According to the Pew Research Center, “Christians were the largest religious group in the world in 2015, making up nearly a third (31%) of Earth’s 7.3 billion people” (Pew Research Center, 2017). This can most likely be attributed to Christianity’s meteoric rise in various parts of the world, from its inception in the 1st century A.D. spanning past the Roman Empire and into the early 21st century. However, one oft-misconstrued impact of the religion in its history is its effect on the Sinosphere, which Asian historian Barbara Watson Andaya speculates is a consequence of its association with the West. According to Andaya, there is an assumption that many Asians see Christianity as an extension of European arrival and the colonization that occurred throughout the fifteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Andaya, 2018).

As a result, the widely-held interpretation by many is that Christianity’s seemingly sudden upsurge in the Asian community was due to a recent phenomenon. They would be incorrect. Some Asian countries, however, have been molded more than others by its influence in the 20th century. Of these countries, none have been changed so drastically as Korea: according to the Pew Research Center, “In 1900, only 1% of the country’s population was Christian, but… In 2010, roughly three-in-ten South Koreans were” (Pew 2014). Pew goes on to mention that when removing unaffiliates, Christians are the largest religious group in South Korea─even larger than Buddhism. But why? With the exception of the Philippines, Asia has historically been a difficult place for Christianity to take hold of.

Unlike other Asian countries, however, Korea’s modern independence movement begun with a distinctly Christian leadership that grew into the massive religious population that resides there today. Despite the fact that the March First Movement─the country’s first series of protests to gain freedom─was unable to produce any tangible results towards independence from Japan, its link to Christianity is what created the religion’s proliferation in the region.

Religion, specifically Christianity and its many denominations, has a remarkably long history in Korea. As far back as the 18th century, religious aristocrats became baptized and spread Catholicism to their peers. At the turn of the 19th century, things changed: these same converts faced persecution after their refusal to conform to Confucian tradition. Catholicism was banned.
However, while Korea was beginning to shed its reputation of being a “hermit kingdom” and was beginning diplomatic relations with the West, religion made a resurgence in the country.

Much of this was due to the missionaries that the United States had sent over throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the first of whom, Horace Allen, went on to serve as a bridge between the two as a foreign ambassador. These missionaries served to raise awareness of modern medical and educational advancements from the West and created schools and churches in their efforts to make a self-sustaining religious environment in Korea. This established a religious culture in the country that would serve as a base for the following events.

Following the United States’ refusal to involve themselves with matters of Korean sovereignty, Japan was able to declare Korea its protectorate in 1910 and most of the missionaries and envoys were told to leave. Eight years later, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed at the Paris Peace Conference that countries were entitled to self-determination from colonial powers after World War I. Wilson had intended this message for the colonies held captive under the defeated powers, of which Japan was not included.

Regardless, 33 organizers all across Korea, inspired by Wilson’s philosophy, declared their independence from Japan in March 1919 as their “inherent right” (Wilson, 1918). This is where the link between the independence movement and Christianity begins: of these movement organizers, 16 were Christian and many of them were pastors. Shortly after, the Korean Provisional Government was established in Shanghai to carry on the message of the movement and further call for independence. Its leaders were Christian. A month afterwards, Dr. Philip Jaisohn convened the First Korean Congress in Philadelphia, which was, like much of the independence movement, made up of a majority of Christian converts. One attendee of the Congress was Syngman Rhee, the first president of the Korean Provisional Government and the first president of the Republic of Korea.

According to Boston University’s School of Theology, this abundance of Christians involved in the struggle for Korea’s independence was no coincidence: “... the conference organizers consciously utilized the rhetoric of the double pillars of American society─freedom and Christian values. They were able to frame the narrative to appeal to American sensibilities of democracy while also highlighting the struggle as a moral cause, one with implications for the future of Christianity in Korea” (Choi, n.d.). This Christianity also came at the perfect time for the Korean people, whose faith in traditionalist Buddhism and Confucianism had dissolved during Japanese rule. What this culminated in was the formation of a new culture that was tied to Christianity from its very inception.

Japanese occupation changed Korea in many ways. People everywhere see post-liberation Korea as something completely different to the kingdoms of old, and for good reason: shortly following Korea’s freedom was the Korean War, which forever would split the country into two wholly separate national identities. We now see South Korea as a paragon of American freedoms, in the same way that North Korea grew as a result of Soviet intervention. Christianity, however, also played a large role in the country’s origins.

Syngman Rhee was a devout Christian, and many other leaders at the forefront of the fight for independence were too. In the same way that Judeo-Christian morals are tied to American democracy─because the United States was founded under the principle of “one nation under God”─Korea’s March First Movement began with a sizeable Christian influence that found its way into the philosophy of Korean independence as a whole.

From the implications of its constitution, to its leadership, to how it has impacted the nation even today, it is undeniable that Christianity’s impact on the March First Movement has shaped Korea’s national identity following its liberation from Japanese annexation.