Do the Word

Dr. Hyun Sook Foley, Voice of the Martyrs Korea President, authors this special 8-part series on Kim Kyo Shin, one of the greatest martyrs in Korean Christian history whose voice needs to be heard today more than ever, by Korea and the world.

Reviewing Kim Kyo Shin’s life and death is a reminder of how inaccurate it is to describe him as a Christian nationalist who opposed the Korean church. In truth, Kim’s mission had very little to do with opposing the Korean church but everything to do with promoting a truly Korean Christianity. He did not come to faith in a Korean church or even in Korea at all (Hwang, 2012, 85). He is better understood as a missionary to Chosun who sought to introduce the Christian faith without American or foreign presuppositions, believing that God’s special providence for Chosun as a nation made the development of a truly Korean expression of Christianity an urgent necessity. As both he, his supporters, and opponents would agree, he loved Chosun and Christ, not the church:

“A renowned Presbyterian, Reverend Kim In-seo (1894-1964)…a disciple of the famous revivalist Gil Seon-ju…[criticized KKS]…professed to have three C’s to love: Choseon (Korea), Christ, and Church, whereas Kim Kyo-sin used to say that he loved two C’s: Christ and Choseon” (Hwang, 2012, 111).

Or as Kim Kyo Shin himself put it in the editor’s column of the 75th issue of Sungsuh Chosun, “Bible and Korea; Bible to Korea; Korea on the Bible” (in Kim, 2012, 192).

Ultimately the Korean churches opposed him, not on the basis of his character or on the fruits of his ministry but simply on the basis of definition of what constituted a Christian:

For Calvin, the marks of the true church were that the word of God should be purely preached and heard, and that the sacraments should be rightly administered according to Christ’s institution. He stated that the true church is indeed to be found where the Gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered. In the early twentieth century in Korea, most churches had similar views concerning the church. In contrast, the NCM practiced neither preaching nor the sacraments (Hwang, 2012, 113).

For Kim Kyo Shin, there were far more significant issues facing Christians in Korea than whether or not they adhered to Western-style religious rituals. He called Korean churches to rise above denominationalism in order to defeat what he called “a very strong monster”:

Today a very strong monster is before Christians. We are facing a generation when God-fearing people, whether they are in church or out of church, have to fight with all their strength. The prevailing state of this generation requires us to shed martyrs’ blood to discern true religion. Since we live in such generation, we lost interest in debating whether salvation is in church or out of it. We would prepare a tomb for those who suffer persecution for Christ, and please bury us if you see our corpse. (From the 100th issue of Sungsuh Chosun, in Kim, 2012, 193).

Perhaps because his focus was on this greater task, it did not seem to change or challenge him that Korean churches ultimately rejected him and his teaching. As his former student Guhn Goo, later a professor of natural science at Seoul City College, later recalled, in matters of church and all of life, Kim Kyo Shin was “free to do right things daringly”:

King Lee and Queen Bang-ja visited Yangjung School that his mother Queen Uhm founded. Whole neighborhood and school was cleaned up, teachers wore tailcoat, and students’ work was displayed in two classrooms. 500 students wore clean clothes, standing on their feet in two lines, one each side of the road. Finally, after one hour of waiting, King’s motorcade arrived. Inspection at the end of a ceremony just ended solemnly. At that moment, someone was passing by us on a bicycle on a steep downhill road from main building to the entrance gate, as swift as a flying arrow; it was Teacher Kim. When the whole school was under holiday mood, Teacher Kim was going home, without having any concern about it; the more I think about his appearance at that time the more he seemed to be perfectly composed, without being overly sensitive to others’ opinion, and free to do right things daringly.” (Kim, 2012, 209).

Next in the Conclusion of this special series on Kim Kyo Shin: Why He Matters Today More Than Ever

Works Cited

Hwang, S.C. 2012. A theological analysis of the Non-Church Movement in Korea with a special reference to the formation of its spirituality. Birmingham, UK: University of Birmingham.

Kim, J.C. 2012. Recollection of Kyo-Shin Kim. BibleKorea.net. Accessed November 30, 2015 at http://www.biblekorea.net/articles/Recollection_of_Kyo-shin_Kim.doc.

Dr. Hyun Sook Foley, Voice of the Martyrs Korea President, authors this special 8-part series on Kim Kyo Shin, one of the greatest martyrs in Korean Christian history whose voice needs to be heard today more than ever, by Korea and the world.

