Creationism in a South Korean Culture: Science, Religion, and the Struggle Against Evolution

Half a century ago, when I was just beginning a career exploring Korean history and culture, there were so few academic books in English focused on Korea (with the exception of books on the Korean War) that we few Anglophones in the field felt that we should read every title we ran across. With the explosion of interest in Korea across the English-speaking world over the decades since then, that is no longer possible. Instead, we have to pick and choose from among the many interesting books that appear in our libraries or on publishers’ tables at conferences. We often assume a glance at a title alone is enough to tell us whether that book is relevant to what we are focused on and is therefore worth spending the time it would take to read it. If a book’s title suggests it is not directly connected with our teaching or research interests, we often put it aside. In the case of Creationism in a South Korean Culture, however, putting it aside because of its title would be a mistake.The presence of creationism in its title might give the impression that this book has nothing to offer someone with little interest in Christian fundamentalism on the peninsula. However, that is not the case at all. This study of the creationist community in South Korea tells a broader story of the Korean encounter with modernity.For a significant number of Koreans, modernity has meant adopting the Protestant Christianity introduced from the West in the late nineteenth century. South Korea is now, in terms of the percentage of its population which attends Protestant churches, the most Protestant country in Asia, claiming almost 20 percent of the population.1 Since Protestants now comprise the largest religious community in South Korea, and have also made significant contributions to Korea’s cultural, economic, and political modernization since the end of the nineteenth century, it is impossible to understand modern South Korea without taking into account the role Protestants have played in creating the Korea we see today.Another aspect of modernity is, of course, modern science and technology. Modern science and technology have not only made Koreans healthier, wealthier, and better connected to the world around them than their Chosŏn ancestors were, it has also changed the way they view the natural world. Much more than their ancestors did, they now see nature as amenable to mathematical and experimental investigation.2 That modern view of nature has allowed them to create the industrial and commercial powerhouse that is the Republic of Korea. It is therefore impossible to understand modern South Korea without taking into account the role modern science and technology have played in constructing that powerhouse.In this monograph, Hyung Wook Park presents a case study of those two components of modern Korea, Protestantism and science, joining together to produce creation science. There is no evidence that Koreans believed in a divine creator of the universe until Christianity began penetrating the peninsula in the late eighteenth century. Nor did Koreans begin to elevate science and technology to the highly respected status they enjoy today until the late nineteenth century. The linking of religious creationist thought with the conceptual framework of modern science came even later, emerging only in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The story of creation science in Korea is, therefore, a story of one current shaping Korea’s modernization.Creationism needs to be distinguished from the more narrowly defined creation science. Creationism is the broad belief that God created the universe, a belief shared by the vast majority of Christians on earth as well as followers of many other religious traditions. As such creationism can coexist with belief in evolution, since God can be seen as creating the creatures who inhabit His world through evolution. Creation science emerged out of creationism in opposition to the theory of evolution, which it condemns as contrary to an accurate reading of the Bible. Creation scientists claim to offer a scientific alternative to a worldview which denies the Bible’s account of the direct and, more importantly, continuing agency of God in creating not only the animals on earth but also the earth itself. Many of them also deny widely accepted geological timelines, insisting that the earth, as the Bible implies, is only 6,000 years old.South Korea and the United States are the two countries which have the strongest creation science communities. Creation science originated in the US but arrived in South Korea only two decades after its birth on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. The close ties between US fundamentalists and South Korean fundamentalists explains that short transmission time.Korean fundamentalist Rev. Kim Chun’gon (1925–2009), the founder of the South Korean branch of the conservative Campus Crusade for Christ, began publicly warning about putting too much trust in science. Hyung Wook Park tells us that Kim did so even though he had established an annual National Prayer Breakfast starting in 1966 for pastors to pray for the success of President Park Chung Hee, despite the fact that Park had become known for his strong support for science and technology, including establishing the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST).Park points out that Rev. Kim was responsible for the first major stimulus to the formation of a creation science community in Korea when he invited several anti-evolution and young-earth advocates from the Institute for Creation Research in the US to a World Evangelization Crusade in Seoul in 1980. The lectures those creationists gave at that crusade promoted their institute’s advocacy of the position that “the biblical record of primeval history in Genesis 1–11 is factual, historical, and clearly understandable and, therefore, that all things were created and made in six literal days.”3For me, the most surprising—and fascinating–-chapters in the book are chapters 3 and 4, in which Park discusses the founding of the Korean Association for Creation Research (KACR) just one year after that crusade in Seoul. Kim Yŏnggil, an American-educated engineer with work experience at NASA, is given credit for founding that young-earth creationist organization in 1981 