hankyoreh

By Heo Jae-hyun, staff reporter

Intolerance by certain Protestant churches in South Korea is nothing new. Such churches brand anyone who is different from them as heretics and refuse to even talk to them. As they cling to the idea that they alone hold the truth, they ignore their neighbors and injure the weak.

Scene #1　

On May 10, Kim, 48, opened up a kimbap (Korean seaweed rolls) restaurant next to Yonsei Central Baptist Church in the Guro district of Seoul, but he was forced to close less than 20 days later.

Even when customers first started asking him if this was really the heretical kimbap restaurant, he was not sure what was happening. Before long, he learned that his picture had been hung up at various places in the church, rather like a poster for a wanted fugitive. Kim heard from churchgoers that the pastor of the church, Yoon Seok-jeon, had told them during a sermon that they must never go to Kim’s kimbap restaurant. Every day, churchgoers gathered in front of his restaurant and shouted, “Get out of here, heretic!”

Kim gave up on the kimbap restaurant that he had spent 35 million won (US$31,000) setting up. He was in such a hurry to close the business that he wasn’t even able to sell it.

Kim had been a member of Yonsei Central Baptist Church, but five years ago he had moved to a smaller church that had recently been established in the area. While his former church was Baptist by denomination, the new church was in the process of applying to become a Holiness church.

Rumors started going around that Kim had joined the Shinchonji Church of Jesus, which is widely considered to be a cult. People suspected that Kim had opened his kimbap restaurant near the church to try to lure away members of Yonsei Central Baptist Church.

While it was true that the kimbap restaurant was 200 meters away from the church, it was also 30 meters away from Kim’s house.

Hanging in front of the closed kimbap restaurant is a banner that says, “A sincere apology is requested from Yonsei Central Baptist Church for making it impossible to do business.” The church has not responded to Kim’s appeal. He tried to meet Yoon, the pastor at the church, but he was unable to.

“We have evidence that Kim is a member of Shinchonji,” a representative for the church said. “While this may not make much sense to outsiders, people can be led astray simply by coming into contact with members of Shinchonji.”

“We put up the pictures because we didn’t want to cause any harm to people who have the same name as Kim,” the representative explained. “We took them down when they started causing problems.”

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Something bizarre and absurd took place recently at Mokwon University in Daejeon. On May 24, students from the Korean language department of the university were performing a ritual known as “gosa” as a special activity intended to teach them about traditional Confucian culture.

The students had just started reciting the ceremonial text in front of the gosa table when all of a sudden a stranger approached and knocked the table over. The intruder was a 24-year-old student from the theology department.

A video was uploaded to YouTube titled “the Mokwon University Volibear Incident” that shows the student screaming, “You can’t do gosa at a Christian university!” “Volibear” is a video game character that often uses an attack that involves knocking things over.

A number of netizens criticized the student’s actions, saying it was reminiscent of the 2010 video of Christians walking on the grounds of Bongeun Temple, a sign meant to signify territorial control. Some netizens retorted that the gosa ceremony should not be allowed at a Christian university.

With the controversy heating up, Park No-gweon, chair of the theology department, offered an apology. “It appears that the student’s intense faith led him to act this way, but the method he chose was inappropriate,” Park said. The student who caused the commotion has refused to comment.

Within religious circles, some are suggesting that the two incidents are linked to the exclusive nature of Korean Protestantism. “There is a tendency for Korean Christians to teach that simply being different makes one a heretic, and they don’t offer any clear standards for making this kind of judgment,” said Kim Ae-hui, secretary-general of the Christian Alliance for Church Reform. “As a result, some believers resort to this kind of extreme behavior.”

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