, he was awed when he saw US missionaries fly into remote islands and, wherever they spotted signs of life in the jungle below, drop food packets as the first contact with what missionaries call ‘‘unreached people’’. ‘‘So even here, it is very difficult, but not impossible,’’ he said. ‘‘We are planting one church at a time.’’ —NYT