Faith, Praxis and Theology

Chapter One

FAITH, PRAXIS AND THEOLOGY

At the Interrogation Centre: Summer, 1980

It was one of those hot and humid July days in Seoul, almost two months since Martial Law was declared. Many students had been arrested. Universities were shut down. Fellow professors had disappeared. No one seemed to know what was going to happen. It was certain the military would take over the country, but no one was sure how. Meanwhile university business had to go on as usual, although students were not allowed on campus. All the university gates were heavily guarded by combat units in armoured personnel carriers.

I was in the middle of a faculty meeting when a man from the Joint Investigation headquarters called and asked me to meet him at a nearby tea-house. I was supposed to be frightened by the call. He represented a department well-known for its interrogation, and one which took students, intellectuals and politicians to some unknown place for investigation and interrogation, sometimes even for torture. In the tea-house I told them that I was in the middle of a very important faculty committee meeting, and that I was the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences – the largest college in the university. The plainclothesmen pointed out our Dean of the Faculty, who had just been called out of a meeting with the president of the university. They showed me a note which said I was to be taken to their Headquarters for investigation in connection with the Kim Dae-Jung incident. Kim had been court-martialed and sentenced to death for his political activities as an

opposition leader during the Park Chung-Hee era. I knew immediately that they were investigating me for my political stance, and sensed that they were going to demand my resignation from the university at the conclusion of the investigation. The military investigation center was rather clean and hushed. My room was about 12 feet long and 8 feet wide with a metal desk and two metal chairs, one on each side of the desk. Mattresses and blankets were neatly folded and stored in the corner of the room. I was to have the room to myself. In no time the man came into the room and I had to take everything out of my pockets and take off my belt. It looked like I might have to stay quite a while. He asked me to sit down at the desk and gave me some government stationery and a ball point pen. He told me that I had a lot to write about.

The first thing I was asked to write was my autobiography. Not a brief one, nor a summary of my life until now. No curriculum vitae, that is. I was supposed to write about my family, my father, my grandfather, my schoolteachers, books, kind of education, kind of friends, and so on and so forth. I was not to overlook anything. In short, was to write my autobiography. The man looked very tough and serious and very business-like, but he did not tell me why I had to do this. That was not his business nor mine. I was only to give him the complete story of my life.

I did not know where to begin. He said to begin with my birth. I thought that wouldn't be too interesting, and I told him so. He raised his voice a little and told me to follow his orders, saying something about this being no literature class. I was not to produce an autobiographical masterpiece. They were not interested in my writing skill, but rather in my life and thought... they are the thought police. This was 1980 and only four years away from "1984".

I was taken into the martial law command's interrogation

center to tell them the story of Korean minjung people – my sociopolitical and theological biography. Later on the same floor of the interrogation center I met other Christian professor friends. One was in the labor movement, one in a Christian professors' organization, one in the student movement. Another was dean of the faculty of a Christian university which had had the most intensive student demonstrations for the democratization for the country following the fateful death of President Park Chung Hee, who had ruled South Korea from 1961 to 1979. We were all there to tell the story of the oppressed minjung of Korea. None of us had been taken in for any shameful crimes. One way or another, actively or passively, we had each committed ourselves to work with the minjung. We had the unspoken common understanding that the minjung is present where there is socio-cultural alienation, economic exploitation and political repression. That is the place, we thought, where we should be and where we should work. Therefore, a woman is a minjung when she is dominated by a man, by the family or by socio-cultural structures and factors. An ethnic group is a minjung group when it is politically and economically discriminated against by another ethnic group. A race is minjung when it is dominated by another powerful ruling race, as in a colonial situation. When intellectuals are suppressed for using their creative and critical abilities against rulers and the powerful on behalf of the oppressed, then they too belong to the minjung. Workers and farmers are minjung when they are exploited, whether they are aware of it or not. They are minjung when their needs, demands and basic human rights are ignored and crushed by ruling powers.

