Latest / Martyrs And Missionaries / The History of Christianity in Korea

Transcript

The History of Christianity in Korea · Martyrs And Missionaries

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Martyrs and Missionaries is a production of Revive Studios.
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: it is so good to be back in the studio recording actually not back in the studio because this is a whole new brand new studio to me because we moved houses this summer so um but it's so good to be back.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: I got a lot of emails recently that are like are you coming back or are you gonna do this thing?
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like I'm so sorry guys.
• 0:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we were in the States this summer and so that was really busy but really good and then when we came back To endo, it was a very very busy.
• 1:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we had our teacher training.
• 1:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: We moved houses.
• 1:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: I got sick for like three weeks and then we had some protests, which are all done now and everything's fine.
• 1:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: But It was it was a really busy like back to the school year and so I am really happy to be back and I'm sorry.
• 1:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: It took me so long
• 1:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have two orders of business, and want to tell you guys about the first one is about our t-shirt shop.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: So if you have bought and things, if you have bought things from us in the past, you may have realized that the quality is not super high.
• 1:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And also it takes forever and a day to get to you.
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we switched that.
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we changed it.
• 1:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: We realized that because we actually hadn't had a chance to order anything since we'd been like kind of overseas and all that.
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: We tried ordering something this summer, and we're like, this is not going to work.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you're a Patreon, you know that we tried to surprise our patrons with like a Christmas shirt that came, I think summer actually still arriving.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I didn't work.
• 1:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we ended up switching that over and got some new designs and stuff like that.
• 2:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: So if you go to our website, which I will link in this episode description, everything there is amazing.
• 2:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have got a few different shirts from them.
• 2:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: My kids have gotten shirts from them,
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Secondly, sometimes occasionally, we get messages about some of the ads that run on the show and we are hosted through a place called Red Circle and we have no control over those ads unfortunately, but we have everything blocked out so they'll have like a list of like options and subjects and things like that.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: We have literally blacked out like majority of them.
• 2:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: The problem is that they're regional and occasionally things slip through and something inappropriate comes on.
• 2:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: not like explicitly, but sometimes it's not like what we would like to advertise.
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so we get these messages and they're like, hey, why do you endorse this?
• 2:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, you don't.
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we go back through and try to figure out like where did it slip through?
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes we can figure it out other times we cannot.
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: But through this and first and foremost, we do not endorse those things.
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's what you don't know that.
• 3:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Secondly, we are looking at getting our own ads and doing our own things now.
• 3:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: like that and get off of the red circle ads so that way you don't hear like, best buy, you know, and things like that.
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that way you hear something more content specific to what you're listening to.
• 3:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we patient with us because that's going to take probably a few months to work out, but we are in the process of doing that.
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that is all the order of business stuff out of the way.
• 3:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I want to tell you how this particular episode came to be.
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: It came back this summer, and I was working on like this other episode.
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just like, I'm not feeling it.
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, now that he's gone a great guy, you're just some episodes where you're just like, and I just don't know if this is the one I want to come back with.
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: I started looking up some other people, and I came across this guy that was a missionary to Korea.
• 3:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, oh, that's kind of interesting because you don't really think like about Korea in 1800s, right?
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: It kind of gets skipped over for like Japan and China, especially.
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: But Korea has a really unique history in Northeastern Asia.
• 4:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so the more that I started thinking about it, I was like, oh, should I do one specific person?
• 4:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, no, let's do this.
• 4:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's like, let's do one of these history of the Christianity in this country because it's actually really fascinating.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that is how it came to be.
• 4:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm really excited to bring this to you guys because it's just fascinating.
• 4:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: So without further ado, let's go ahead and get into it.
• 4:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Korea was the most desired prize by China, by Japan, and by Russia.
• 4:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the Golden Age of Korea, if you're in the K-Dramas and things like that, you'll probably see a lot of these things.
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's called the Josen Period or Josen Period or I'm not entirely sure the pronunciation kind of fluctuates.
• 4:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it's a long lasting dynasty.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's about 1392 to 1910 when Japan ends up annexing them.
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: But during this time, especially in the earlier phase, they enjoyed a very profitable relationship with the Ming Dynasty in China.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: So Ming Dynasty, Joe's and Dynasty in Korea, these are like the golden ages for both of these countries.
• 5:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Korea considered China to be its big brother, and even after the Qing Dynasty took over for the Ming, Korea enjoyed a mostly peaceful kind of like vessel relationship, although I don't think the Qing respected them in the same way that the Ming Dynasty did.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: But Korean ambassadors and merchants would travel very regularly to China, and this is where they first learned about Christianity.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Their earliest exposure was actually to Catholicism, and they returned to Korea with religious texts and then mistakenly in small groups.
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Christianity was officially outlawed in Korea because the government felt that it clashed with their tradition of honoring or worshiping other spirits and sisters.
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so these Christians face persecution and martyrdom up into the 1870s.
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as a result, Catholicism just never really took off.
• 5:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Catholic persecution of 1866 alone killed 8,000 Catholics and even 9 French priests.
• 5:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Korea was first introduced to Protestantism during the 1860s via the, pretty much the same process.
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: They had these merchants that traveled to Manchuria in northeastern China.
• 6:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And at this time, Manchuria is mostly independent, but a small part of it is owned by Russia.
• 6:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the first Protestant Church was established on May 16th, 1883.
• 6:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: The student June, who was one of the first Protestants in Korea, was baptized in Japan in the same year.
