BEIJING - "I declare that the City of
Seoul is a holy place governed by God; the
citizens in Seoul are God's people; the churches
and Christians in Seoul are spiritual guards that
protect the city ... I now dedicate Seoul to the
Lord," the mayor of Seoul solemnly told the
audience who packed an auditorium on May 31, 2004.
The mayor at the time is now South Korea's
president-elect, Lee Myung-bak. Lee will succeed
outgoing President Roh Moo-hyun on February 25.
When Lee ran for president, a blogger
remembered the statement and said, "This is a very
important piece of evidence that shows why Lee
shouldn't be the president," questioning Lee's
religious penchant. Many other bloggers also
chimed in, quipping that Lee
will
try to dedicate the whole country to God if he
became president. Some also gibed that God would
be sued by Lee if he didn't become president,
given all the religious fervor Lee had publicly
demonstrated. Some more analytic minds tried to
give it a more nuanced shot, calling it as Lee's
deliberate advance to appeal to the Christian
voters.
In fact, a still nagging
misconception about Lee is that he is a politician
who simply tries to benefit from his religious
constituency. That's a great understatement of
Lee's faith. Lee is a Christian and a "real" one
for that matter. As a person born into a devout
Christian family, Lee once said that the biggest
blessing he had received from his mother was
"coming to know the love of God". It is also well
known that Lee - the ex-chief executive of the
Hyundai conglomerate - had volunteered for more
than three years as a church parking guide on
Sunday mornings to get voted as an elder of his
church. He realized that dream in 1995.
After he won the nomination from the Grand
National Party as its presidential candidate, the
first place Lee visited was the National Cemetery
in southern Seoul, where the remains of some
54,000 patriots and soldiers killed during the
Korean War are buried. It is a traditional gesture
for politicians. But the second place Lee visited
was the Christian Council of Korea (CCK). Reverend
Lee Yong-kyu, head of CCK, greeted Lee amid a
swarm of journalists:
I congratulate you on being
nominated as the party's presidential candidate,
which was possible because of God's power and
authority that was behind you in your going
through this difficult time. I trust that God
will lead you to the eventual
victory.
The media event created a
controversy even within his own party regarding
its "appropriateness" for a presidential candidate
who should exude an air of impartiality. Lee's
aides feared such a photo-op might give a wrong
impression to those having other religions. But
Lee didn't seem to mind.
In 2006, Lee also
sent a video prayer message to a Christian rally
held in the southern city of Busan in which the
worship leader prayed feverishly: "Lord, let the
Buddhist temples in this country crumble down!"
That footage - which someone poked fun at by
cleverly comparing it to Ronald Reagan's famous
speech, "Mr [Mikhail] Gorbachev, tear down this
wall!" - drew palpable and anticipated uproars
from the Buddhists and even some from Christians.
Some feared that the repercussion and
Lee's unconcealed self-identifying with
Christianity would undermine his presidential
candidacy because South Korea historically has a
huge Buddhist population, in spite of the very
aggressive evangelism outreach of Christians, seen
in its recent history.
According to the
latest figure from the Korea National Statistical
Office, conducted in December 2005, among South
Korea's 47 million population, 53% were counted as
having any kind of religion. Among them were
Buddhists, 22.8% (10 million); Protestants, 18.3%
(8.6 million); and Catholics, 10.9% (5.1 million).
In addition, among the almost half of the nation's
population who don't outwardly identify themselves
with any religion, many of them privately follow
Buddhism as their family tradition.
But,
apparently, God must have been so pleased with
Lee's outspoken endorsement of Him because the
divine entity blessed Lee in his running for the
presidency. Otherwise, how else can Lee - a person
who attributes all matters of life to God's divine
providence - explain his victory? Lee won the
presidential seat by earning 48.6% support from
voters, clearly distinguishing himself from the
second runner, Chung Dong-young, who earned a
distant 26.2%. During the campaign, Chang Sang,
another Christian presidential candidate and a PhD
graduate of the Princeton Theological Seminary in
New Jersey, complained that Lee's outspoken wooing
of the Christian constituency was unfairly helping
him to rake in as much as 80% of Korea's Christian
votes. Christianity was introduced to Korea in
the late 19th century. Last year, many Korean
Christians celebrated the centennial anniversary
of the 1907 "Pyongyang Revival", commemorating an
event when Christianity began to spread rapidly
across the peninsula. Christianity carries a proud
record in steering the country's recent history.
