Christian higher education in Korea: Exploring historical roles and regular christian curricular and non-regular mentoring programs

Abstract

Christianity played an important role in modern higher education in Korea. The oldest university in Korea is the Yonhee Professional College founded by Underwood, an American Christian missionary. Also the first medical school, Severance Medical School, was founded by a Christian missionary. Christian educational institutions have historically had a significant impact on Korean society in terms of the independence movement, enlightenment, literacy, and modern knowledge. Currently Christian curricula are institutionalized very well in Korean Christian universities. However there is some doubt as to whether regular Christian education curricula imbue students with spirituality, morality, and ethics in terms of internalization in Korean society. On the other hand, Christian circles, which provide an extracurricular program, are considered to have a significant impact on students in terms of spirituality, morality, ethical awareness, and character development since the 1960s and 1970s. In particular, the circles developed and implemented a discipleship training program which is a mentoring education method. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the roles of Christian higher education in Korean history and to compare regular Christian curricular and non-regular Christian mentoring programs. In order to explain Christian discipleship programs, this chapter defines religious terminology and lexicon that is germane to the Christian faith and some underlying assumptions about approaches toward evangelism. Additionally, this chapter discusses what religious higher education should do in the future.