"Why do you professors and Christians get mixed up with these people, or minjung as you call them? It should be the Christian attitude and Christian faith to be good to the authorities and to think about heaven and to worry

about your soul". Pointing at other rooms, the interrogator told me that the people in there were all in trouble because they had gotten involved in social problems. He was lamenting what had happened to that good old religion. Christians are always in trouble. But he was practically shouting when he asked me why a scholar like me had to meddle with poor people, laborers, and stupid, trouble-making students. What do I know about farmers and female workers in the textile factories? What does Christianity have to do with them? He produced a document and almost hit me in the face with it, ordering me to write about its background and content. The document was the 1974 Theological Statement of Korean Christians signed by 66 leading theologians and church leaders in Korea, when workers, students, and writers were fighting for their freedom and human dignity. I had signed the statement. I saw that the document was covered with red pencil marks by the inspecting reader (or readers); particularly the following part of it:

Jesus the Messiah, our Lord, lived and dwelt among the oppressed, poverty-stricken, and sick in Judea. He boldly confronted Pontius Pilate, a representative of the Roman Empire, and he was crucified while witnessing to the truth. He has risen from the dead, releasing the power to transform and set the people free.

We resolve that we will follow the footsteps of our Lord, living among our oppressed and poor people, standing against political oppression, and participating in the transformation of history, for this is the only way to the Messianic Kingdom.

What can I add to this? Looking back at the document from my present viewpoint in prison, I decided that it wasn't bad at all. We had said what had to be said.

Christianity is for the poor and oppressed, and the history of Korean Christianity attests to that fact.

Korean Politics in the 1970's

At the interrogation center, they were interested in my "confession", which was to be a statement of my faith and political involvement at Ewha University. When I began to teach at Ewha in 1969 President Park Chung Hee was in his second presidential term. He was successful in taking over the weak and ineffective civilian government which followed the downfall of the autocratic Syngman Rhee regime in the student revolution of 1960. Mr. Park forced the people to agree with his normalization policy with Japan in 1965, and he sent Korean troops to the jungles of the Vietnam War in 1965. President Park was re-elected in 1967 for his second and last term of office. In 1969 he forced the people to pass a proposal to change the Constitution so he could run for a third term; Christians and students strongly opposed the idea. The National Council of Churches in Korea issued a statement against the national referendum.

There were widespread arrests of student leaders and closure of university campuses. But as soon as the universities were open for the second semester of 1969, Park's ruling Democratic Republican Party (DRP) unilaterally passed his third-term proposal in the National Assembly, and it was confirmed by a 65% majority in a national referendum that October. Again President Park had broken his promise to make the Korean political system more democratic. He used the possible military threat from the North as his excuse for prolonging his power and military rule. Ideologically, he advocated an even stronger anti-communist stance and fabricated the so-called "Korean style" democracy. "The Korean style democracy" meant that his government was legitimate, ideologically stemming from the traditional Confucian

style of authoritarian government. His Party and government argued that "Korean style democracy" was necessary, because Koreans are used to the authoritarian traditions of Confucianism, and that these traditions were more necessary now than ever under the threat of the North Korean communist regime. After his narrow victory over opposition Presidential candidate Kim Dae Jung in the presidential election in 1971, Park and his DRP moved very swiftly to organize the government into a dictatorial system. Only a year had passed after his inauguration when all the universities were seized by soldiers, and on October 17, 1972, martial law was declared with the suspension of the Constitution and the dissolution of the National Assembly. Park and his followers formulated the new Yushin ("Revitalisation") Constitution, and under martial law the new Constitution was passed in another national referendum. The new Constitution received a 91% affirmative vote, and in December the new President was elected by the newly-formed 2,500 member electoral body called the "National Conference for Unification". President Park was the only candidate for the first of an unlimited number of six-year terms as President. His permanent control of dictatorial power now seemed tight and complete.

The people of Korea had been formed into a modern Babylonian captivity. With the Yushin System, President Park had seized almost absolute political power over the; nation. Democracy became a mockery and in the name of Korean-style democracy all the democratic rights of the voters, the masters of the nation, were robbed and denied to them. There was no freedom of the press, no academic freedom to discuss and criticize the Constitution, no religious freedom to pray for democratic development of the country or for basic God-given human rights. The power of the National Assembly was drastically reduced; the President had the power to dissolve it at any time, as

well as the power to .hand-pick up to one-third of its membership. The Supreme Court was also to be constituted by the President, and it was not given authority to deal with constitutional matters. The President virtually had all the powers of the three supposedly and formally separate arms of the government.

