Asia Sentinel

The All for Christ Theological Seminary in central Mindoro. (Photo: M. Gibb)

Korea’s aggressive Christian missionaries, sowing almost as much irritation as they do the word of God, have been spreading across the Filipino island of Mindoro with more zeal than sensitivity, their critics say.

"One must understand that there is no single authority when it comes to the Korean missionaries,” says Thai economist Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.

“Many churches compete with each other so to win public support," he said in an email interview.

"For the Korean missionaries, the only way to win hearts and minds in this traditionally Catholic society is [to] combine the issue of religious faith and the standard of living... [I]nstead of promoting the value of their religion, the Korean missionaries use money to buy the devotion of the people. It is a corrupt practice to me because in buying the people's faith, this can change the whole landscape of the local culture, belief and customs, which could be detrimental to the country as a whole," he added.

The spread of Christianity a la Korea has dismayed many in Southeast Asia, Chachavalpongpun continued. "In the Philippines where the majority of the population commits to Catholicism, Korean missionaries try hard to break through the protective wall and attract the locals to their Protestant denominations, an endeavor viewed by local religious leaders with suspicion."

Others are even more forceful in their denunciations. One of Korea's most experienced NGO experts, with nearly 40 years experience but who didn't want his name used, said he is "angry and fed up" at the way Korean missionaries conduct themselves in Southeast Asia, accusing them of being in competition with each other, especially over building churches and buying land.

The NGO worker said he had come across similar complaints in other parts of Asia directed at Koreans in the corporate world, especially from people working in factories managed by Koreans. He said people in grassroots communities are suffering and that there should be a debate about the way Koreans conduct themselves in other cultures that might be vulnerable and poor.

Critics say the problem lies in ignorance and a lack of cultural sensitivity.

According to the Korea Research Institute for Missions, a Seoul-based organization that studies Korean missionary activity around the world, there are 700 missionaries in the Philippines alone.

Yet very few have the kind of training needed for working in intercultural situations overseas. In fact, any Korean citizen who wants to be a missionary doesn't need any training at all. There are cases of Korean missionaries working with some degree of success, or so it would seem, with the eight tribes that make up Mindoro’s indigenous Mangyan.

But there are persistent rumors that some missionaries are actually businessmen in disguise. The key, Mangyan spiritual and secular leaders say, is to listen to what people want rather than impose a system from outside.

Steve Moon, the institute's executive director, said more than 160 missionary agencies in Korea regularly dispatch missionaries overseas, but there is no central regulatory or quality assurance body. Each has its own methods of selection, training and certification, which might range from the very good to the woefully poor. The upshot is that some missionaries head into potentially dangerous regions filled with zeal to spread the Gospels and the teachings of Jesus Christ but can be met with opposition and resentment.

The most notorious case involved the 23 evangelical Christians from Sammeul Community Church in southern Seoul who were kidnapped by Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. Rumors persist that the Korean government paid a huge ransom to win their release.

"Filled with zeal, the missionaries' passion to win converts and to spread the gospel can be overwhelming. [Korean missionaries] sometimes smash idols of other religions due to their ignorance and cultural insensitivity," said Moon, whose job involves visiting missionaries in the field overseas and researching the kinds of challenges they face, information that can be used to help train new recruits and improve methods.

This lack of training was witnessed first-hand by Andrew Kim, a long-term missionary based in Baguio, northern Philippines. Currently on sabbatical in Canada, he agreed that most Korean mission agencies do not offer or require field adjustment training, which can cause the kind of cultural insensitivity that the Mangyan people complain of.

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Dog eaters
written by Jesus , January 19, 2009

Koreans are dog eaters. Hell will be full of Koreans.

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modern tragedy of religionism
written by one wise man , December 26, 2008

This is an example of the tragedy that religions bring to the people,i.e. the missionaries that are preaching to the people they claim to "help". They always target the poor and uneducated and tempt them with material goodies and somehow linke all these largese to their "God". Like in China, they undermine the governance of the land and worse still provoke retaliation. At the end it is not the people who benefit but the "Church" who receive large amounts of monetary gifts. The people? They will still be poor and ignorant except for the few who benefit from the largese. This is the failure of religion - it builds cliques, promote clubmanship and forget the bigger role of religion, which is the development of character and principles in the believer. At the end it is nothing more than a political club/party, with religious overtones. To this end, Islam and Christianity are ideological twins. Bishop Desmond Tutu once said "the British came and gave us christianity, and took away our land". In the Philippines, the Catholic church is the single biggest owner of land. Who are the landless? The locals, and this after 500 years of Catholic domination.

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Back to Jerusalem
written by Sejong , December 25, 2008

It seems that the fanatical Korean evangelists tend to take a scotch earth policy when dealing with other religions or even Christian denominations which are different from their beliefs. This can lead to conflicts with other fundamentalist faith like Islam.

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