while he was working at KAIST, Korea’s most advanced science-and-technology research center. Moreover, many of the early members of that anti-evolution society were also well-respected scientists and engineers at KAIST. And Kim himself would go on to be named South Korea’s scientist of the year in 1987. There are, of course, scientists and engineers in the United States who also happen to believe in the more radical version of creationism. However, they don’t tend to be concentrated at the best universities or research institutes. In Korea, on the other hand, that is where they are to be found.Park goes on to show how, because of the scientific credentials of its earliest proponents in Korea, creation science soon came to be treated as respectable and legitimate science by mainstream media, even though creation scientists argued not only that the earth was only 6,000 years old but also that many of the geological features other scientists point to as evidence that the earth is billions of years old were formed much more recently by the flood which, according to the Bible, covered the earth in Noah’s time. Though their faith in a literal reading of the Bible defines their fundamental worldview, creation scientists maintain that their claims are not based on the Bible alone but also on actual scientific research, which is why they call themselves creation scientists.Creation science is not ecumenical. Its members are mainstream Protestants. Park points out that there do not appear to be any Catholic members, for example. However, it does engage in outreach—to other Protestant Koreans. In chapter 5, Park shows that KACR has expanded overseas, with branches in places in both the US and Japan, where there are a sizable number of immigrants from South Korea. One reason for the viability and respectability of creation science among Koreans, besides the scientific backgrounds of those who promote it, is the fact that, unlike the situation in many other non-Western countries, in Korea, Protestantism has been linked with modernity ever since its arrival on the peninsula in the late nineteenth century. For many South Koreans, to be Protestant is to be modern, even if some of the ideas advocated by Protestant leaders appear to contradict some important assumptions of modern thought, such as evolution and naturalistic instead of supernatural explanations of natural phenomena.In chapter 6, Park focuses on the scientific work of creation scientists. It is not surprising that there were few geologist members of that group in Korea, since creation scientists tend to deny the antiquity of many geographic features. However, it surprised me to learn that there were quite a few biologists, including many who were involved in government-funded biotechnology projects such as genetic engineering. Park explains that the biological sciences were attractive to creation scientists because the complexity they saw in living organisms was, for them, proof that life, in its various manifestations, was a product of a Divine Designer rather than hit-and-miss evolution. Moreover, they could engage with biotechnology because that involved working on existing organisms and slightly modifying them without questioning how they evolved to be what they were.In chapter 7, Park shifts gears to show how creation scientists attack evolutionary theory philosophically. They argue that scientific claims must be based on empirical evidence drawn from direct observations and experimentation. They point out that no one has observed evolution taking place. Therefore, the theory of evolution, they argue, is not scientific.In promoting a debate over the right of mainstream science to monopolize the label of “science,” some creation scientists have become public intellectuals. Many of them are engineers and, as Park points out, would have been considered low-status artisans, subordinate to philosophers, when Korea was dominated by Confucian scholar-officials. The fact that engineers and others involved in the technical study and manipulation of natural objects now can claim the right to debate philosophical issues is another sign of how much Korea has changed over the last century and a half.In chapter 8, Park describes how creationists took advantage of the expansion of the public sphere as Korea democratized in the 1990s to also enter into broader political debates, forming an organization called the Christian Alliance for Environmental Movement to push for greater concern for the environment. Such activism by experts in technical matters would have been unheard of in previous centuries.Anyone interested in Korean history, especially those interested in Korea’s modern history, will find this study of creation science worth reading. Park persuasively argues that creation science is actually a modern phenomenon. Though it may appear anti-modern in its rejection of the claims of the modern geological and biological sciences that the earth is old and that the inhabitants of the earth have changed over time to adapt to changes in nature, creation science, even its young-earth theory, is a product of the modern age. There was no need for creation science until modern science stimulated a critical reading of Genesis and began to question the literal reading of the claim that the universe was created in six days. Without modern science and its impact on the way human beings think about religious texts, there would be no stimulus to promote creation science. Creation science can only be understood in contrast to what it poses as an unacceptable alternative: the modern notion that life on earth and changes in nature can be explained without recourse to supernatural intervention. In other words: no theory of evolution, no creation science. Moreover, without modern science and the respect its practitioners have gained as Korea has modernized, there would be no creation scientists challenging some of the basic assumptions of mainstream science and being given a public forum to do so.Reading Hyung Wook Park’s Creationism in a South Korean Culture has convinced me that a comprehensive account of how much Korea has changed as it has transformed into the modern society we see today should include the emergence of creation science as part of that modernization project. I recommend this book to all students of Korean history, not just those interested primarily in the history of science or religion.