President Park Chung Hee drove the people of Korea into capticity through his absolute rule by emergency degrees. Until he was shot to death by one of his henchmen – the chief of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) – in 1979, he ruled the country with emergency decrees Number 1 through Number 9. The Constitution gave him the power to take "necessary emergency measures" in "the whole range of state affairs, financial and judicial affairs" in times of "national calamity or a grave financial or economic crisis and if the national security or the public safety and order is seriously threatened or such a threat is anticipated". There had been no such threat, except that his own power was threatened by public discontent. "Popular discontent – escalating sense of crisis among the ruling group – intensified repression – escalation of opposition movements" – this was the sequence of the vicious circle for more than ten years of "emergency decree" rule until the President's death in 1979.

The President's emergency decrees were carried out by his own centralized police system which in itself is a Japanese colonial legacy. Besides the regular police force, the Korean Central Intelligence Agency was his most trusted strong arm for controlling the medias, universities, students, faculty, Christian ministers. Catholic priests and labor unions. It was supposed to fight against communist infiltrators from outside, but it was used against internal critics of the government. Universities were manned by KCIA agents. They had control over the hiring and firing of university professors. They checked the lecture notes of

the professors. They were to know any and all student movements against the Yushin government of President Park. In spite of, or perhaps because of, their tight and brutal control over student activities, student protest movements on major university campuses continued.

The Student Protest Movement

In April 1974, commemorating the student revolution of April 1960, students organized the "National Federation of Democratic Youth and Students" (NFDYS). The students' statement demanded that the nation "punish at once the ringleaders of the corrupt power group and guarantee a minimum standard of living for the laboring people and their freedom of labor movements, and to ,release all the patriotic leaders who had been imprisoned". Ultimately the students wanted the Yushin system and the KCIA to be dissolved.

Emergency Decree Number 4 was declared on April 3, 1974 to crush the massive April student demonstrations organized by the National Federation of Democratic Youth and Students. It imposed heavy penalties of five years and above in prison to death on all persons guilty of involvement in the NFDYS. Article 5 of Emergency Decree Number 4 stated quite clearly the repressive measures against the university campuses: "It shall be prohibited for any student to absent himself from school or refuse to attend classes or to take examinations without legitimate cause; to hold an assembly, demonstration, rally, or any individual or collective sit-in, outside or inside the campus, except normal classes or research activities conducted under the guidance and supervision of the school authorities".

The National Federation was used by the authorities as a good excuse to arrest a large number of students and professors, charging them with plotting "the largest communist led rebellion to overthrow the state". More

than 1,000 persons were detained and interrogated, and over 700 were jailed, and of these 253 were Christian students and Christian leaders of the country, including well-known and respected Christian professors.

On several occasions I went to a country prison about 25 miles south of Seoul to visit Dr. Kim Dong gill, though his sister, Kim Okgill, President of Ewah University, was not allowed to see him. President Kim Okgill could take money and clothes to the prison, and she managed to get some news from the cell from the prison guards. An English major while in college, Dr. Kim opened a "free university" in his cell. Out of sheer memory he recited the Bible and English poetry to the 15 student prisoners in his cell. It was a severe Korean winter that he and his students had to endure in an unheated Korean prison cell. But no one died because of the cold; everyone was cheerful as secular saints because of their belief in democracy and faith in Christ. On February 15, 1975, three days after another national referendum on Park's Yushin Constitution, the government announced the temporary suspension of sentences and the immediate release of the political prisoners.

The imprisoned students and professors were never taken back by their universities. After a few months of freedom, poet Kim Chi Ha was taken to prison again. However, university campuses did not remain silent, for students were determined not to be silent until the Yushin system yielded. Campus surveillance on the part of the government was tightened. Students were the single most powerful group which opposed the Korean style democracy and the Yushin system of the government. Instead of responding to student demands and criticism, the authorities criticised the students for being too politicized and instituted a brutal suppression of all creative and critical student activities and movements.

