David Kwang-sun Suh an ordained minister of the

Presbyterian Church of Korea Presbyterian Church of Korea (PCK) was a Protestant denomination based in South Korea; it is currently separated into many branches. History The first Korean Presbyterian church was founded by Seo Sang-ryun in Hwanghae province in 1884. Short ...

and was the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at

Ewha Womans University Ewha Womans University () is a private women's university in Seoul founded in 1886 by Mary F. Scranton under Emperor Gojong. It was the first university founded in South Korea. Currently, Ewha is one of the world's largest female educational ins ...

of Seoul, Korea until he was arrested in 1980. He is perhaps best known as a major representative of the first generation of Korean minjung theologians. He was the President of the World Alliance of

YMCA YMCA, sometimes regionally called the Y, is a worldwide youth organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 64 million beneficiaries in 120 countries. It was founded on 6 June 1844 by George Williams in London, originally ...

s from 1994 to 1998.

Minjung Theology

Suh traces the origins of minjung theology to the

March First Movement The March 1st Movement, also known as the Sam-il (3-1) Movement (Hangul: 삼일 운동; Hanja: 三一運動), was a protest movement by Korean people and students calling for independence from Japan in 1919, and protesting forced assimilation ...

of 1919, an independence movement triggered by the end of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

and the death of King Kojong, the last king of the

Yi Dynasty The House of Yi, also called the Yi dynasty (also transcribed as the Lee dynasty), was the royal family of the Joseon dynasty and later the imperial family of the Korean Empire, descended from the Joseon founder Yi Seong-gye. All of his descendant ...

. It was during the 1919 independence movement when Korean

minjung Minjung is a Korean word that combines the two hanja characters ''min'' () and ''jung'' (). ''Min'' is from ''inmin'' (), which may be translated as "the people", and ''jung'' is from ''daejung'' (), which may be translated as "the public". Thu ...

and Korean Christians partnered together to rise against foreign domination and liberate themselves from Japanese rule, thereby giving birth to

minjung theology Minjung theology () emerged in the 1970s from the experience of South Korean Christians in the struggle for social justice. It is a people's theology, and, according to its authors, "a development of the political hermeneutics of the Gospel in ter ...

. While Suh sees minjung theology as being borne from a political movement, he also clarifies that it has risen from the indigenous

Korean shamanism Korean shamanism or Mu-ism is a religion from Korea. In the Korean language, alternative terms for the tradition are ''musok'' () and ''mugyo'' (무교, 巫敎). Scholars of religion have classified it as a folk religion. There is no central auth ...

as a religion of the poor, oppressed, and marginalized. Combined with the spiritual mindset of Korean shamanism, Suh writes that "For the powerless minjung, the power of the spirit, more particularly the power of the Holy Ghost, is most respected and awed. To become a Christian is to believe in the power of the Holy Ghost which is much more powerful than their shaman spirits." The spirituality of the minjung, then, is a spirituality that has emerged from the feelings of ''

han Han may refer to: Ethnic groups * Han Chinese, or Han People (): the name for the largest ethnic group in China, which also constitutes the world's largest ethnic group. ** Han Taiwanese (): the name for the ethnic group of the Taiwanese p ...

''—the deep feeling of suffering and helplessness experienced by the oppressed.

Writings

* Suh, David Kwang-sun (2000). "Minjung Theology," in ''Dictionary of Third World Theologies'', ed. Virginia Fabella and R.S. Sugirtharajah. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. * Suh, David Kwang-sun (1981). "A Biographical Sketch of an Asian Theological Consultation," in ''Minjung Theology: People as the Subjects of History'', edited by Yongbock Kim. Singapore: Zed Books. .

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Suh, David Kwang-sun 20th-century Calvinist and Reformed theologians World Christianity scholars South Korean theologians South Korean Presbyterians YMCA leaders