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THEOLOGY AND MINJUNG IN KOREA:

An Introduction to Korean Theological Development in the 1970's

I. Emergence of Christian Koinonia in the Korean Historical Predicament: Serving the Minjung

A) It was in the early 1960's that Industrial Mission groups were initially organized for industrial evangelism. As these mission groups began to work among the laborers, it was discovered that the traditional type of evangelism could not be effective due to the distance, alienation and strangeness of the evangelist to the worker and his life. After much reflection and painstaking self-criticism, the Industrial Mission groups trained themselves by working as laborers in the spirit of incarnation. Anyone who worked in the Industrial Mission had to become a laborer for six months or a year in order to have a somatic identification with the worker's life. It was discovered that without such involvement the missioner could not share the emotional and perceptual experiences of fatigue, pain and anger of the worker in the course of his or her life, and therefore that real communication between the missioner and the worker could not take place. This somatic incarnational experience by the industrial missioners transformed the direction of the Industrial Mission work from traditional evangelism to "finding the body of Jesus Christ among the workers themselves."

Thus the role of the industrial missioner was changed from the one of simple distributor of Gospel truths to the workers, to being a servant to the workers, taking up issues that affect the life of the workers themselves. Thus the issues of workers' rights, labor unions, working conditions, economic development and social justice became integral concerns in Industrial Mission's servanthood to the workers (minjung). This was a fundamental shift in the direction of Industrial Mission work in the 1960's, and in the 1970's it was firmly established. The Industrial Mission workers formed a small koinonia as a body to share their experiences as they witnessed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ among the people in Korean society who were most exploited in the course of the so-called rapid economic growth of the 60's and 70's.

B) In the late 1960's, Urban Mission groups were organized centering around the Seoul metropolitan area. From the beginning the concept of mission was forward-looking. The urban poor can restore their rights and protect their interests by organizing power at the grass-roots level. This was the introduction of the concept of the democratic power of the people (minjung) – that is, the urban poor. This may be called grassroots democracy. In this mission experiment

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in poor urban areas, it was recognized as legitimate for the poor to assert their self-interest, such as the right to have clean water or garbage collection service from the city administration; and the concept of the power of the minjung over against the power of the powerful was recognized. The method of the people's power was the so-called community or neighborhood organization.

Then there was the new and important experience of the Student Development Service Corps (SDSC), organized by Korean Student Christian Federation. The basic experience of this student mission was the physical involvement of the students in the situation of workers, farmers and urban poor, by working in a factory for a given period, by living with farmers or urban poor, and by doing community organization. During this period the students would keep a daily diary and hold weekly discussions on the social reality that they were experiencing directly while they were living together among the minjung. This exposure of the students to the living and working conditions of the poor minjung was very fruitful, for it created in the body and life of the students a perception and awareness of the social reality of Korea, which became the basis of their historical consciousness or conscientization to act for justice and social transformation. This experience of the Student Development Service Corps became a dynamic thrust for the Korean Christian student movement. The experience of SDSC also provided a model for the secular student movement to become historically and socially conscientized. Soon many student groups followed the model of the SDSC experience for the activitation of their movement for social justice.

In addition to the emergence of mission koinonia among the minjung there were also some changes in the attitude of the Korean ecumenical movement. The Korean Church stood up and opposed the unfair negotiation of the normalization treaty between the Park Chung Hee government and the Japanese government. Convinced that the treaty negotiation did not deal properly with the terms of the settlement, the church issued statements and held protest prayer meetings. Many of the Christian protestors were expelled from their positions, especially the professors who led the protests. However, this experience was brief. This of course does not mean that it was insignificant. It was the first time since the Liberation of Korea in 1945 that the church took up the political issue wholeheartedly. By this time the number of Christians was increasing very rapidly, and the church was facing a government that was cool, if not hostile to it.

By this time the Park regime had begun its drive for economic growth; the social problems began to intensify, and the political regime became repressive. Being unsure of his political future, Park began to carry out measures to prolong his rule, notably the constitutional amendments of 1969. At this time some of the leaders of the Presbyterian Church of the Republic of Korea actively opposed the constitutional amendment, and the people began to respond to the opposition political party as was demonstrated in the 1971 Presidential election when the opposition candidate almost won.

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Up to this point the theological orientation of the Korean Christian movement was not showing any clear development, although there was intensive discussion on the issues of indigenization and the social implications of the Christian Gospel. Theological discussion on the indigenization did not produce many results except for some preliminary methodological discussions. On the issue of the social implications of the Gospel, Christian Thought magazine and a newly published small monthly theological magazine called Jesamil (The Third Day) played an important role at the end of the 1960's.

II. Development of Christian Koinonia

In the early 70's there was clear development of Christian koinonia (mission groups) as a new thrust of ecumenical movement in Korean Christianity. To mention some of them, Urban Industrial mission koinonia (Inchon, Yongdongpo, Seoul Metropolitan Mission, and Korea Christian Action Organization for Urban and Industrial Mission — a coordinating body for UIM); Christian student koinonia (national network of Korean Student Christian Federation); youth koinonia (national and denominational network of Christian Ecumenical Youth Council — EYC); Christian Faculty Fellowship; families of political prisoners; and Church Women United have been very active in the ecumenical movement. The National Council of Churches in Korea (then led by General Secretary Rev. Kim Kwan Suk) provided overall leadership and coordination of the Korean ecumenical movement. These koinonia groups often met at Thursday (and Friday) Prayer Meetings as weekly gatherings of the movement, in which the intensive experience of prayer and prophetic witness emerged very forcibly.