Historically speaking, Korean students have provided the most forceful ideological leadership in their society. They became the first enlightened element in Korean society when Korea was opened to the West and modernised education. They were the ones who led demonstrations for the independence of Korea when Japan and the Western powers were threatening the selfhood of the nation. Korean students at home and abroad were the leading elite in the March First Independence Movement of 1919. In 1929 teen-aged high school students in Kwangju, a Southern provincial city, rose up against the Japanese. Students went to farms to work for the improvement of Korean rural life, giving up their success and gains in the cities and in the ruling sectors of society. Along with the Christian Church, students became the hope of the Korean people for national independence and liberation. In Korean history, nationalistic and liberation movements have been led by students. So, Korean students and the national liberation movement are inseparable.

This tradition was once again witnessed in the April 19 student revolution of 1960, an uprising for viable democracy. Korean students as a group are very sensitive to political changes and to false political consciousness. In political history of Korea students have been the most volatile and progressive force. Even in traditional court, politics, students of the royal college got a full hearing at the court when they criticised royal policies. The people of Korea, from time immemorial, have respected students. Confucian tradition gives highest respect to learning and therefore to the learned as well, especially when they are with the people and for the people. By contrast, the ruling sector of society has adopted a supreme authoritarian Confucian attitude and has tended to suppress the opinions of youthful students as immature and too idealistic.

Christian Students and Industrial Mission

When I returned home from studies overseas to Korea in 1969, students were not merely a critical political force. They were also deeply involved in villages, the newly developing industries, and in helpless slums and squatter areas as well. Christian student activities were especially remarkable. The Korea Student Christian Federation (KSCF) had already started a social action program called the Social Development Service Corps (SDSC). This program was truly ecumenical – not limited to Christian students but open to non-Christian secular students as well – in nature. Its purpose was to go into the slums, factories and apartment buildings to learn about the social and political realities of modernizing Korean society and to find ways to work with the people. Students mobilized their learned resources to prepare sociological studies on the areas they had chosen, to set up strategy meetings and to go out to help organize the people for action. Students discovered the minjung of Korea and the sufferings of the minjung. They learned of the total social injustice imposed on factory workers and slum dwellers and their situation of total powerlessness. As the students became aware of the minjung of Korea in their powerlessness they formed a community of the minjung which was born out of a keen sense of the historical contradictions of power. The students were conscientized as the minjung became conscious of their situation and they helped the minjung mobilize themselves to change the situation to become masters of their own destiny and the subjects Of history itself.

As student consciousness of the minjung's suffering in the processes of industrialization, "modernization" and development increased, the faculty of Ewha's Christian Studies Department began an industrial internship program. Our intent was to sensitize our students to the urban industrial situation and that of the teen-aged women

workers in the factories in order to help the students seek new directions for Christian mission in the world. Hitherto the Christian Industrial Mission's objective was to evangelize factory workers so they would be obedient to the managers. But the newly arising Industrial Mission work in Korea was taking a different posture. It was to work with the workers and conscientize them about the basic value of the individual, human rights, and their own resources and potentialities for transformation. Our programme was set up in conjunction with a Christian Ethics course to give the students time to reflect on social problems and Christian social ethics. The faculty selected two students from those enrolled in the course to work in a factory during the summer vacation months. As they went into the factory they hid their student identity. Our students were hired as regular workers in a textile factory where most of the employees were young girls. Our students lived with the girls working, in the factory. They worked together, suffered together, and learned together about the structure of economic exploitation, the structure of low wages and the structure of poverty. Our students also learned of the precious wisdom of organizing laborers and the problems of labor unions completely controlled by the government. As expected, the students came back to school having gained more than they gave to the girls in the factory. Our students showed courage and maturity and a sense of wisdom. They shared much with the faculty as they reported back to the students and faculty what they had learned about the meaning of participation in suffering and about the meaning of the Gospel of liberation in the contemporary economic world.

The program continued with wide-spread impact on the campus among Christian and non-Christian students. Working with the audio-visual education students, I created an audio-visual aid which showed the problems of the city, factories, slums and the poor farm areas. The

program was named "One People in Two Worlds", to show the two worlds existing in one country and in one city – two divided worlds – north and south, haves and have-nots, the poor and the rich. The whole campus seemed to have been disturbed by the program shown in the university chapel during religious emphasis week. Challenging the students who came from well-to-do families, we spoke of the tradition of missionary founder-teachers who had built Ewha for the liberation of Korean women from poverty, ignorance and social and cultural oppression.

