Кореялық әлеуметтік әділет іздеуші теология (Minjung теологиясы)

South Korean Christian theological approach for social justice

Minjung theology (hangul=민중신학) emerged in the 1970s from the experience of South Korean Christians in the struggle for social justice. It is a people's theology, and, according to its authors, "a development of the political hermeneutics of the Gospel in terms of the Korean reality." It is part of a wider Asian theological ferment, but it was not designed for export. It "is firmly rooted in a particular situation, and growing out of the struggles of Christians who embrace their own history as well as the universal message of the Bible."

Minjung theology first began in South Korea in the 1950s and 1960s after the Korean War, Jeon Tae il was a factory worker and union organizer who had burned himself to death along with a copy of South Korea's labor laws in an act of political and religious protest. A Catholic writer and artist named Kim Chi ha is credited with inspiring much of minjung thought with graphic depictions of the Korean Christ suffering alongside the minjung. Ahn Byung mu, Suh Nam dong, Hyun Young Hak, and Kim Yong Bock are considered first generation minjung theologians. As South Korea has grown to be more a prosperous nation, later generations of minjung theologians have needed to reevaluate who are the poor and oppressed minjung of Korea. As such, a number of minjung theologians such as Park Soon kyung have focused on questions of reunification with North Korea, identifying the minjung as all those oppressed in both Koreas. The Catholic Priests' Association for Justice (CPAJ) and Fr. Park Chang Shin are associated with liberation theology in Korea. Minjung movements that are important for understanding the Korean context include the Tonghak Peasant Revolution, the March 1st Movement, and the April Revolution. Theology develops out of a human analysis of God's interactions with the world in a given historical and cultural context, and Christian theology has predominately been defined and expressed within a Western context. Minjung theology asserts that God speaks to all historical and cultural contexts including the conditions of Korea. Proponents of Minjung theology believe that the context of Korea is similar in many ways to the stories found in the bible, and that God is demonstrably on the side of the poor and oppressed throughout the books of the Bible. The word Minjung translates literally as "the mass of people," but a more comprehensive definition of the term is "those who are oppressed politically, exploited economically, alienated socially, and kept uneducated in cultural and intellectual matters." Another way of putting it is that the minjung are han ridden people, which is a Korean word that roughly translates as resentment. Minjung is contrasted by the paeksung who accept oppression and the word inmin meaning a national identity. The Old Testament was written from the perspective of people in positions of power, but the stories are often about the liberation of the minjung. For instance, the Exodus, a story told from the perspective of Moses, is about the liberation of the Hebrew people from the oppressive rule of the Egyptian Pharaoh Rameses II. The Exodus story has parallels to Korean history because Koreans have endured under brutal governments for most of its history. The first Protestant missionaries in Korea such as Horace Newton Allen, Henry Appenzeller, and Horace Grant Underwood began their missions among the lower classes. For instance, in 1885 the Protestant missions opened a school for girls, which was attended by minjung but were dismissed by the yang ban. These missionaries discovered that the Chinese language was being used by the upper classes so the missionaries began using Hangul and translated the Bible into Hangul between 1887 and 1900. In January 1893, the Nevius Plan was adopted by Protestant missions, which stated that:

text=1. It is better to aim at the conversion of the working classes than that of the higher classes. 2. The conversion of women and the training of Christian girls should be a special aim, since mothers exercise so important an influence over future generations. 3. The Word of God converts where humankind is without resources; therefore it is most important that we make every effort to place a clear translation of the Bible before the people as soon as possible. 4. The mass of Koreans must be led to Christ by their own fellow country men; therefore we shall thoroughly train a few as evangelists rather than preach to a multitude ourselves.|author=Cyris H. S. Moon and Mun Hŭi sŏk|title=A Korean Minjung Theology: An Old Testament Perspective|source=Chapter 2, Page 11

During the Tonghak rebellion, the minjung held the belief that "humanity is heaven" and that the lower classes were subjects of history rather than simply objects being acted upon. However, in the early 1900s Protestant missionaries became disconnected from the minjung and after the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1905 Protestant churches no longer focused on the political oppression of the minjung and were more concerned with the saving of souls. Once Korea was officially annexed to Japan in the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910 Koreans were expected to recognize the Imperial Rescript on Education and the divinity or Arahitogami of the emperor. Korea under Japanese rule led to the persecution of Christians who began to interpret the bible within the context of their struggle for independence by turning to the Exodus story and would culminate in the March 1st Movement. Twenty two percent of the participants in the movement and much of the leadership consisted of Christians, but the movement was crushed by the Japanese military. Christian missionaries found it necessary to collaborate with Japanese authorities, and between 1920 and 1945 Korean churches became fundamentalist and focused on Western theology while also giving into Japanese demands to recognize the divinity of the emperor. At the end of World War II, in 1945, the Korean minjung achieved independence from Japan in much the same way that the Hebrew people liberated themselves from the Egyptians.

The word multitude is uniquely important within minjung theology. Minjung theology is a belief that is concerned with the experience of the lower classes or the multitude. William Huang of the conservative MercatorNet has criticized believers in minjung theology for supporting restrictions on beef imports from America, encouraging peaceful dialogue with North Korea, and calling for the National Security Act to be repealed.