Many church leaders were patriots who
stood at the forefront of the anti-Japanese
movement. Koreans also had a positive image of
Christianity, particularly after the Korean War in
the 1950s when American church groups and
missionaries helped the poverty-stricken nation by
providing food, setting up hospitals and schools.
During the dictatorship period under president
Park Chung-hee, church leaders fought for the
nation's democracy. And many Christians
volunteered to hand in their gold and other
jewelry in a mass effort to bail out the bankrupt
nation during the Asian financial crisis in
1997-98.
However, as Christianity has
become socially active, vocal and powerful, it
also started to draw its share of criticism.
Critics point out that some denominations of
Christianity don't tolerate other religious
beliefs and many of the evangelical Korean
Christians are more fervent than their Western
counterparts, and even curse those who don't
believe as they do.
The most recent
controversy erupted when a picture of a Buddhist
monk being harassed by an overzealous Christian
brandishing a cross surfaced on one of the
country's popular websites, dcinside.com. Critics
also pointed out some of the immoral conducts
committed by church leaders, some including sexual
abuses.
A blogger, "Delicious" said, "The
pesky evangelical enthusiasm and profit-seeking
activities by churches is turning the country into
a cemetery. Wherever there is a place with human
presence, within a 50-meter radius there is also a
church with a red-cross sign high up in the sky."
Anti-Christian sentiment in South Korea
reached its highest point last year when 23
missionaries, all from the same Protestant church,
were held hostage after entering Islamic
Afghanistan with an ultimate goal of converting
the people into Christians. Two were killed before
the other 21 were returned to Korea, but for a few
months after their homecoming angry protesters
picketed in front of their church.
Although Lee Myung-bak was primarily voted
as president due to people's high hopes for the
nation's economic revival, some fear Lee may fill
his new cabinet with "churchgoers". That concern
was palpable when Lee picked the head of the very
powerful Presidential Transition Committee from
the same church where he is an elder.
The
Somang Presbyterian Church where Lee and his wife,
Kim Yoon-ok, a deaconess, attend has 70,000
registered attendants managed by 20 pastors. In
addition, Lee Kyung-sook, the head of Lee's
Presidential Transition Committee, other church
members are the president-elect's brother Lee
Sang-deuk, who is also the vice speaker of the
National Assembly; lawmaker Chung Mong-jun, who
last week met with US President George W Bush in
Washington as the president-elect's envoy; Yoon
Young-kwan, the ex-foreign minister; Hong In-ki,
ex-head of the Korea Stock Exchange; Kim Shin-bae,
chief executive officer of SK Telecom who sat next
to Google chief Eric Schmidt at the recent Davos
World Economic Forum in Switzerland. And the list
goes on ...
Some joked that Lee's
government should be called "Somang government",
noting the name of the church and the church's
influence on the nation's politics and industry.
"Somang" literally means "hope" in Korean.
This month, Lee attended a prayer meeting
hosted by CCK, the conservative Christian
organization that supported Lee during the
presidential campaign, including its 800-member
pastors, and there Lee correctly pointed out,
"Korean society is deeply divided." Lee proceeded
to cite regional, generational and ideological
divides in the nation. Yet he failed to cite the
religious divide. Perhaps, he doesn't smell it in
the air yet.
And perhaps South Koreans
should be ready for a day when Lee solemnly reads
out a statement dedicating the nation to God.
Perhaps, it's salubrious for one of his aides to
whisper to Lee that there is a joke circulating in
town these days that says: "Lee Myung-bak is a
president anointed by God, not voted by people."
His aide should also tell the chosen one that it
wasn't necessarily meant to be a compliment.
Sunny Lee is a writer based in
Beijing, where he has lived for five years. A
native of South Korea, Lee is a graduate of
Harvard University and Beijing Foreign Studies
University.
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