Four Types of Protestant Responses to South Korean Government Measures to Control COVID-19 Outbreaks in 2020-2021

Abstract

Abstract:The pandemic and government measures against it have deeply affected all aspects of South Korean society, not least the Protestants and their communities, be they small congregations or megachurches, denominations or parachurch organizations. How did Korean Protestants respond to these anti-pandemic measures? This study seeks to address this question—focusing on the period between February 1, 2020, when the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention first announced the discovery of the virus in a Protestant church, to November 1, 2021, when the "Living with COVlD-19" policy was initiated. Along the way, the study examines tensions elicited by the measures and responses to them—not only between the government and the Protestant communities but also within the communities themselves. In the main, there were four types of Protestant responses to the government's anti-pandemic measures, described in terms of their agents: willing compliers, begrudging compliers, amenable noncompliers, and defiant noncompliers. All four of them coexisted throughout the twenty-one-month period, and generally mapped onto the theological and political fissures that existed in the Korean Protestant Church at the time. A key point of theological tension was in-person worship, and a focus of political tension was issues related to Chŏn Kwang-hun, a far-right evangelical leader and the most vociferous and controversial critic of the government during the period.