Presbyterians in Korea

The word came first

The story of Korean Protestantism begins with a Bible that arrived before the missionaries. In the early 1880s John Ross, a Scottish Presbyterian missionary in Manchuria, worked with Korean helpers to translate the Gospels into Korean, and a few years later the whole New Testament was printed. Some carried these books across the border, and it is told that there were Koreans who had read the Gospels and believed before any missionary came to live among them.

In 1884 Horace Allen, a medical missionary of the American Northern Presbyterian church, arrived. Around Easter 1885 the Presbyterian Horace Underwood and the Methodist Henry Appenzeller landed together at Chemulpo, today's Incheon. Presbyterian missionaries from the American South, from Australia and from Canada followed. They founded schools and hospitals and joined in translating the Bible.

In 1890 John Nevius, a missionary in China, visited Seoul and laid out the principles he had learned there: a church should support itself, govern itself and spread the gospel itself. The Presbyterian missionaries took these principles as their own, and Bible classes, where believers gathered for days at a time to study Scripture, became the heart of church life. So the Korean church grew as a church of lay people hungry for the word.

Revival and the first presbytery

In January 1907, during a Bible class at the Jangdaehyeon church in Pyongyang, a great movement of repentance broke out. People confessed their sins openly and with tears, asked one another's forgiveness, and made restitution for wrongs done. The revival spread to other regions, and many say that the early-morning prayer meetings and the united, spoken prayer still familiar in Korean churches took root in these years. Among its leaders was Gil Seon-ju.

That September the first presbytery of the Korean Presbyterian church, the independent presbytery, met in Pyongyang. The several Presbyterian missions had agreed to build one Korean church rather than separate churches after their home countries. The presbytery ordained seven graduates of the Pyongyang seminary as the first Korean ministers and resolved to send one of them, Yi Gi-pung, as a missionary to Jeju. It adopted as its standards the Twelve Articles, based on the creed of the Presbyterian Church in India, together with the Westminster Shorter Catechism The Twelve Articles. The Twelve Articles begin by confessing Scripture as the word of God and set out, briefly, the faith of the whole church as the Reformed confess it. In 1912 the first General Assembly was formed. How sessions, presbyteries and assemblies govern a Presbyterian church is the subject of a later lesson.

Shrine worship and the martyrs

In the 1930s the Japanese colonial government pressed schools and churches to take part in Shinto shrine rites, insisting that these were national ceremonies, not religion. Some missions chose to close their schools rather than comply. But in 1938, under police watch and pressure, the Presbyterian General Assembly passed a resolution accepting shrine worship.

Those who would not go along paid a heavy price. Pastor Ju Gi-cheol of the Sanjeonghyeon church in Pyongyang refused to the end. He was imprisoned again and again, and he died in prison in 1944. Many other ministers and believers were jailed and suffered, and some died in prison. The Lord had spoken to another suffering church, in Smyrna:

Do not fear what you are about to suffer. … Be faithful even unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.

Revelation 2:10

Matthew Henry, on this promise, writes that "the life worn out in his service, or laid down in his cause, shall be rewarded with a much better life, which shall be eternal" Matthew Henry.

The church remembers this history not to blame others but to examine itself. Those who gave way in fear were as weak as we are, and none of us can say with confidence what we would have done in their place. After liberation the General Assembly withdrew the resolution (in 1954, it is recorded), and several denominations have since confessed it publicly as sin. The church gives thanks for the faithfulness of its martyrs and lays its own weakness before God.

A divided church and the call to unity

After liberation the Korean Presbyterian church divided more than once. In 1952 those gathered around the Goryeo seminary, concerned for repentance over shrine worship and the renewal of the church, formed the Kosin church. In 1953, after a dispute over the doctrine of Scripture and theological education, the Kijang church (the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea) went its own way. In 1959 the Hapdong and Tonghap churches parted over membership in the World Council of Churches, among other issues. Divisions continued, and today there are many Presbyterian denominations in Korea. Each held convictions it meant to keep; in every case the sins and weaknesses of all were mixed in as well. The Presbyterian churches are now the largest family of Protestants in Korea, and the responsibility for unity weighs on them all the more.

Paul rebuked the factions in Corinth:

What I mean is this: Individuals among you are saying, “I follow Paul,” “I follow Apollos,” “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.” Is Christ divided?

1 Corinthians 1:12-13

Jesus prayed "that all of them may be one" (John 17:21), so that the world may believe. Chrysostom, commenting on the prayer, says: "there is no scandal so great as division, whereas unity amongst believers is a great argument for believing" Chrysostom. Unity is first a gift, not an achievement. Paul tells us to keep "the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace" (Ephesians 4:3), and gives the reason:

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

Ephesians 4:4-6

The story of the Korean Presbyterian churches shows grace and shame side by side: believers who gathered for days to study the word, martyrs faithful unto death, and a church that fell and was broken apart. Presbyterians today receive this history with gratitude and repentance, not pride, and treat brothers and sisters in other denominations and traditions as one family in Christ. For more on why the churches have divided, see Why are there so many churches and denominations?.

Practice