• 6:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he wrote an article in the missionary review of the world urging more Americans to injure Korea.
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that was like December of 1883.
• 6:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And many missionaries would answer that call.
• 6:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: But we're going to get ahead of ourselves if we go that way.
• 6:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we're not going to go that way just yet.
• 6:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: because you need to know that Korea was incredibly isolationist.
• 6:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: They made Japan look like they were just wide open and ready for business.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: They stayed reclusive for 30 years after Japan opened its borders, and that will really hurt them as Japan modernizes and expands its horizons towards the colonization of its neighbors.
• 6:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: America's first contact came in 1866 about 10 years after Japan's encounter, and American merchant ship named the General Sherman tried to force Korea to open up like they had done with Japan and then with China.
• 7:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they sailed at the river into what is now North Korea, and the Korean officials in the area told them no way we're not going to let you in, and they were like, well, we're going to keep moving.
• 7:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: So Korea decided to send out fire ships that would set the general Sherman ablaze, and it worked.
• 7:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so these sailors, like, you know, fleeing for their lives, they go on shore, and they are all slaughtered.
• 7:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Interestingly, nothing comes of this.
• 7:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's no repercussions for this until about five years later.
• 7:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: The American Ambassador to China decided that it was finally time to investigate.
• 7:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it seems like what it really was was they knew what happened in the general Sherman, but they were also like, well, let's like actually go and try to open up Korea.
• 7:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so,
• 7:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: this was the reason for being in the country, but it was also just like, well, it's time.
• 7:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
• 7:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So he sends out five warships with 650 men.
• 7:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they arrive a little bit north of what will eventually become the Incian airport outside of Seoul.
• 8:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they wanted to sail up the Han River, which would put them right into the heart of Seoul.
• 8:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so Korea was like, no, you're not going to do that.
• 8:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the Americans demanded that they apologize for what had happened to the General Sherman
• 8:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: no.
• 8:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: So then they decide to open fire on these ships.
• 8:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Koreans open fire on these American ships and their weapons are so outdated they have like no effect.
• 8:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the Americans decide to take out three forts, they made landfall, they destroyed another one in 15 minutes.
• 8:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there was really no contest here.
• 8:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: In this battle, there were 243 Koreans and three Americans killed.
• 8:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And America captured 20 Koreans hoping to use them as a bargaining chip.
• 8:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: But Korea said that they were cowards and didn't care to have them brought back.
• 8:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: America released them anyway and then kind of like sailed back out.
• 8:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: This takes about three days.
• 8:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And America kind of waited to see what would happen.
• 8:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Korea decided to double double down on its isolationism and then reinforce itself with better weapons.
• 9:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And America was just not worth it, so they sealed off.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Five more years go by and Korea finally cracks when Japan sells in and threatens to fire on soul if they refuse to make a trade agreement and then from there, segdominous.
• 9:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: So then they signed with some European countries
• 9:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in 1882, just one year before Western Christians heard Lee Soo-Jung's plea for missionaries, America and Korea struck another deal.
• 9:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: America became the most favored trade partner and each country promised to mutual aid to each other in case of attack.
• 9:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: But now you're thinking, like, well, what about when Japan annexed Korea?
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: There was no attack.
• 9:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, America didn't do anything, right?
• 9:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: We'll get to that because I have the exact same five.
• 9:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: But before we get to that, we have to discuss the ruling family of Korea.
• 9:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: The last emperor of the Joseph period is Emperor Gojo, and he took over for his father in 1866, which is the same year that the General Sherman incident happened.
• 10:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, it seems that his father still held all the influence, so it's kind of unclear about how much power that Go Jun had, although he did share the same isolationist sentiments as his father, and he married the Empress Myeong-Syeong, or Queen Min as she would later be known, and she was opposed to the controlling hand of her husband's father.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, she banishes him in 1873, and just three years later, they open up to trade, albeit
• 10:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the Empress is open to reform, but she's really, really slow about it.
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: But she is much more friendly to Chinese interests than to Japan's interests.
• 10:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you picture Korea, you basically have Japan on one arm and China on the other and they're both tugging, right?
• 10:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, how in wind to modernize was a source of contention for China, Japan, and Korea alike.
• 10:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And from many Koreans, they felt that China was stifling them, and to be honest, they actually were.
• 11:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: They tried to forcibly prevent a legation from going to America and visiting Washington.
• 11:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when they arrived, the American ambassador tried to introduce Korea as a subordinate of China.
• 11:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: On the other hand, you had Japan.
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: trying to encroach on what little sovereignty they had.
• 11:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Korea was modernizing, but it was modernizing very slowly and was it too little too late.
• 11:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: These frustrations boiled over into the cops in Ku of 1884, reformers from the ruling class in Korea who were all young men, like below 30, wanted rapid modernization.
• 11:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: They were jealous of the industrialization of Japan, with their major restoration.
• 11:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And many of them had spent time in Japan
• 11:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: They seized the palace in Seoul and killed several of the pro-Chinese conservative faction, and they actually won for a few days and then began implementing the reforms, which were not bad, actually.
• 11:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then Chinese forces were brought in by the royal family, and overwhelmed them a few of them died and the rest fled to Japan.
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that, once again, stymied the modernization in Korea.
• 12:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: They were still under China's thumb, and now Japan was also breathing down their neck.
