How Korea embraced Christianity

Former missionaries look back at a nation that's now the No. 2 source of Christian mission workers.

By Jane Lampman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the March 7, 2007 edition

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While Christianity's explosive growth has swept through much of the Southern Hemisphere – particularly across Africa – another dramatic story has unfolded in Asia. Some have dubbed it the "Korean miracle."

About one-third of South Koreans are now Christian. Seoul, the capital, boasts 10 of the 11 largest Christian congregations in the world. And South Korea sends more missionaries abroad to spread the word than any other country except the United States.

Christianity has grown from a few hundred adherents in the late 19th century to "about 9 million Protestants and 3 to 4 million Catholics in South Korea today," says the Rev. Samuel Moffett, professor emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey.

Dr. Moffett and his wife, Eileen, experienced "the miracle" firsthand. As a son of the first long-term Protestant missionary in northern Korea, he was born in Pyongyang in 1916 and grew up there. Later, the couple spent 25 years serving as missionaries in South Korea, starting in 1955 after the Korean War ended.

No one knows how many Christians remain in North Korea. Two-thirds of Korean Christians lived there before the war, but many fled to escape Communist rule.

The Moffetts have watched South Korea turn into an economic wunderkind, move from authoritarianism to democracy, and become a bastion of Christianity.

"Koreans are natural evangelists – they love to tell the good news," Moffett says during a recent phone interview from his home in Princeton, N.J.

For example, Mrs. Moffett remembers a drive they once took into the Korean countryside in their jeep, stopping along the road to buy a watermelon. "After the transaction, the man looked up and said in Korean, 'Are you a Christian?' I said 'yes,' " she recalls. "Then he said, 'Oh, that's wonderful. If you weren't, I was going to tell you how much you were missing!' "

Today, thousands of Koreans rise to attend prayer services in huge city churches at 4:30 a.m. before heading for work.

"Their prayer life is remarkable, and the whole congregation prays together," Sam says. "In the country churches, you sometimes have to ring a bell to get them to stop."

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flashback: Eileen Moffett (l.), seen in this 1958 photo, went to South Korea after the Korean War with her husband Sam on a Protestant mission. For years, they worked in the rural Andong region and in the capital, Seoul. COURTESY OF SAM AND EILEEN MOFFETT COURTESY OF SAM AND EILEEN MOFFETT