Intricate Modernity: The South Korean Protestant Experience

precis: This essay reconsiders the South Korean Protestant experience of modernity by complicating the widely accepted view that Protestantism marked a clean rupture from traditional society and religious culture. While often portrayed as a symbol of Western modernity and individualism, Korean Protestantism continues to preserve and refract enduring elements of Korea's pre-Christian religious ethos. Drawing on literature in global/world Christianity and ethnographic research with Korean Protestant immigrants in the United States, I argue that Protestant modernity in Korea emerges not as a total break but as an entangled process shaped by tensions between old and new religious identities. Migration, to the U.S. in particular, has served as a meaningful avenue through which many South Korean Protestants seek both religious and social salvation. These lived experiences highlight how Western modernity is reinterpreted and localized within Korean religious life, offering a more nuanced understanding of religious change in the global context.