Page 45 - A Dissertation for Doctor of Philosophy

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74.4 percent in 1990. Kim writes that “between 1960 and 1995, urban population increased by
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about 30 million, from 8.9 million to 38.5 million.” Consequently, rural populations

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plummeted by as much as thirteen percent. Urbanization resulted in the dismantling of an
agriculture-centered feudal economic system, a family and class-centered social system, and a

Confucianism-centered cultural system. Social structure experienced blinding transformation.

People in the society struggled to adjust to the drastic changes. It was incumbent upon them to

new jobs and follow new life styles but with a different set of rules and values.

In the mist of urbanization, people in the cities created new communities and practiced a

new ideology through these new communities. Kwang-Ok Kim dubbed this new ideology “neo-

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tribalism.” Traditionally, Koreans are a community-oriented people. Even though they have
experienced changes of communal structure and values in the process of industrialization and

urbanization, they have found a new way of doing community in a different cultural setting.

76 Won Gue Lee, “A Sociological Study on the Factors of Church Growth and Decline in
Korea,” Korea Journal 39 (Winter 1999), 250.

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Yong Kim, “Indusrialization and urbanization,” 38.
78 Kwang-Ok Kim, “The Communal Ideology and Its Reality: With Reference to the
Emergence of Neo-Tribalism,” Korea Journal 38 (Autumn 1998), 24.

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Ibid. He introduces several communal models of neo-tribalism in which community of
church is included.

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See Tae-Jin Yi, “Korean History Study: Breaking away from Modernism” in The
Review of Korean Studies 2 (September 1999): 138-158. Community in Korea is regarded as a
cultural construction. Yi explains that there was a culture of group singing in premodern Korean
society while they worked in community. They sang together to lessen fatigue and monotony of
farming and fishing and most importantly help to foster a spirit of cooperation. In festivals of
planting and harvesting, group songs were sung to honor deities and to instill a sense of unity
within the community. He writes, “Our traditional culture emphasized harmony in all areas. This
harmonious characteristic is thus embedded in the Korean temperament” 158.