2009/09/03

How come most Korean people belive in Christianism (or Protestant)?

How come most Korean people belive in Christianism (or Protestant) and they are so religious?

hmmmmmmm....
I know Korean people are so into Protestant. They always go to church every Sunday, don't they.
I suppose Korean people are into church because,

1. I belive the most popular protestant Korean branch do have rigid doctrines. I think the most popular branch among Korean Protestant is probyterians, and probyterians do emphsize don't skip the prayer service, neither drink nor smoke and etc. Actually 30% in  Korean population belive in some sort of Christianism including Catholic and Protestantism. The other 34% belives in Buddhism. The rest is either atheist or belives in some other form of religion.

However since Christianism has been only introduced for like two centuries, many Koreans including some christians have respects towards buddhism, Korean shamanism, confucism, and taoism.
Actually a lot of people including christans go for fortune tellers who are mostly taoists or related to Korean shamnism.

2. For the benefit from Korean community
You know Koreans are from a  very homogenous country. They are not really open-minded to other culture especially whem it comes to marriage. A lot of conservative Korean parents and typical 1.5 Korean generation want a Korean for family. Well my parent's dont. But they prefer caucasians or other east asians.

Yeah Koreans are somewhat racists when it comes to marriage.
Anyhoo they are into church because it's only a community where you can meet your other half.

3. Koreans are not good at English. In order to expand their business for 1st generation they need Koreans.

4. To educate Korean language, unlike Chinese community Koreans don't have a private Korean class. It is churches which provide Korean language classes. Your parents want you to be good at your language, don't they?

5. Christianism, especially Prostestantism is a saviour religion after Korean colonization, Korean war
A lot of missionaries especially from protestants did come to Korea when Korea was colonized by Japan.
They actually helped Koreans to protest against Japanese government. Later during the Korean war,  lots of missionaries from US came.

Quite contrast to religions existed in Korea before, Christianism guarateed salvation after death.
Buddhism guarantees salvation but Korean buddhism had been weakened while the most recent Korean dynasty, Choseon adopted Confucianism instead of Buddhism. The dynasty before Choseon, Koryo adopted Buddhism, and the buddhist monks were influentical in Koryo government.

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