Prompt: Modern Church in a painting, in Seoul City, South Korea

Source

Reaching the fourth book, I thought there is nothing I can glean from it that will be relevant to my paper. The fourth book is an old one. It was written by C. A. Clark and if my reading of the Roman Numeral is accurate, the book was first published in 1930. The title is The Korean Church and the Nevius Method.

This type of book requires more time to digest its content. For my current purpose, the only relevant material I found after browsing the table of content is the 9th chapter. It talks about two tragic events that happened in the past under the hands of the Japanese government where the author describes as "The Calvaries of the Korean Church" (p. 167).

Most Christians today, when they think of the Korean Church, the first things that come to mind are mega churches and missionaries. Working with Korean missionaries for almost four decades now, I myself am not aware of such a painful past.

In this article, revisiting this part of Korean Church history, I want to reflect on the themes of Calvary, freedom, and tyranny.

The Conspiracy Case of 1912

The year 1912 was unforgettable for those who witnessed first-hand the atrocities committed by the Japanese government against the Korean Church. In that year, 123 church leaders were arrested and accused of plotting to assassinate the Governor General. The government saw the Church as a threat and considered it a political organization.

The goal of the arrest was to intimidate the Church and to let them experience the taste of "German fright" (p. 163). The government expected that out of this situation, the Church would freeze into inaction.

Terrible stories of torture followed. None of the accused were allowed to see legal advice. Mission organizations came to the rescue and so "lawyers were hired, and the cases fought" (p. 164). After a long legal battle, 117 were set free and 6 were condemned to 10 years' imprisonment.

The Persecution of 1919

After seven years, the earlier accusation morphed into a full blown persecution. The Japanese government adopted an attitude of contempt and suspicion on everything the Koreans did. They passed a law on "public subscriptions" in the name of protecting the public from fraudulent projects. Projects that can only be allowed are those that the government would permit to operate after receiving formal applications. So far the announced intention was good but the Japanese government particularly the low ranking officials seized this as an opportunity "to embarrass and harass the churches" (p. 165). The Korean people in general also received the same treatment that the churches received from the hands of the Japanese government.

And then on March 1 of the same year, the Koreans reached the limit of their suffering and so the whole nation rose up as one people refusing to be assimilated into Japanese culture and demanded freedom. Here's how Clark summarized such a memorable event in Korean history:

As one man, the nation rose, and they marched in long columns, men, women and children, through the streets of the cities to the police stations and places of government, demanding their liberty ((ibid.)

The Japanese government didn't know what to do. The only response they knew is the power "of the bullet and the bayonet" (ibid.). Koreans were unarmed and so they were incapable to use force. All they asked for was to regain their freedom.

The popular saying is true that those who use force are afraid of reasoning for they themselves are aware that the truth is not on their side. And so the Japanese government ordered the soldiers to fire on the crowds or scatter them with bayonets. They even stripped naked the young girls of academy age to shame them.

In their attempt to crush the "rebellion", the government looked for a central authority that made such uprising possible, but they found none. It was just a spontaneous act of protest of 20 million Koreans joining forces against the abuses of the civil government.

Nevertheless, the authorities are forced to fabricate a scapegoat and it was again the Korean Church that became the victim. Church leaders were arrested and were sent to jails. A number of churches were burned and destroyed. The missionaries took action and started informing "the decent people of the Japanese Empire" (p. 166). The government denied all the accusations but gradually the truth came out. "The decent people of Japan rose up and deposed the Governor General and many of the officials, and they made at least an effort to repair the damage that had been done" (pp. 166-167).

The Korean Church came out victoriously from those years of terror. What followed after are years of reconstruction:

The new officials of the government issued proclamations absolving the missionaries and the Church, as an organization, from blame for the uprising, and they sought the cooperation of the missionaries in their work of reconstruction (p. 167).

Lessons for Today

What can we learn from the tragic experience of the Korean Church? I can cite at least four:

One, the danger of the excessive power of the civil government. We have seen such an abuse since the biblical times. I shared in The Way to Financial Freedom Part 2 the danger of the power of an abusive government. We see this happened repeatedly throughout human history and this is exactly what happened in the history of the Korean Church.

Two, the danger of using the law as a weapon to silence opposition. Again, we saw how it was done in the time of Pharaoh of Moses' generation, in the experience of the Korean Church, and even up to this day. Such a strategy is the way of the political class to protect its interest. Their real intention is always hidden from public view. They announced one thing but the real intent is different.

Third, the power of information. In Korean history, the wave of persecution has been stopped only after the decent people of Japan came to know the real situation. Living in an Information Age, we no longer have an excuse if tyranny again will gain the upper hand in our time. If this will happen, this only shows that the majority are still sleeping while only few remains awake.

Lastly, the power of decentralization. This idea is popular today in the world of financial technology and that's why you read of blockchain and crypto projects like Decentralized Finance (DeFi).

In the tragic history of the Korean Church, the Japanese government felt powerless when they could not find any central authority that organized such a national act of defiance. The best they can do was to pick up the Korean Church as the scapegoat for their misdeeds.

In the case of what's going on in the crypto space right now, this should serve as a lesson to centralized projects and exchanges that they could also be used as fall guys in the SEC's ongoing crackdown of crypto projects.

I am done with the fourth book on mission and freedom. Seven more to go!

Grace and peace!

Source:

Clark, C. A. 1930. The Korean Church and The Nevius Methods. New York/Chicago/London/Edinburgh: Fleming H. Revell Company.