• 12:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: They asked Japan for these, like, antagonists, these work criminals, basically, to be brought back, and Japan refused, stating that Korea needed to instead apologize to them.
• 12:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why that is?
• 12:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Who knows?
• 12:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: The career refused, and so trading came to a standstill, and eventually it was resolved when Korea apologized to Japan and then paid them a hefty fee for the inconvenience.
• 12:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Did they get their people back?
• 12:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: No.
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this also confirms what Japan was already kind of new, which was that Korea is right for the taking.
• 12:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: They have no power.
• 12:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now I want to pivot into some of the missionaries that came to Korea after they opened up.
• 12:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: When they first arrived, open worship and evangelization was until loud.
• 12:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: That wouldn't be allowed until 1887.
• 12:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: So those missionaries that came a few years earlier had to get creative.
• 12:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Horace Grant, underwood, was one of those men.
• 13:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was so moved by Lee soon Jun's appeal and his translation of Mark and to Korea that he decided to go there himself.
• 13:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: He taught physics and chemistry at the first modern hospital, which was built by missionaries.
• 13:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's still an
• 13:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: You worked with the group that was translating the Bible into Korean, actually, the biblical translation into Hang Yul or the Common Tang in Korea was revolutionary because it leads favored classical Chinese, which was unattainable to the peasant class, which Korea was mostly made up of.
• 13:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the key reason why Protestantism took over because those people who were learning how to read Hang Yul, which was much more easier to understand, had access to the scriptures
• 13:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so Horace Underwood and his buddies finished their translation work the same year that Korea was annexed.
• 13:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: He also helped to establish the sole YMCA and later became the president of Pyeong-to-University, which was started by missionaries, and is still one of the most prestigious schools in Korea.
• 14:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Underwood's wife, Vilius actually served as the personal position of the Empress, but we don't know anything else about her.
• 14:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Henry Appenzeller and his wife came to Korean 1885 as Methodist missionaries, and their daughter is the first American born in the country.
• 14:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: They founded a boy's school, the first Christian newspaper, and the first Methodist Church.
• 14:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Henry also worked with a team translating the New Testament in the Korean, and he died at 44 during a shipwreck when he tried to go down and wake up a woman and her baby and get them off the ship, unsure if he was successful about that, but he goes down as kind
• 14:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Mary Scranton was a widow who was asked to become the first missionary since by the Methodist Episcopal Church, and she arrived in 1884 as well.
• 14:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: They all arrived basically in that same like three years span.
• 14:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And she wanted to start a school for girls.
• 14:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And her first student was
• 14:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: a concupine of one of the nobles, and she stayed about three months, so not very long.
• 15:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Korea, like many of its neighbors, considered the education of girls to kind of be a waste of time.
• 15:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And women were not even given names.
• 15:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: They were known as like their family name, whether brother, or their uncle, or their father, or whatever.
• 15:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And even the Empress was not given a name until after her death.
• 15:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: But slowly, students were added not from the elite classes though, but from the orphans in the single parent households.
• 15:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And a few years later, after it gets going, the emperor himself named the school Ewa or Pierre Blossom's, and it's a massive women's university now.
• 15:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: When we went to Seoul for the first time, we stayed near that university, and they had these amazing, like, just rose around upon rows of socks, like the most creative and fun socks.
• 15:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: I got so many.
• 15:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: High-quality socks.
• 15:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have very good memories of Ewa University and not because I went there, but because I'm like, oh, it's so nice.
• 15:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was so pretty and they had wonderful socks.
• 15:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: But since then it is grown to be
• 15:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: one of the most respected institutions in Korea.
• 15:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, Scranton leaves Ewa and then partnered with local day schools traveling all over rural Korea.
• 16:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: She also helped trade local women in evangelizing and these Scranton women's leadership center is named after her.
• 16:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was started in 2007 and it helps raise scholarships to provide women with the opportunity for education and developing countries, which emulates the example that Mary provided.
• 16:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: The last missionary I want to cover in this list is Horace Allen.
• 16:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: He is the missionary who first sent me on to this deep dive and was the initial inspiration.
• 16:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: But then I kind of had to fix that because he's interesting.
• 16:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's a really important figure.
• 16:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: What he is not really a missionary in the traditional sense, and not really quite sure which category to put him in, because when Horace was sent to Nanjing, China in 1883, as a medical missionary, he was sent by the Presbyterians, and he hated working there because he was called out so often for obium overdoses, and that he never got a moment's rest because that was such a prevalent problem.
• 17:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he was in China for less than a year before he then transferred
• 17:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: He actually is historically their very first missionary.
• 17:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when he arrives, he wanted to stay out of politics because that was kind of what they were supposed to do.
• 17:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: The missions were all like, hey, don't get involved because it's a mess and we don't want any missionaries kind of like, you know, getting involved in that.
• 17:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he takes this so seriously that he even refused to help welcome the British Council.
• 17:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: but two things changed that.
• 17:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Number one, he's called on to help save the life of the Empress's nephew who was attacked during the cops in Ku and he was their first introduction to Western medicine and their huge fans.
• 17:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Number two, when other missionaries began arriving, he didn't get along with them, and he especially didn't like Horace Underwood, who he considered to be too conceded and rash.
• 17:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: He had further difficulties with Underwood and the other missionaries.
• 17:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: He had his doubts concerning their even evangelistic practices, and he was actually always cautious about being overt about mission work.
• 18:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: In contrast to that, Underwood was very zealous to promote his mission, cautiously, but without apology and to preach and take the consequences.
