Sources of Korean Christianity, 1832-1945.

Park, Joon-Sik

Edited by Sung-Deuk Oak. Seoul: Institute for Korean Church History, 2004. Pp. 509. KRW 30,000 (approx. $25).

The growth of Korean Christianity and its leading role in world mission, with currently more than 10,000 overseas missionaries, have been remarkable by any measure. Yet, documented primary sources on Korean Christianity have not been readily available, which could have spurred further studies on its vital growth and dynamic mission. In order to help bridge this gap, Sung-Deuk Oak, who received his Th.D. from Boston University and is visiting professor at the UCLA Center for Korean Studies, has edited an excellent sourcebook for scholars and students of Korean Christianity.

This topically organized volume focuses on the messages, messengers, and methods of mission; early Korean Christians; Korean religions; national crisis, Japanese colonialism, and Communism; controversies and revivals; and overseas Korean churches and the Korean missionary movement. A significant number of the documents appear here in print for the first time. All are in English, some of them having been translated from Korean or Chinese sources. Many include vivid narratives of early Korean Christians and missionaries.

Sources of Korean Christianity is a well-selected and well-organized collection of significant documents that introduces readers to the full breadth of Korean Christianity through 1945. The chapter on strategies of mission, for instance, illustrates various methods adopted by the missionaries, including the sociological methods of John Nevius and John Ross, as well as James Dennis. In particular, the book sheds light on the encounter between Christianity and Korean religions. It also contains a few documents that allow a glimpse of the early missionary movement, which sent its first Protestant missionaries in 1907 to the island of Quelpart (now Cheju) and in 1909 to Siberia.

Introductory notes provide historical background for the documents as a whole. They are rather sketchy and inadequate, however; fuller interpretive annotations would have made the book a more valuable resource. This volume almost exclusively focuses on Korean Protestantism, though Oak desires to incorporate more sources on Korean Catholicism in the second volume, which is planned to cover the period 1945 to 2000.

Joon-Sik Park is the E. Stanley Jones Associate Professor q[ World Evangelism at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio, in Delaware, Ohio. He previously served as pastor of multicultural United Methodist congregations in Ohio and Kentucky.