Download

The Early Korean Mission As A Holistic Mission Model
- Establishing of Oneness between Spreading the Gospel and Social Work -

Choi, Moo Youl

I. Introduction

Characteristic of the Early Korean Church was a strong evangelical movement centered in the Great Revival Movement in 1907, Bible study, and the Illiteracy Eradication Movement which laid a foundation for the rapid church growth of the Korean Church. Beside this, sturdy social participation, centered in social work, was a significant characteristic of the early church. These two elements worked together and co-operated, and presented a desirable model for healthy mission by the Korean church. However, severe divisions, which were caused by theological differences between progressives related to the WCC and conservatives supported by the WEF, NAE, and ICCC, brought serious confrontations, so that the Korean church became a battle ground of foreign ideology. The conservatives carried on division and expanded their denominations and churches in the name of church growth as a reaction to excessive social participation by the progressive party, thus neglecting the church's social accountability. On the other hand, the progressives firmly drove their policy forward in regard to social and political issues, while ignoring the power of the Gospel that results in growth. To solve this problem, we must refer to the early church's mission which was a model of holistic mission. The spiritual movement of the early church is well known, but the social movement, and in particular the social work, must be noted and evaluated more clearly. On this point, the writer would like to focus on the social movement of the early church which made possible an holistic approach toward mission.

II. Education as a Mission Strategy of Mission

1. The Situation of the early schools

In the 1890s, the radical change that had taken place in the system of education had a far reaching effect, after the discontinuance of the "Kwago", the state examination. It affected the middle as well as the upper classes and this helped to demonstrate to the public that the old order of hereditary yangbanism was rapidly passing away.

Koreans were beginning to face up to the reality that only a new kind of education could reform their life and thought. The Confucian system had faded away, and the new Japanese government had not developed its own educational system. An insatiable demand for education was arising everywhere.

2. Organization of Boys' Schools.

When missionaries started schools in 1885, the people began to feel that the future of the nation depended on the education of the younger generation.

Following the Sino-Japanese war (1894-1895), there was a marked increase in students. This increase was undoubtedly due to the victory of the Japanese, who had defeated China with the arts and weapons borrowed from the West. Knowledge from the West was desperately requested in Korea. People were eager for Western education. The people and the politicians believed that Christianity would bring about national development. Especially the people of the Enlightenment Party had great hopes that the missionaries could bring enlightenment to Korea, and that Korea could come in closer contact with Western culture.

In April, 1885, H. G. Appenzeller established a school, within 8 months of his arrival in Korea. In 1885, Appenzeller gained only two students as parents were hesitant to commit their children to a missionary's care. By the next year the school was given a name which had been selected by the king as a sign of royal approval. This school was the Paeje Haktang. The institution's curriculum was divided into Chinese, English, and theological departments. As to the number of students, there were 106 in the English and sixty in the Chinese department in 1896. In the theological department, there were in attendance at the last session in 1896, six students.

3. Organization of Girls' Schools and the Enhancement of Women's Rights.

One of the most significant ethics with which Christianity influenced Korea was the upholding of women's rights. Under the pressure of Confucianism, women did not have human rights, but Christianity made it possible for them to achieve equal privilege and accountability with men, which was a big achievement for Korean Christianity.

The honour of beginning women's work and of founding the first girls' school in Korea goes to Mrs. Mary F. Scranton (1832-1909), mother of William B. Scranton. Soon after her arrival in Korea in June, 1885, she made efforts to purchase a property on the hill where the mission board held some property. The first purchase was made in October, 1885. At about the same time that the Paeje Haktang was founded, Mrs. Scranton decided to found a school for young girls. By 1888, there were eighteen students enrolled. The plan was to train the girls to be superior wives and mothers, and to be missionaries for the faith. As with the Paeje School, this school was given royal approval. The queen gave it the name Ihwa Haktang, which became the foundation later for both Ewha Girls' High School and Ewha Woman's University.

The movement which enhanced the right of women was continued by missionaries through education work and medical work up to the 1920s. In 1920-1930 which was the height of the enlightenment drive, night schools for women had been started by churches or night schools used churches as class rooms. The YMCA and YWCA also vigorously performed these projects, and through education the whole of society was changing.

4. Erecting Nursery Schools

The first kindergarten of Korea was planned by Lula E. Frey(1869-1921), a missionary of Iwha Haktang, with 22 children in 1913. The nursery was closed when she returned to America because of health problems. In December, 1913 an American missionary Charlotte G. Brownlee (1876 - 1970) who studied at Cincinnati Kindergarten Training School, came to Seoul and started a nursery school which was attached to Iwha Haktang, and this was the pioneer of the kindergarten movement in Korea.