• 18:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the other missionaries really weren't big fans of him either because they're like, what are you even doing over here for not going to be, you know, you're not going to be zealous for the Lord.
• 18:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: So Horace becomes disillusioned and actually kind of disgusted by him because he writes, mission work is a force.
• 18:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: One of his colleagues had every other week, holy do himself, and all but two to three hours of other weeks.
• 18:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yet he does not study.
• 18:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Underwood has as much leisure, and so have the Methodist.
• 18:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a pretty soft thing.
• 18:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: So Horace is a pretty prickly fellow.
• 18:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: He also disagreed with his colleagues that Japan was the answer to all of Korea's problems.
• 18:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: They were all very pro-Japan.
• 18:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that was another kind of like, you know, sticking point for him.
• 18:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't like that.
• 18:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: and most majority Americans held best sentiment, so in that way, Boris was kind of an outlier.
• 18:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Boris felt that the Korean government should be able to be in control of itself.
• 19:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: He wanted Korean sovereignty.
• 19:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And a few years after he arrived, he was asked to be the foreign secretary to the Korean envoy who would be visiting Washington.
• 19:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the same envoy that China forcibly tries to stop.
• 19:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Horace accepts the assignment having changed his previous views through all these different hardships that he, you know, all these other things that he felt.
• 19:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he dives in headlong.
• 19:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think Horace kind of likes the idea of helping people in theory more than he actually likes helping them himself because here's his thoughts on the envoy he's sailing with to Washington.
• 19:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: They persist in standing upon closet seats or toilet seats, which they keep dirty all the time, and as severely marked with their hob nailed shoes.
• 19:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: They smell of done continually, persisting and smoking in their rooms, which smell horribly of unwashed bodies, done still wine, Korean food, smoke, etc.
• 19:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: I go regularly every morning to see the minister and get him up on deck.
• 19:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can't long stay in the room as I have had to point out lice to them on their clothes.
• 20:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the visit goes well in Horace encourages American companies to invest in Korean business ventures, specifically gold mining.
• 20:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And a few companies invest and make gold-vot mining a very lucrative opportunity.
• 20:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And with his duty done, he goes back to Korea.
• 20:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: He starts working as a doctor, establishing a hospital, which is now known as Severance Hospital, which is a teaching hospital attached to the famous young-sized university, or young-say, on-site, started by missionaries as well.
• 20:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now moving forward, it's almost turned to the turn of the 20th century, it's 1897, and he is firmly established in Korean politics.
• 20:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's working as the U.S.
• 20:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Minister and Consul General to Seoul.
• 20:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's even more convinced for the need of Korean independence, but America, and most importantly, President Roosevelt, the Adoroes of Elk, were not with him.
• 21:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Roosevelt, very pro-Japan.
• 21:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: He has a quote that says, Japan is indeed a wonderful land.
• 21:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nothing in history has quite paralleled her rise in the last 50 years.
• 21:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Korea is absolutely Japan's.
• 21:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: So Horus goes to Washington to speak with Roosevelt on Korea's behalf, and it goes nowhere.
• 21:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: On his trip back to Korea, he passes through Japan, and he notes by encouraging Japan it seemed that we were egging them on to war, a war that would harm us.
• 21:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: As Japan continued their aggressive policies, Horace wrote the Secretary of State about Emperor Gojong's, a state of mind, he falls back in his extremity upon his old friendship in America, he confidently expects that America will do something for him at the close of this war that war being the Russo-Japanese war, which Japan will win, or when the opportunity offers to retain for him as much of his independence as possible.
• 21:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: His letter never gets answered, and in 1905, he's recalled to America and his post is given to another guy with the appropriate pro-Japanese views.
• 21:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Back in America, he still lobbies per Korean independence, but it falls on deaf ears.
• 22:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: He goes back to practicing medicine, and in his spare time, he writes speeches and books which exposed English speakers to Korean folktales and culture for the first time, and two of his most well-known books are Korean tales and things
• 22:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and he doesn't see, you know, everything else that happens probably for the better, he does see the annexation of course, but not the actual war itself.
• 22:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: So Horace doesn't really go down as a missionary, exactly.
• 22:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's hard to know how much of his faith and his later years that he kind of still held onto, but he is to be commended for his fight to help career remain free despite opposition for everyone around him and his own government.
• 22:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so that's why I didn't build an episode around him, but he is a very, very important figure.
• 22:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now let's go back a bit to before all of that.
• 22:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you remember, I mentioned how the Impress was a not a big fan of the Impress Dad's sins and packing.
• 23:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the dad did not go gentle into that good night.
• 23:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: He started working with the Japanese to undermine the royal family.
• 23:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in 1895, the Impress is assassinated by a group of Japanese Ronin, let into the palace by those who were loyal to the dad.
• 23:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: and to Japan.
• 23:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And many countries were like, oh my goodness, that's so terrible, but they don't do anything, not at all.
• 23:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And a few months later, the Japanese back to cabinet orders all Korean married men to cut off their top knots, which is a key symbol of their national identity.
• 23:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And once again, when they call my goodness so terrible, but they don't do anything nothing happens.
• 23:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Emperor Gojung is actually still tentatively in charge.
• 23:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: He forms the Korean Republic in 1897, elevates the status of his belated wife, whose name he gives Queen Min.
• 23:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: But he is soon forced to abdicate and his son takes over for a few years.