Finally, one of our students who was in the factory was discovered by the factory girls and eventually by the factory managers to be a university student. The whole program was publicized by a daily newspaper. It became an embarrassment to the factory, and a challenge to the so-called development policy of the government. As the Yushin system set in with the imposition of harsh emergency decrees, student involvement in slum areas and factories had to be withdrawn and students had to mobilize themselves otherwise for the struggle for freedom and democracy.

The Christian Urban Industrial Mission (UIM) in its present form had been active since 1965, although individual denominational industrial mission work existed since 1958. The UIM activity has the tradition of acting as a counter or critical force against the government- controlled labor unions in Korea. UIM workers were the organizers of labor-centered labour unions in the factories, and they were the only ones in the factories to speak up for the basic human rights of the factory workers. The Protestant UIM and the Catholic JOC (Young Catholic Workers) have made very significant contributions to the Korean labor movement in contrast to the government-controlled labor unions. In the early 1970's a young garment factory worker

burned himself to death to express his agony over the contradictions existing in the world of labor with its inhuman exploitation. He was not a Christian but in him young Christian students encountered the Christian presence. And the young Christian students went into the labor world with their identity. Christians, students and laborers came together in the struggle for justice, equality and humane life in contemporary Korea. In this togetherness with the people, in this presence and participation in their suffering and struggles for a more humane life and a just society, Christians have identified themselves as true disciples of Jesus Christ and have found themselves in the tradition of the Korean Church that worked for the liberation of the Korean minjung.

Student Discovery of the Traditional Minjung Culture

It is an historical irony and perhaps the grace of God, that Korean Christians discovered their own identity clearly in the historical traditions of Korea. The Yushin, government emphasized a "Korean type of democracy" as its rationale for going against the development of Western democratic ideas and ideals. Government ideologies spoke of "rejuvenation" of Korean industry and traditional consciousness in order to justify their Confucian style authoritarianism in all walks of life. Their emphasis on national consciousness in the history of Korea made a significant contribution to the development of historical research on things Korean. While the scholars were doing research on the history of the rulers, kings and ruling classes, students and writers were doing more serious research on the history of the people: downtrodden, oppressed, socially and economically alienated people or the minjung. While the government was commercializing the traditional folklore and folk arts, the students re-created them in the present political consciousness, making folk plays the living arts and life of the oppressed people.

Students at Ewha Womans University, for instance, organized a study group to learn the traditional performing arts of the common people. They learned from the old performers of Korean traditional mask dances. The Korean mask dance is a genuine people's art. Being a uniquely Korean art form it can be easily exploited by the government as good propaganda material for the traditional arts of Korea. But Korean mask dances were born in the consciousness of the Korean minjung. They speak of the minjung's suffering and their agony and their transcendence. Korean mask dances have the minjung's body movement and their own music — straight and strong with a natural beauty and dynamic balance. The stories of the Korean mask dances are about the lives of the minjung. And they are critical of the ruling class showing how unfit are the ruling aristocrats to rule the people, and that how the religious leaders are too deeply corrupt to give salvation to the people. They laugh at the rulers, at their jokes, at themselves. This is the "feast of fools". The minjung laugh at themselves, at their own suffering, and at their own powerlessness. But they transcend themselves and overcome their foolishness and their powerlessness. They sense the power of the solidarity of a community.

Their language is vulgar and unrefined and spontaneous. Korean mask dances speak the language of the body and the language of the minjung. Our students learned the spirit of mask dances and performed them in public on campus which heightened the consciousness for the minjung, the people, and of the present political situations. Our students adopted the mask dance form for the creation of their own contemporary plays. These were more powerful than the performance of Jesus Christ Superstar or Godspell, because, in spite of their power, they are still Western plays coming out of a Western consciousness. In a word, they were still foreign to our students. But the Korean mask dances were Korean

expressions, and they were the language of the suffering people with whom Christians were to identify themselves. Korean Christians became more and more conscious of their own historical roots in their active participation in the people's struggle for socio-economic justice. They started over again in looking into the traditional religious consciousness of the Korean people, in identifying themselves with the culture and language of the common people of the minjung, and in studying the history of the development of Korean Christianity.