III. Medical Work as a Contact Point of Evangelism.

1. The situation before medical work.

The first Protestant missionary to come with the intention of residing permanently in Korea was Dr. Horace N. Allen, of the (Northern) Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., Dr. Allen also made it possible for Horace G. Underwood, who was next to arrive, to be of immediate help as H. G. Underwood studied medicine before leaving the States.

Between the time of the arrival of Dr. Allen and the other missionaries appointed to this new field, a dramatic event took place, the Emeute of 1884 or the Kapsin coup which temporarily overthrew the conservative government of that time. Prince Min Yong-ik (1860 -1914), as one of the leaders of the conservative faction at court, was set upon, brutally slashed, and left to bleed to death. At the point of death, Dr. Allen was summoned to care for him. It required three months of constant medical care before the prince was out of danger. This won the confidence and friendship of the King and prepared the way for open missionary work.

Because of the meritorious service of healing Min Yong-ik, Allen was given a reward of 100,000 yang and the home of Hong Yong-sik, who was executed after the fall of the radicals, to use as a hospital building.

Leprosy, although not very common in Korea in general, was fairly prevalent in the southern provinces. In the 1860s, it was estimated that in the Chongsang Provinces there were between twenty and thirty thousand victims of this disease. Lepers were expelled by their families and totally neglected by people until leper asylums had been established. In Sunchon, the first leper was received in 1909. In Pusan in 1910 an asylum was started, with a group of 30 lepers with the help of the Mission to Lepers in India and the East of the Australian Mission Board. In Taegu, the work was begun in 1916, and the first building constructed in 1917. About 1918, treatment was begun, and the death rate decreased. In 1924, the first 44 patients were discharged as symptom-free.

Even in these miserable situations, the church and missionaries made great efforts to heal lepers with the power of the Spirit and with medical work. Christian lepers always had a most remarkable zeal for the propagation of the Gospel, because of what had been done for them. Bands of them on several occasions asked to be allowed to go out during the warm summer months in order to preach the Gospel to their heathen fellow-countrymen.

Cholera came in deadly waves. On the 24th of July 1886 Henry Appenzeller wrote in his diary, "Five hundred people are dying daily of cholera. The air is full of weeping and wailing". His diary entry for 28 July, four days later, noted: "No decrease. 3,140 were carried out the city gates these 10 days. The Koreans are alarmed; the Government is paralysed; the King has appealed for foreign medicine."

Cholera was a fierce, fast-moving disease and the Koreans knew their healing methods accomplished very little. Having no way to stop the spread of infectious diseases, the people abandoned their relatives to their fate in simple shelters built some distance from the city.

A very important department of the hospital's activities was its medical school. In 1906, already several young men had received considerable instruction and training in the foundation branches of Anatomy, Physiology, Chemistry, Bacteriology. There were no nurses in Korea at that time. The palace sent a group of kisaeng(singing and dancing girls for the nobility) to the hospital. O. R. Avison who worked in the government hospital ejected them at once, convinced of their medical inexperience and doubtful of their moral character. The Mission magazine 'Korean Review' indicates the requirements of women nurses.

The first nursing school in Korea was opened in 1903 by a Methodist, Margaret Edmunds. The first two nurses graduated in 1908. Esther Shields began a school for nurses at Severance in 1906 and its first graduate, in 1910, was Kim Pae-se, sister of Korea's first woman M D, Esther Kim Pak. At first Japanese nurses served as head nurses at Severance under Miss Shield's direction, with, as the hospital report put it, "a sufficiently large staff of Korean women under their guidance to ensure the thorough care of every patient."

The most important medical development in Seoul was the establishment of Severance Hospital. A new accommodation, with modern equipment, was opened for service in September, 1904. The opening of Severance Hospital in Seoul was not only a new departure in medical mission in Korea, but also in the development of the medical profession, for it unified all the poorly equipped small hospitals and dispensaries in the city and trained young Korean Christian doctors.

After Severance Hospital opened, Dr. Avison continued to teach his medical class of seven young men, using textbooks and vocabulary he developed as he went along. These men passed demanding examinations and were graduated in 1908, after 15 years of training. More than a thousand people attended the graduation ceremony. This was a turning point in medical history as these graduates laid the foundation of Korean medical work, and they could treat their own people with their own techniques.

IV. Conclusion

Social movement, particularly Christian social work, was a significant factor of early church mission which made Korean church growth possible as an essential and most co-operative partner of proclaiming the Gospel. The accord between the proclamation of the Gospel and social work established and presented a holistic approach to mission in the Korean church.

The Korean church which has experienced enormous church growth is now facing a crisis of evangelism, and needs to prepare a counterplan in order to cope with this problem. The most reasonable and desirable solution, as far as the writer is concerned, is the recovery of holistic mission the early church established through which all the Korean church, conservatives and progressives, could work together in unity in the Lord Jesus.