• 23:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's no power there.
• 23:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And King Gojung, because he ends up dropping the Emperor title, I think, to kind of be in line with the whole Republic idea.
• 24:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's placed under house arrest, and though he makes multiple attempts to escape, he never succeeds.
• 24:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he dies in 1919 under suspicious circumstances, and many Koreans felt that he had been poisoned.
• 24:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And their suspicions culminated in the March 1st Korean Independence Movement, which we'll talk about a little bit later.
• 24:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: But by this time, it is clear to the Koreans that no one is going to step in and help them.
• 24:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, in 1905, there was a little agreement between the Secretary of War, who was William Howard Taft, future U.S.
• 24:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: President, and the Japanese Prime Minister, Katsura Taro, called appropriately the Taft Katsura Agreement.
• 24:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Supposedly, it wasn't a secret, but nobody knew it even happened until 1924.
• 24:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: The meeting took place at the close of the Russo-Japanese War, with Japan victorious, and this was revolutionary because an Asian power had never before a defeated A-European power.
• 24:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, apparently Roosevelt told the Japanese that they are more racially similar to Americans than Russians are even though Russians are a white race and that Japan should take its place among the Great Western powers to dominate among other areas, Korea and Manchuria, but that Japan must not encroach on the U.S.
• 25:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: possession of the Philippines, which America had won a few years previously in the Spanish American War.
• 25:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Japan's like, oh, yeah, that's totally fine.
• 25:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're our ally, you're our buddy, keep the Philippines.
• 25:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: They just wanted to colonize Korea.
• 25:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Korea's autonomy, entering into deals on its own accord that Prime Minister claimed, has started the war with Russia, and they just didn't want to get dragged into another unnecessary war.
• 25:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Poor Japan.
• 25:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: They claim that they were merely a stabilizing force.
• 25:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tafting by extension Roosevelt, agreed with this very logical agreement, Japan just wanted to help.
• 25:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: few days later, Katsu water gives an interview to the New York Times and stated that Japan's policy in the Far East will be an exact accord with that of England and the United States.
• 25:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Japan will soon force upon Korea and China the same benefits of modern development that had been in the past forced on us.
• 26:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: We intend to begin a campaign of education in Korea and China such as we ourselves have experienced and to develop a geographic commercial interest that will benefit us all.
• 26:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: China and Korea are both atrociously misgoverned.
• 26:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: These conditions we will endeavor to correct at the earliest possible date by persuasion and education.
• 26:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: If possible by force, if necessary, and in all in this, as in all things, we expect to act and exact concurrence with the ideas and desire of England and the United States.
• 26:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was really smart because he's very reasonable in tone, but then he's also pointing to the fact that the European powers and America have done this as well.
• 26:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: So they can't be mad and nobody is.
• 26:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everybody's like this is totally fine.
• 26:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: But upon its discovery, Korea understandably feels very betrayed by America and they are because America directly broke their trade agreement that they had made about 20 years before.
• 27:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: and this broken treaty has been used as an example by more modern Korean historians and politicians that America's promises cannot be trusted.
• 27:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: did you know that Pyongyang before it became known as the capital of North Korea, it was known as the Jerusalem of the East.
• 27:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: In 1907, the city experienced a massive revival that spread throughout the rest of the country.
• 27:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: It started in a small Bible study that the major catalyst was the public repentance of sin.
• 27:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: It worked outward from there, and many, many people came to Christ, churches were revitalized and grew rapidly.
• 27:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Koreans took responsibility for local ministry and evangelization, and they didn't just rely on the missionaries, the foreign missionaries.
• 27:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: The revival also sparked social changes with Christians challenging the practice of slavery and concubines.
• 27:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: This one revival laid a lasting foundation of Christendom in Korea, which helped them whether the persecutions of Japan during their annexation period.
• 27:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: When Japan takes over a few years later, they began creating schools, but Koreans still chose to go to those that were run by the churches instead.
• 28:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Japan wanted to push Shintoism on Korea as well as Emperor worship, which they all did in Japan.
• 28:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're like, yeah, you're part of Japan.
• 28:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: You do what Japan says.
• 28:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Korean Christians refused citing that these rituals and practices were forbidden by their Christian faith.
• 28:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Christianity persisted despite Japanese persecution in part because it was seen as nationalistic a way of sticking it to Japan, to be Christian was kind of to be anti-Japan.
• 28:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And on March 1st, 1919, a month or so after the death of King Gojung, a group of nonviolent protesters stood up in a restaurant in Seoul and read the newly signed Korean Declaration
• 28:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: About half of its signers, 15 at 33, were Christians, and these protests spilled outwards, and although they were peaceful demonstrations, they were often violently suppressed by Japanese authorities.
• 28:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the demonstrations in Korea inspired similar protests in both China and in India, and today March 1st is nationally recognized as a holiday in South Korea.
• 29:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: At the time,
• 29:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: A first Korean Congress was even held in Philadelphia, which was viewed as a cradle of liberty for its own independence movement, the American Revolution, right?
• 29:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: They even sent statements to President Woodrow Wilson, which were ignored.
• 29:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And every time you think Wilson couldn't get worse, he just does it again.
• 29:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you're new to this podcast or a Vive Studios in general, just know that extreme dislike of Woodrow Wilson is a prerequisite for listening.
• 29:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you don't have it yet, you will learn.
• 29:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And now we need to talk about Kim Il Sung.