All the theological questions of the 1960's – indigenization of Christianity, the problem of text and context, and the issue of demythologization and interpretation of the Biblical language – all turned around to discover the language of the liberating Gospel in the Korean consciousness, in its art forms, in its literature and music, and its dances and plays. Korean Christians found their own stories to tell alongside the stories of the Bible, the stories of a liberating Jesus and the Christian Gospel. The theology of the minjung was therefore born out of active participation in the struggle of the Korean people for a more humane and just society. But it is more than a political theology. It is rooted deeply in the consciousness of Korean history, its religion and its culture. It is a cultural response to the minjung of Korea. It is a cultural theology. It is a cultural theology not in the style of Paul Tillich. It is not a kind of theology which would respond to the western and aristocratic forms of culture which Tillich knows well and loves so dearly. It is a Korean Christian response to Korean culture, and the Korean minjung's way to life. It is not like Paul Tillich's correlation method which presupposes a Christian stance over against a given culture. Korean cultural theology is a Christian response within the culture, right in the middle of and at the center of the culture of minjung. (In this sense, Harvey Cox's criticism of Tillich is quite close to our

resent concern in the development of minjung theology). With the development of student consciousness and concern as well as the re-creation of the Korean traditional culture of the minjung, coincidentally, and out of this consciousness of the students, the world of poet Kim Chi Ha was born. He used the traditional rhythm of Korean folk tales in song form (Pan sori). He told traditional stories of the common people with their suffering and "han". He created the stories of the minjung in his long poems. He was critical of the ruling class; so were the mask dances. Actually he was creating mask dance poems in the contemporary Korean situation – extremely funny and extremely sad at the same time; extremely joyous and at the same time extremely angry. He showed his passion for the final victory of the minjung and his vision of Utopia, the time and place where the minjung become the subject of history.

Kim Chi Ha spoke of the "han" of the Korean minjung in his now banned poem, "The Story of the Sound" published in 1972. The story is about "very strange bumping sounds" which "if heard by people with money and power would cause them to tremble like aspen leaves and break out in cold sweat". The whole story is about the origin of a bumping noise. A bumping sound is heard coming from a deep prison cell. A poor prisoner named Ando is expressing his deepest "han" over his unjust and cruel treatment in prison. His head and legs were chopped off; and the trunk of his body keeps rolling and bumping against the prison walls. This is the noise. The "han" of the oppressed people and the "han-cry" of the unjustly-treated people are heard as strange bumping sounds day and night, posing an incredible threat to their oppressors. This noise is not merely the cry of the minjung in the prison cell and in the prison-like conditions of the society. It will accumulate to make the noise of revolution. Revolution is the. culmination of the oppressed people's

cries and shouts of "han". According to poet Kim Chi Ha, the work of a poet is to transmit the "han" of the people in his/her poetry as an expression of political imagination. "This little peninsula is filled with the clamour of aggrieved ghosts. It is filled with the mourning noice of the "han" of those who died from foreign invasions, wars, tyranny, rebellion, malignant diseases and starvation. I want my poems to be the womb or bearer of these sounds, to be the transmitter of the 'han' and to communicate a sharp awareness of our historical tragedy". Poet Kim Chi Ha is not the only one who expresses the cries of the people through creative literature and arts. There were other novelists and poets who wrote about the historical suffering of the Korean people in the late 60's and early 70's. Their materials were not limited to traditional stories. They boldly used the contemporary materials of labor problems, the rapidly changing urban situation and life in the slums and factories to raise the consciousness of Korean readers. Some of their works were banned by the authorities, and some of the writers were even investigated and convicted on charges of pro-communism. But their works are a search for humane society and humanity itself in a historical situation which is in a process of rapid dehumanization. As the dehumanization of politics or a total alienation of the minjung from the political process and total exploitation of the workers were in progress, Korean intellectuals and Christians were drawn more and more to one issue – mobilization of the minjung. Korean church historians looked at the 100 years' of Korean Protestantism from the perspective of the liberation of the nation and the "han" of the oppressed people. Korean secular historians read the history of Korea from the perspective of the development of the minjung's self-consciousness. Some Korean Buddhist writers began to interpret the Maitrya Buddha as the messianic Buddha of

the Korean minjung. Student demonstrations were not limited to demands for more democracy; they were more and more related to the economically exploited workers and minjung of Korea. The whole movement for democratization in Korea of the 1970's was not just power politics or party politics to support one party over another. It was a populist movement for the rights of the minjung, their livelihood and their humanization.