There were also Roman Catholic counterparts: the Priests Corps for the Realization of Justice, Catholic Young Workers Organization (JOC), Catholic Farmers Association, Justice and Peace Commission and other groups were very active Christian koinonia in the 1970's.

These Christian koinonia engaged in mission work to protect the human rights of workers, farmers and urban poor, and to fight for justice and freedom of writers and university teachers. The human rights movement, as it is loosely called and coordinated by the Human Rights Commission of NCCK, spread into the provincial cities of Pusan, Chonju, Kwangju, Kunsan, Chongju and Inchon.

Another point that should be made here is that the human rights movement has its secular counterparts: secular student movements on university campuses, writers and poets, journalists, professors and politicians have been active in the movement and have worked closely together with the Christian human rights movement. At one point there was organized a Coalition for Human Rights Movement (In Kwon Yon Hap) to coordinate overall human rights concerns.

The experiences of the human rights movement in Korea have been very harsh and deep, and yet there has been generated the profound reality of koinonia and joy in the midst of sufferings, imprisonments and deaths.

It all began as a resistance against the so-called "Yushin (revitalization)

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Political Reform" in which the dictatorial powers of Park Chung Hee became almost unlimited. In 1973, at the Easter Sunrise Service at Namsan Mountain in the center of Seoul, a voice was raised: "The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the resurrection of democracy." This action was led by the Seoul Metropolitan Mission group. The people involved were charged with plotting to overthrow the government. This small incident, which was blown up by the authorities, was a symbol of the church's prophetic witness against the new Yushin System. Among the many dramatic events which followed were the famous so-called People's Revolutionary Party case in which ecumenical leaders and student leaders were charged under anti-communist and treason laws; and the March 1, 1976 Declaration at Myongdong Cathedral in which the people who signed were tried and drew heavy sentences. Thus the human rights movement, Christian and secular, provided a historical context for theological reflection in Korea.

III. Theological Development

The first stage of theological development was, as we have already indicated, discussions on indigenization, the secularization thesis, and political theology, around 1970.

However, in the early 1970's the minjung (downtrodden people) became a concern for theological reflection as theologians were constantly invited to speak to minjung mission groups such as UIM. The theologians began to learn and reflect upon these experiences of mission work at the grassroots level. Several important articles were written on the theme of minjung by Ahn Byung Mu and Suh Nam Dong in the early 70's. Ahn began to differentiate minjung from minjok (national people) and Suh began to discover theological themes on the minjung in church history.

However, the real effort to articulate minjung theology was made in the latter half of the 1970's. A number of articles on minjung were written and published in various journals. Some were theological; some were historical. Some were social-scientific and others were literary. There was lively interaction between theological reflection on the minjung and secular intellectual efforts to articulate the reality of the minjung.

The Asian Theological Consultation in October 1979, sponsored by the Commission on Theological Concerns of Christian Conference of Asia and the Korean National Council of Churches, was an important event for theological articulation on the minjung, in dialogue with other Asian theologians.

There is an ongoing informal discussion group on minjung theology involving about two dozen people. Systematic theologians, Old Testament and New Testament theologians, church historians, Christian ethicists, Christian educationalists and other theologians are included. Frequently there are dialogues between theologians and scholars of other disciplines such as sociologists, economists, writers, artists, poets, etc. Those who have been concentrating on the theme of minjung have written many volumes and articles on the theme.

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We cannot enumerate them here, but they are historical writings about the minjung, literary and poetic expressions of the experiences of the minjung, and analyses of minjung culture such as the mask dance (Talchum), sons and paintings.

IV. Some Salient Aspects of Minjung Theology

A) Definition of Minjung?

There has been pressure from the social scientific viewpoint to define the term "minjung" very clearly. However, there has also been a certain resistance against defining or conceptualizing the term. Generally, theologians prefer a loose definition of the minjung; but they seek to clarify, concretely and analytically, the reality of the minjung at the present stage. There are two reasons for this: 1) Current definitions of the people, especially as "proletariat", have not served the minjung, for this is connected with the totalitarian political ideology in our own context; and 2) a scientific definition would be an objectification of the minjung on the epistemological level, making the people an object. This does not mean that the reality of minjung should not be clarified. Theologians and others seek to clarify the minjung in historical terms, socio-economic and socio-cultural terms, and socio-biographical terms. The social biography (story) of the minjung has been an important point of reference for minjung theologians.

What this means is that Korean history, particularly the social history of the Korean minjung, has had to be studied. Minjung movements and their traditions, minjung religious traditions (Buddhist and Tonghak) have been investigated. Past and present literary and cultural expressions of experiences of the minjung have been looked into, so as to inter-weave the Biblical stories and the stories of the minjung. It is in this context of two stories that Korean church history is being re-read.

B) Biblical and Theological References

Minjung theologians are keen to discover the socio-economic background of the Biblical texts. They are intensely interested in the Ochlos, the poor of the New Testament, and in the Covenant Code and prophetic traditions of the Old Testament. Other related themes, such as Am Haretz and the people of God, are also important. The theological items of theodicy, apocalypse, Messianic Suffering Servant, Messianic Spirit (Holy Spirit), and other traditional theological themes are newly formulated in the context of the minjung in Korea.