• 29:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: He is the founder and first dictator of North Korea.
• 29:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's born Kim Sung Drew in 1912 in Pyongyang, and his grandfather on his mom's side was a pastor and his father went to a missionary school and was an elder in a Presbyterian church.
• 29:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: His parents were in independence activists and they, like many others, fled to Manchuria to escape Japanese occupation, Kim only had about eight years of formal education, and he considered it to be outdated and joined up with the Chinese Communist Party in 1921.
• 30:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Japan took over Manchuria at that same year which provided Kim with the opportunity to test his metal and he rose to the ranks and by 1935 he was calling himself Kim Il Sung which means Kim becomes the son.
• 30:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you can tell this is a very humble guy.
• 30:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was soon wanted by the Japanese, they called him the tiger and now I have to stop here.
• 30:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: and say that a lot about a lot of what we know about Kim comes from Kim himself, especially in these earlier years.
• 30:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: He created his own backstory, and so he has to take certain parts of this with a grain of salt.
• 30:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like when you eat about his backstory, you never know.
• 30:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it does seem that the Japanese may have captured his first wife and tried to lure him in that way.
• 30:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't take the bait and they killed her.
• 30:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Kim runs away with 12 of his men.
• 31:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: They flee to the Soviets and were retrained in one of their like Korean specific training centers.
• 31:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Kim became a captain in the Red Army, and served with the Soviets until the end of the war.
• 31:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, Kim's entire political career in Korea was completely manufactured by the Soviets.
• 31:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't speak Korean, he'd grow up in China, he only spoke Chinese maybe a little bit of Russian considering his closeness with the Soviet Union, and in 1945 he had been away for 26 years.
• 31:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Despite all of this, they made him the secretary of the Korean Communist Party, and if Stalin
• 31:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, Kim uses his influence to start the Korean people's army, the Republic of Korea in the South, declared themselves in charge of Korea, the Soviets held their own elections and said that Kim had won, and by 1949, he had completely solidified power and began building his now infamous cult of personality.
• 32:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Every good dictator has a cult of personality extoling their extraordinary childhood in communist virtues.
• 32:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Korean War begins a year later when Kim invades the South, and it lasts for three years, and results, as we all know, in a divided Korea.
• 32:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Kim considered this war a win because he still held on to power, and he launches into this five-year economic plan in the same style as Russia and China later on Cambodia, and supposedly this is a massive success.
• 32:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: The thing is that in every other country that tried it, it was an absolute disaster.
• 32:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's hard to believe that it was a massive success for North Korea.
• 32:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the South is having its own problems and was suffering under the regime of Sigmund Rhee until the 1960s when it began an aggressive industrialization plan that moved it from an agrarian or agricultural society to a modern one.
• 32:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is where North Korea really falls behind, but before all that, Kim had become an absolute Megalomaniac.
• 33:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: He has all these posters and statues of himself commissioned, he's rewritten his own history, and it's clear that things have gotten out of hand.
• 33:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: By 1956, both the Chinese and the Soviets were like, we've got to get rid of this guy, but they fail.
• 33:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: For whatever reason, it doesn't work.
• 33:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: They've created a monster and they cannot kill.
• 33:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then he starts this caste system which still continues today called the sung bun system.
• 33:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: There are three casts, the core, the wavering, and the hostile.
• 33:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can guess what each of those mean.
• 33:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: North Koreans are placed into their cast based on their political, social, and economic backgrounds.
• 33:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Today, North Korea is one of the top nations in the world for human rights abuses, sexual domestic abuses, rampant, mountutrition, strict monitoring of movements for barbing an SD card to watch South Korean dramas.
• 33:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: One man was sentenced to seven years of heart labor, the woman who gave it to him was sentenced to 15 years.
• 33:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then in the ongoing Ukrainian Russian conflict, North Korea has been sending their own
• 34:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: going back to Kimmel's son, he decides he's not promo.
• 34:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's actually doesn't agree with him at all.
• 34:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're not doing communism right.
• 34:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: He cozy's up to the Soviets even though he's not really a linnonist or a Stalinist either.
• 34:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that Russia was just more in the mood to be helpful.
• 34:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: But by 1980 North Korea's economy completely tanked.
• 34:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: China doesn't care about them anymore.
• 34:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Soviet Union is crumbling, and so he appoints his son Kim Jong Il to take over for him, which secures the familial succession of power.
• 34:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: He dies in 1994, and then he's later on declared the eternal president of North Korea.
• 34:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: He is supposedly embolmed, linen-style, and that makes him the only dead man to rule a country.
• 34:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: The country has a political kind of religious system called duty.
• 34:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's how you pronounce that.
• 34:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it was started in the 1960s, and it basically means self-reliance and teaches North Korean excellence and isolationism while also deifying Kim Il-sung.
• 35:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: They even have their own calendar using the same name.
• 35:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: The calendar begins with the year of Kim's birth, that's 1912.
• 35:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: So in North Korea, it is currently
• 35:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: North Korea even today insists that it has freedom of religion, whether their people simply aren't stupid enough to believe in those kinds of things, Kim will song himself actually wrote on this several times, and I'll read a few excerpts from one of his books.
• 35:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: He says, the foreign missionaries living in Korea in the old days were the espionage agents of the imperialists.
• 35:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Only the imperialist countries dispatched missionaries in order to invade other countries, but there can be no such thing in the democratic world today.
