Adversity and advance: The experience of the Orthodox Church of Korea

Abstract

The development of the Orthodox Church of Korea and her philanthropic works have evolved like a three-act play, ridden with the sorrow and hardship of modern Korean history. That history dates from around 1848 to the late 1980s, evoking a long and sad tragedy narrative of MinJung that began in 1852 and continued to the early 1980s. The 'Han' memory of Korean ancestry contains a prolonged painful and shameful past during the collapse of the JoSeon Dynasty, which ushered in the imperial Japanese occupation, followed by a brief respite at the time of the Korean independence movement in 1945. Finally, in the aftermath of the Korean War from 1950-3 at last, in the name of democracy and industrialisation, many young women were sacrificed and exploited under the two oppressive structures - patriarchy and capitalism - under the rule of the totalitarian government from 1953 to the latter years of the 1980s, including the KwangJu massacre on 18 May 1980. © Edinburgh University Press.