If crying out in morning prayer was the symbol of the Korean church, rising early to wash himself in cold water in solitude and staying up late to study the Bible was the symbol of the Christianity of Kim Kyo Shin. As Pyung Goo No, who later gathered all 158 issues of Sungsuh Chosun and bound them into the 7 volume collected works of KKS, wrote “He published Sungsuh Chosun for the faith of countrymen in a unique way; rather than accepting rituals and sermons in established churches, he hoped people to digest Christianity by studying the Bible through the soul of Koreans. He advocated that we ought to chill our emotional ardor in our head with cold water to have belief properly” (Kim 2012, 180).

This self-study method was not simply the creation of Kim Kyo Shin. It was actually the indigenous practice which had characterized Korean Christianity before Western missionaries arrived:

Christianity in Korea was begun by Korean Confucian literati rather than foreign missionaries. The tradition of Confucianism is that Confucianists read classics, discuss what they read, and conduct research. The classics provide all they wish to know and what is needed for them to achieve their goals… Historically, from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries during the formative stage of Roman Catholicism in Korea, Korean Confucian Catholics researched and understood the Bible for themselves similarly, rather than by passively learning from foreign missionaries. In the same way, even during the early stages of the introduction of Protestantism, [Non Church Movement] members, influenced as they were by Confucianism, did not feel the necessity to receive help from foreign missionaries in studying, understanding, and practicing the teachings of the Bible. For understanding and teaching, the Bible alone was sufficient, and they were confident that they could know what the Bible teaches, without outside help (Hwang, 2012, 175).

To Kim Kyo Shin, Christianity was not a ritual to be enacted but a path to be studied, mastered, and lived out under the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus he taught it the same way such a subject would be studied in a Confucian academy, only instead of “reading, memorizing, and interpreting Confucian texts,” he taught his students how to read, memorize, and interpret the Bible for themselves (Hwang, 2012, 28). In many ways, he taught the Bible the same way he taught other subjects in his day job as a grade teacher (Kim, 2012, 2). He saw the public school classroom rather than the church building as the most important place to model and live out the Christian life.

Being a grade school teacher might sound less devout than pastoring or less revolutionary than the activity of some nationalists, but the Japanese regarded Kim Kyo Shin as a danger to national security because of his simple acts of faithfulness to Christ and Chosun in the classroom. For example, he continued to use his Korean name as well as the Korean names for his students in roll call. He taught in the Korean language, and contrary to colonial policy his geography lessons were about Korean, not Japanese, geography. He refused to bow to the Japanese emperor in the morning exercises. He also taught lessons from the Korean Bible. Ultimately he was forced to resign in 1940 after 12 years of teaching (Kim, 2012, 2). Two years later he was imprisoned by the Japanese for an article in his magazine, spending a year in prison while his 300 subscribers were detained by the police for ten days or more (Hwang, 2012, 100).

Barred from teaching after his release from prison, he continued to teach—this time at the Heung-nam Nitrogen Chemical Co. One of his college alumni from Japan hired him to oversee the plant’s 5,000 Korean laborers and to improve their working conditions. In addition to taking care of the laborers’ physical needs, Kim Kyo Shin also taught Korean classes to the laborers. Though the Japanese government objected, Kim Kyo Shin’s alumni friend and plant manager stood up for him and insisted that the classes were necessary for worker safety and productivity (Kim, 2012, 168).

Ultimately, living out his faith cost Kim Kyo Shin his life—not at the hands of the government but at the hands of a contagious disease. In April 1945, three months before the end of the war, Kim Kyo Shin contracted typhoid as a result of personally caring for infected workers. He died at age 44, his body cremated before proper tribute could be arranged (Hwang, 2012, 89), which may be in keeping with what he would have preferred.

Next in Part VII of this special series on Kim Kyo Shin: Missionary To Chosun

Works Cited

Hwang, S.C. 2012. A theological analysis of the Non-Church Movement in Korea with a special reference to the formation of its spirituality. Birmingham, UK: University of Birmingham.

Kim, J.C. 2012. Recollection of Kyo-Shin Kim. BibleKorea.net. Accessed November 30, 2015 at http://www.biblekorea.net/articles/Recollection_of_Kyo-shin_Kim.doc.