• 35:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Religious people should abandon the wrong idea of worshiping foreign missionaries from now on religion should be subjected to the interests of the state, and the people should be for the sake of our nation.
• 35:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the only religion Koreans can believe in.
• 36:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: We are of the opinion that some Christians at present are inclined to place hopes in the U.S.
• 36:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: military, government, and its students in South Korea.
• 36:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: But that will have no political effect of any consequence on the coming elections.
• 36:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: We believe that Christians are first of all Koreans, and that if they really love Korea and want the country's independence and sovereignty, they will take an active part in these elections of great significance in the history of our nation.
• 36:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: He goes on to say the North Korea should follow the patterns of the youth groups that the churches use and have songs and literature and games for them, which will lead them in the way that Kim wants them to go.
• 36:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this is obviously very popular in many dictatorships and kind of like those kind of powers have done that throughout the years.
• 36:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: He says, in our country, all religious men have also been remolded.
• 36:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Many leaders of foreign countries ask us how the religious question was settled in Korea.
• 36:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: As a matter of fact, after liberation, the solution of this question was one of the very difficult tasks with which we were faced.
• 36:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: At the time,
• 37:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Religions exerted a bad influence on the rising generation.
• 37:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nevertheless, we could not eradicate them in an overbearing manner, yet all religions disappeared from our country in the course of the Fatherland Liberation War.
• 37:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: During the war, the U.S.
• 37:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: imperialists bombed and destroyed all the churches, and the religious people altered their convictions after seeing the atrocities committed by the U.S.
• 37:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: imperial, imperialist aggressor army.
• 37:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: There was a clergyman living in a village he shot himself off without doing any work and slandered our party before the war, waiting for the arrival of the U.S.
• 37:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: imperialists.
• 37:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: During the war the people's army units had no sooner retreated than he went out with an enemy flag and hand ahead of everyone to greet the invaders as soon as they arrived in his village however they shot or stole the peasants chickens at will and made free with the women.
• 37:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: They even carried away and raped the clergyman's daughter.
• 37:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: At this, he came to realize that the Americans had fooled people by means of Jesus Christ.
• 37:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: From then onwards, he first took his faith in Christianity.
• 37:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: When the people's army took the offensive again, he went out with the flag of our republic and welcomed them.
• 38:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: After that, he worked faithfully in support of our party.
• 38:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: In our country, religions were exterminated not by us, but by the U.S.
• 38:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: imperialists.
• 38:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: They became so to speak, the teachers who opened the eyes of the religious men.
• 38:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: So North Korea and Kim himself, they claim they don't and didn't persecute Christians, but many stories, including those a woman named Sunja disagree with this narrative.
• 38:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I found Sunja's story on the voice of the martyrs, and she came from a Christian family, and her parents prayed that God would use her and that she would become an evangelist.
• 38:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And she was born in 1937, so after the annexation kind of in that prime period of,
• 38:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: before the war, right?
• 38:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And her father was a god-made Christian man and was known for sharing his faith very publicly.
• 38:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was criticized for it even among his extended family, but he saw persecution as part of Christian life.
• 38:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when the Communists began gaining power, he became uneasy and told a three of his sons to move south.
• 39:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't follow them, though.
• 39:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the Communists destroyed many of the churches, turned them into something else like party headquarters, or, you know,
• 39:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Soonja was due to take her entrance exam for the middle school and when they saw her ID card was listed as Christian, they turned her away.
• 39:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the mid-1960s, Sunjoo's brother hosted a prayer gathering at his house, and recognizing that many people were worshiping Kim Il-Sung as a false idol, he burned a portrait of the North Korean leader, following their time of prayer.
• 39:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: In one person at the prayer meeting reported the act to the authorities and Sunjoo's brother was quickly arrested and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
• 39:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: In addition, Sunjoo's family was separated and forced to leave Pyongyang and her parents
• 39:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Soonja then becomes married to a politically connected man, and she has a three-year-old and eight-month-old, and the government forces him to divorce her because she was a Christian.
• 39:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: So he kicks her out of the house, and she's got her boys hanging on to her, and they're like, when are we going to see you again?
• 40:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And she's like, oh, just a few days, even though she knows she'll never see them again, and then her husband begins to kind of beat the boys back into the house, and
• 40:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: She doesn't ever, she has never seen them since.
• 40:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: She moves in with her parents after they are released from the mines, and then they go to visit the brother, they try to visit him, and they see him, I think, the first time, but he's really like quite gaunt and very much, like, has been abused.
• 40:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: They go to visit him again, and they're like, oh, he's, he's fine.
• 40:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's not, but he's not here anymore.
• 40:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: like then they get the idea that like he actually died.
• 40:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's he's not he's not there anymore.
• 40:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so with this she kind of loses her faith.
• 40:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's like this is like why would God let so many horrible things happen to me?
• 40:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in the early 70s she marries again.
• 40:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: She marries a widow a widow where with kids and trying to set us in the ship.
• 40:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: So he has eight kids from his previous marriage and they have two of their own and
• 40:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: he goes off with the kids to go visit his family in China and she is able to kind of get a very temporary visa because she doesn't have Chinese citizenship so she has to work very hard to get this visa and when she's there she's walking down a street in the city in China and she hears somebody recite John 316 she turns around nobody's there her husband didn't hear anything
• 41:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: But she feels a conviction she has to go to church and so she begins a Bible study with a Chinese pastor.
• 41:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the Chinese pastor is like you have to go out of a country.
