While Korean Christianity has been making headlines because of the hostage crisis in Afghanistan, another dimension of the life and work of the Korean churches, which has gone largely unnoticed, is being recognised this week.
In recent years South Korean churches have come to be known for their spectacular growth rate, which is the fastest of any nation in Asia. Lesser-known is the role Korea's mainline churches have played in working for peace and reunification of their divided country.
In two conferences this week and next, the churches in Korea will be celebrating 100 years since the great revival of 1907 and, in a second meeting, the churches' continuing role in the reunification of Korea.
At both meetings, the WCC general secretary, Rev. Dr. Samuel Kobia, will be delivering keynote addresses.
A history of peacemaking
For Geo-Sung Kim, chairperson of Transparency International Korea and a pastor of the Presbyterian Church of the Republic of Korea, the most serious obstacles to achieving the country's reunification are the "barbed wire entanglements within our hearts".
After World War II and liberation from Japanese rule, Korea was partitioned into two military occupation zones, with the Soviet Union governing the north and the United States the south. This separation not only split the country politically and ideologically, but separated millions of families and divided the churches.
The Korean War, 1950 to 1953, deepened the division between what would become communist North Korea (the Democratic People's Republic of Korea) and capitalist South Korea (the Republic of Korea). The war ended with the signing of an armistice agreement which meant fighting stopped but the two countries remained technically at war.
To this day a peace treaty has never replaced the armistice. However, in 1991 the two Koreas did sign a non-aggression pact and joined the United Nations.
From the early days of the separation the churches of South Korea have pioneered in peace-making efforts and addressed the issue of reunification at a time when the subject was seldom openly discussed in their country.
The churches were reacting to what the Korean church leader Jae-Woong Ahn, former general secretary of the Christian Conference of Asia, called "a tragedy and a painful reality for people living on both sides". While the two Koreas were technically still at war, about ten million families remained separated and paid a huge human cost for division between North and South.
A landmark in the history of the Korean churches' struggle for reunification was the 1984 "Peace and Justice in North-East Asia" consultation held in Tozanso, Japan. Convened by the World Council of Churches (WCC) the event set the stage for face to face talks between Christians from north and south Korea two years later in Glion, Switzerland.
Held in a context of high tensions and efforts on all sides to demonize "the other", these consultations started what was called the Tozanso process, later regarded by many as the precursor of Korean rapprochement.
At the time, the meetings were viewed not only as a new chapter in the ecumenical movement in the Koreas and around the world, but served as examples of how being a witness for peace is integral to Christian faith.
