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South Korea's Christian Military Chaplaincy in the Korean War - religion as ideology?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Vladimir Tikhonov
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The present paper examines the military chaplaincy in the context of a problem which has long intrigued researchers, namely the reasons for the rapid growth of the Christian (Protestant and Catholic) churches in 1950-80s South Korea compared to Japan or Taiwan. The author suggests that, whereas a general answer to the question may be the use of Christianity as a de facto state ideology in the years 1948-1960 and its functioning as an ideology of capitalist modernisation in the 1960s-80s, a particularly important part of government-induced Christianization of South Korea was the institution of military chaplaincy. In 1951-1968, Christians - despite being a numerical minority! - monopolized the chaplaincy in the military, and fully utilised this monopoly, “solacing” vulnerable youth forcibly conscripted for military service and making many “church family members”. The loyalties won in such a way, often lasted for life, thus providing the churches with new recruits and the hard-core anti-Communist state - with docile anti-Communismt Christian subjects.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 11 , Issue 18 , May 2013 , e1
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Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2013

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