• 41:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: She goes back to North Korea when the day comes for her to leave, she couldn't do it.
• 41:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: So two more years go by and then she's finally ready to escape.
• 41:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: She does successfully meets up with this Chinese pastor.
• 41:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: and then she moves with her family to a small Chinese town.
• 41:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Her husband never became a believer but he clearly loved her and ended up buying her Chinese citizenship for a thousand dollars.
• 41:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: She moves with her husband and two youngest kids to Korea, but her husband's only able to say stay for three years before he has to go back to China and there he dies of an illness.
• 42:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And she has an absolutely amazing testimony today.
• 42:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: She does regular mission trips to China and she ministers to traffic women.
• 42:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: She said, I cried a lot when I met North Korean women in China who were sex trafficked.
• 42:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: She said, I shared my testimony.
• 42:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: They were in their 30s or 40s.
• 42:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And for them, I was like a mother.
• 42:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I just hugged them and they were holding my hand and starting to cry and I really felt pain when I saw them.
• 42:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And looking back on her life, she said that her biggest regret is that she didn't listen to her father's wishes when she was younger.
• 42:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: If I can meet my parents in heaven, I want to say sorry to my father because I couldn't live a good Christian when I was in North Korea.
• 42:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: My father kept asking me to be an evangelist, but I didn't follow this.
• 42:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Her regressor slowly fading though in the light of an ever-growing faith that her father once prayed she would have.
• 42:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: God is using me and my vision, and now I am living as an evangelist.
• 42:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think maybe my parents' prayer is being answered.
• 42:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a very sad story,
• 43:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was looking to figure out how many Christians people estimate are in North Korea.
• 43:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I stumbled across this woman who had written a book, her name is Melanie Kurt Patrick, and she's the author of the book Escape from North Korea, the untold story of Asia's Underground Railroad.
• 43:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in her book, she describes the tiny, the house churches as tiny, many only consisting of one family or just a husband and a wife.
• 43:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: A reports convey that children were often excluded from worship until they were old enough to keep the family secret hidden.
• 43:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: and all precautions are taken to escape torture, execution, and imprisonment, and many Christians who are caught and threatened, they are asked to return to their communities and act as spies to report back on others practicing their Christian faith.
• 43:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there are outreach programs from South Korea where people will go in and give Bibles and such two North Koreans, they were even like blooms and stuff that were going over that would hand out the gospel tracks and things like that, but the government before the current government's now in Korea kind of crack down on that and said, no, you can't send anything over anymore, but even still there were South Koreans who were sending things.
• 44:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as a whole, the perception and perspective of North Korea, two South Koreans is sharply divided because the older and the younger generations just see it very differently.
• 44:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: The older generation wants to see it collapse and they feel that the way to do that is to leave it alone.
• 44:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you don't provide them with any help, you don't provide them with any assistance monetarily.
• 44:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: They will collapse because they can't support themselves.
• 44:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they can't.
• 44:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're kind of like propped up, right?
• 44:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the younger generation wants to collapse them by killing them with kindness, basically, as the idea.
• 44:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And critics of this method, which would be the older generation, feel this is prolonging the regime.
• 44:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Looking at Korea as a whole, I think that one of the reasons Christianity did so well in Korea is because they were evangelized predominantly by Presbyterians who really pushed them to make their churches their own and make their mission work their own.
• 45:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Within a generation, most Protestant churches were self-governing and were sending their own missionaries.
• 45:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this is a key component to them being able to withstand persecution and a civil war after the foreign missionaries had left.
• 45:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: but where there is wheat, there are also tears because South Korea has a few rather dominant cults.
• 45:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And some of these cults have even spread beyond the country and had begun targeting college campuses and city centers.
• 45:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we had a run in a few years ago in Miami at some outdoor mall.
• 45:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: There was this guy that came up and he was like, oh, you need to talk like some of the mother of God.
• 45:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can't remember, basically there's this cult.
• 45:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I came to the name of it.
• 45:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's the world mission society of God, church, something like that.
• 45:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think cultist doesn't add as a couple episodes on them, actually, but they were talking to us about how God was a mother, the Holy Spirit was a mother, something very, very strange, but they were inviting us to like join them for a study of this and we're like, no.
• 45:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: But there are other strange ones, we won't get into that, but they also have a lot of gigantic megapasters that are going down in scandal, which is also a well-known story in the US and
• 46:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some of you may have heard as well that Korea has recently jailed a pastor for supporting the candidate for the conservative party, and this has many Christians in the country worried and suggests a concerning shift against religious freedom.
• 46:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: But despite these troubles at home, Korea is the world's second largest ascender of missionaries.
• 46:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Per capita, they actually send more than anyone in the world to give you an idea of how impressive this is.
• 46:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is out of a population of 333 million people.
• 46:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Comparatively, Korea has almost 23,000 Protestant long-term missionaries serving a broad with a population of 51 million people.
• 46:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Korea has had access to the gospel for about 150 years.
• 46:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: In that time, they had been a push of isolation by foreign powers, annexed by Japan, suffered through a civil war and decades of political turmoil and economic woes, and yet they still sinned the most missionaries in the world.
• 47:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's very much a testimony to their priorities and also the power of the gospel.
• 47:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I really hope you enjoyed this episode, and I also hope to back much more quickly with the next episode.
• 47:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: As always, thank you for listening to Mars and missionaries.
• 47:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Elise.