Korean Missionaries? In Afganistan??
Korean missionaries are in the news again today, here, because a group of them in Afganistan have been taken hostage. The pastor and one other have been killed and left by the road.
Release of Taliban prisoners is being demanded in exchange for the other Koreans in the group.
That has become a familiar, weary story. Foreigners are taken hostage in a Muslim land. Demands must be fulfilled before they can be freed. So what else is new?
But the rest of the story seems the stuff of
(Image from opinionjournal.com)
fantasy. What in the world are missionaries from Korea doing in a place like Afganistan? We picture them moving through Afganistan, and it seems unreal. .We wonder - as many Afganis probably do - what in the world are they doing there? (As Koreans must have wondered a century ago what all those strange-looking missionaries were doing in their country.)
That story is hard to get a handle on. It is also something few would ever have predicted.
As Leslie Hook of the Asian Wall Street Journal writes today's U.S. Wall Street Journal,
Asian missionaries are everythere, and today they're often found in some of the world's most dangerous hotspots.
Who knew? And why is that? Ms. Hook continues,
Although only about 30% of South Korea's 49 million citizens are Christian, the country is second only to the U.S. in the number of missionaries it sends abroad. As of last year, 16,600 Korean missionaries were stationed in 173 countries."
How did this enormous change come about? Catholic missionaries went to Korea 200 years ago, then Protestant missionaries atreamed into both Korea and China 100 years later. Many missionaries were targeted and killed. But they kept coming. Now there are 350 million Asian Christians, up from about 20 million in 1900. And more and more Asians are becoming missionaries.
Korean Christian aid workers are one example of missionaries from the "majority world" - continents other than Europe and North America. South Korea alone has gone from 93 missionaries abroad in 1979 to over 8000 in 2000 and double that by 2006. About half go to other East Asian countries, and others to places like Jordan, Turkey and Syria. Missionaries from across the world are still flowing into Asia as well, like the African from Nigeria who runs an underground church in China.
Now there is a backlash in South Korea, with "vacation missionaries" being criticized for going to situations "where they are way out of their depth," according to Tim Peters, a Christian living in Korea. The hostages are being criticized for being naive and the churches for competing with each other to see who can perform the most dangerous missions.
Several churches and organizations have canceled their trips to Afganistan. The Korean government has restricted its citizens from traveling to Afganistan without explicit government approval.
Meanwhile, family members of the victims are gathered at Saemmul Church, praying and watching newscasts. Christians around the country are keeping vigil. Amid the onslaught of critical voices, many in Korea's Christian community feel misunderstood.
"It's not about competition.....I think missionaries are sharing because they have boldness," says Kim Hee-chan, who works at the Middle East Team, a group that helps organize missionaries. And, she says, "Missionaries sacrifice." A fact the hostages in Afghanistan know only too well.