Journalists and Professors

In response to the Declaration of Freedom of the Press (1975) issued by the leading newspapers in Korea, some 300 reporters, editors and printers were dismissed from their jobs. The Korean Christian Faculty Fellowship, a Christian university professor group which had been actively involved in the students' and religious leadership in the struggle, joined the protest movement. In the spring of 1976, the Ministry of Education dismissed over 160 university professors and junior college teachers on the grounds of incompetence and lack of qualifications. Among them – the government included against the will of the respective university presidents – were 15 Christian professors from prestigious universities. Those dismissed professors were well qualified and well-respected professors, most of them Ph. D. holders from well-known American and European universities. They were in no sense incompetent. They did not have "political ambition" like their fellow professors who worked for the repressive government as technocrats and ideologues. But the dismissed professors were accused of being "politically active" or "meddling in politics" by the same government which was mobilizing all available intellectual resources for its own power and political survival.

I was listed as one of those to be dismissed in 1976, according to rumour – a rumour which no one cared to clarify as factual. But according to another rumour, (in a

time of extreme press censorship, rumours are the only reliable source of information), the President of Ewha Womans University, Kirn Okgill, was the only university president who refused to dismiss members of her faculty including me.

At the interrogation center, I was asked to write about my activities in the Christian Faculty Fellowship which supported the Christian professors dismissed from their universities. The last paper I had to write was about the Theological Declaration of 1974 which I had signed along with 65 other Korean church leaders and theologians. The interrogator concentrated on the following passage and demanded that I translate it into plain language, giving the background and intention of such a statement:

All powers that be come from God (Roman 13). This passage of the Bible expresses the limits of political power before it speaks of obedience to it, The political ruler is commissioned to preserve life, property, and freedom, which are fundamental human rights, and the exercise of political power should be within this limit. Political power that violates the life and the freedom of man, his fundamental human rights, is in rebellion against God. Christianity understands that if the relative thing is absolutized it is called an idol. Traditionally Christianity fights against such an idol. Therefore, when absolutized power violates human rights, the church has no choice but to struggle against it.

This is a strong and clear expression of the political theology of Korean Christians from the beginning, more particularly under the Japanese domination of Korea. Korean Christians have interpreted the first and second commandments more politically than any other contemporary Christians in the world. Moltmann's

political theology, and his political hermeneutics of the Gospel were put into practice with blood, and so have matured in the bone marrow of Korean Christians. It has been the call of God to struggle against the demonic political forces in the world that make themselves all-powerful political idols. That is why Korean Christians had to bear the cross of suffering as they fought the Japanese, the North Korean communities and now the Yushin regime. The decision on the part of the interrogator was quite clear: he told me that I was "impossible and could not be saved", and that I should be sent to the military tribunal to be tried for inciting students to bloody demonstrations.

What was more troubling to the interrogator was the passage in the theological declaration of 1974 immediately following the one quoted above:

Common survival and mutual help are necessary for people to create meaningful and fruitful lives. Christians are fighters against the power of evil which prevents the possibility of such common survival. Thus the church is commanded to fight suppression, to be on the side of the poor and the oppressed, to liberate them and to restore their human rights.

This was a clear statement of the Korean Christians' commitment to the Gospel of liberation – the Gospel that is committed to and proclaimed for the liberation of the poor and the oppressed and the alienated. This is the root of the theology of the minjung in the history of the development of Korean Protestantism.

When I finished writing my confession of Christian faith in my cell room, interpreting the declaration of fellow Christian theologians and our country of faith in Jesus Christ in this particular history of crisis, it was already my

second Sunday in the cell. Some one in the next started singing hymns and the military policemen who were guarding us in the corridor joined in. Almost all Christian professors who were writing their biography of struggle for the minjung were eventually dismissed from their teaching posts. (Some 87 professors were dismissed in the summer purge of universities by the new military government of 1980). We heard the voices of the minjung as we were humming silently the hymns of liberation.