Japanese mainliners in total are less than a single percent of the population while in Korea the total Christian population is around 17-20% with its historical size being around 50-60%
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Billy Graham is considered a national hero btw
aug 25, 2025, 6:22 pm β’ 18 0 β’ view
His wife was born in Pyongyang.
aug 25, 2025, 6:30 pm β’ 8 0 β’ view
Yeah thatβs part of the reason why he became a unofficial ambassador to North Korea for South Korea
aug 25, 2025, 6:31 pm β’ 10 0 β’ view
yup yup. Korea was flooded by american missionaries, especially after the war, and most of (all?) the dictators were christians who gave them support and actively attacked/suppressed Korea's indigenous religious traditions.
aug 25, 2025, 6:24 pm β’ 3 0 β’ view
The dictators arenβt Christian park was a Buddhist and Chun was a Buddhist during his administration only becoming a born again during his later life in the 2010s
aug 25, 2025, 6:30 pm β’ 1 0 β’ view
my understanding is that park was a presbyterian?
aug 25, 2025, 6:32 pm β’ 0 0 β’ view
The fuck you got that from? He attended church as a child but never joined.
aug 25, 2025, 6:33 pm β’ 0 0 β’ view
no need to be aggro. I feel like I was told that by a professor, but a quick google search says you're right. doesn't change that he pursued overtly pro-evangelical and anti-indigenous religious policies
aug 25, 2025, 6:38 pm β’ 1 0 β’ view
When your saying indigenous religous do you mean shamanism or Buddhism cause Buddhism is about as indigenous as Christianity to Korea
aug 25, 2025, 6:42 pm β’ 2 0 β’ view
mainly shamanism, but Korean buddhism is its own thing, too. one can debate how/if/when an imported religion becomes local til the head spins, but i feel pretty confident calling Korean buddhism korean, it's been like ~1700 years and it has its own schools
aug 25, 2025, 6:46 pm β’ 0 0 β’ view
Itβs how it was viewed by the late 1800s especially given its role during the occupation and late dynastic period. Korean Buddhism is very much Japanese inspired
aug 25, 2025, 6:48 pm β’ 2 0 β’ view
*itβs not how
aug 25, 2025, 6:49 pm β’ 0 0 β’ view
huh, really? my impression was the opposite (not knowing as much about late 1800s Korea as I should), that Japanese buddhism came from Korea (literally, but also in terms of intellectual and ideological influence), not the other way round.
aug 25, 2025, 6:53 pm β’ 0 0 β’ view
Buddhism had during the centuries fallen out favor and much like Christianity was repressed by the Yi dynasty who preferred Confucianism and shamanism
aug 25, 2025, 7:06 pm β’ 2 0 β’ view
So Korean buddhists institutions were supportive of the occupation? how did that play with the Japanese attempt to force Shinto onto Korea?
aug 25, 2025, 6:53 pm β’ 0 0 β’ view
on top of that, even among nonchristians, korean churches got a lot of street cred for later switching tack and strongly supporting democratization. That's being eroded now by the hauty chauvinism towards nonchristians, but it still lingers
aug 25, 2025, 6:24 pm β’ 1 0 β’ view
Park Chung Hee gave (favored) churches state funding and land, and made life miserable for practitioners of the folk religion and institutional buddhism. even with democracy, you get people like Lee Myung-bak using the regulatory powers of the state to attack nonevangelical religious institutions
aug 25, 2025, 6:29 pm β’ 1 0 β’ view
Wow that's wild. I'd heard the younger generation was very secular while the preceding generation was very Christian but somehow I didn't internalize the extent of the decline. Did the fall of the dictatorship just totally discredit Christianity for most Koreans?
aug 25, 2025, 6:32 pm β’ 1 0 β’ view
No lol it increased it prestige the subsequent years in the 90s is what did that
aug 25, 2025, 6:34 pm β’ 5 0 β’ view