The Role of Newspapers in the Early Korean Protestant Community: An Analysis of The Korean Christian Advocate and The Christian News

Abstract:This article investigates the role of weekly religious newspapers in the late nineteenth-century Korean Protestant community. I initiate the study by exploring the historical backdrop of The Korean Christian Advocate and The Christian News, early Christian newspapers in Korea published by Methodist and Presbyterian missionaries, respectively, from the United States. The article then analyzes the role these newspapers played in defining and developing the identity of the early Protestant community in Korea. I pay attention to the active participation in these newspapers by their readers, namely, examining their readership's contributions to the papers. Finally, I argue that the new medium of newspapers played a pivotal role in initiating a new religious community. The early Korean Protestant Christians envisioned their own religious community and way of life through the mediated publicness provided by newspapers. The newspaper opened up an imaginative space in which members of the community were allowed to imagine the telepresence of a religious community, offering them a new religious habitus and experience.