Page 34 - A Dissertation for Doctor of Philosophy

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December 194, all Protestant missionaries left Korea. In general, the Korean pulpit was weak
and confused. Chung criticized that there were many pulpiteers in the Church:

In the 1930’s there were dirty streams of thoughts that flew into and intimidated the
Korean pulpit. Various Western philosophies such as Communism, Anarchism,
Despotism, and Liberalism created the age of confusion. . . . Thus, the zeal of preaching
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the Word and evangelism became frozen. The preachers were dismayed.

At this time Rev. Ki-Chul Chu, Yang-Won Son, and Sang-Dong Han were the representative

preachers. It was Reverund Chu, however, who emerged as the salient representative of the

resistance movement against Shinto worship. Like Dietrich Bonhoeffer of Germany, Chu

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experienced martyrdom in prison.

Preaching in the Stage of Restoration (1945-1960)

The Korean Liberation on August 15, 1945 was not only the deliverance of the nation but

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also the emancipation of Korean Christianity. Immediately after the liberation, however, there

ensued much confusion. The church needed to restore the Christianity that split ten years earlier.

In addition, the nation itself was experiencing political division: Communism in the North, and

Democracy in the South. Furthermore, the Korean War broke out in 1950 and lasted three years.

This plunged the Korean churches into greater confusion characteristic of wartime. The

Christians in the north escaped the North Korean government and came down to the South where

38 Clark, Christianity, 13.

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Chung, A History of Preaching, 276.
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Blair and Hunt, The Korean Pentecost, 98-114. They described those who martyred in

detail. There were 50 martyrs of ordained preachers out of 70 who were put into prison.
41 Tong-Sik Yoo, A Mineral Vein of Korean Theology (Seoul: Jeon Mang Sa, 1982), 145.