Religion of the Korean Ethnic Minority in China, by China Report.com

Religion :

The earliest Korean people arriving in China practiced totemism and ancestor worship. Their religion was shamanist. Today, there is no longer a uniform religion for this minority. Many Ethnic Koreans are atheist. Among those who consider themselves as religious, most are of the Christian Faith. A small numbers of the Koreans have adopted Chinese Religious influences, practising Buddhism or Confucianism.

Christian Religion among the Chaoxian (Koreans) in China (P.R.C.) has been on the rise since policy changes adopted first under guidance of Deng Xiaoping gave greater room for religious practices and allowed for increased contacts with Koreans outside China. Many Koreans as well as Han Chinese in Jilin Province still have relatives living in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea and mutual sympathy is traditionally high. There are therefor many links with North Korea. Among things North Koreans can come across the border via a special arrangement that allows for family visits that can last up to six months. As China's ties with North Korea have grown since the 1990's so have the number of family visits grown.

Ties with South Korea (R.O.K.), once out of the question, have also developped.

Especially after the normalization of diplomatic relations between the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and the Peoples Republic of China in 1992, economic and other links between Koreans in China and the "mother nation" have blossomed. Along with the availabilty of Korean consumer goods and popular culture, Christianity, mainly in the form of Protestantism and Roman Catholicism has made inroads among Koreans within China.

No Christian Churches, and officially no Christian citizens exists within neighboring North Korea (D.P.R.K.). They do however in large numbers in South Korea which is in missionary terms the 2nd most active nation in the world. Thus, among things due to the ongoing ideological and political struggle with the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (D.P.R.K.) or North Korea) Christian churches within Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture receive plentyful donations from the faithful and affluent Christians on the Southern half of the Korean Peninsula and to a lesser extend from Christian Organizations in the United States of America.

Recently a new large Church, a state approved Protestant Church, has been constructed in Yanji (Yeongil), the Capital of Yanbian. Other churches can be found in Tumen City as well in surrounding villages. So called "underground churches" which have no Government and Chinese Communist Party oversight, are also rumored to be well spread throughout Yanbian Korean Prefecture, where they mobilize local communities offering a form of spiritual life that has long been absent in the heartlands of Manchuria, regions that served as a base for Communist groups and Guerilla's since the 1930's.

Today Christian Churches and organizations in Yanbian and elsewhere actively work against Central Government Policies and lend help to refugees coming across the border from North Korea by aiding their transport to the border of Thailand and exposing the plight of women refugees who (supposedly) are often pushed into marriage in China, sold and/or forced into prostitution. Although marriage between a Chinese Man and an illegally immigrated Korean woman is by no means legal in the Peoples Republic of China, there is a large "market" of single Chinese Men within rural Jilin Province in search of a woman for marriage.

The rise of Christian beliefs among the ethnic Korean population (and others in the regions) have certainly not been welcomed by the Chinese Government. On the contrary, official authorities in China still regard Christianity as a "foreign faith" and Chinese authorities have made explicit references to ethnic Koreans and Korean nationals as a religious threat.

Among the first real signs of a struggle between the Chinese Government and South Korean Christian religious groups the Peoples Republic of China declared the mission of the Korea’s World Elijah Evangelical Mission an “evil cult” in the year 1996, notably several years before the much wider publicized banning of the "Falun Gong" Cult group. Since this did not sufficiently deter the "World Elijah Evangelical Mission" from further conversion attempts in north-east China, in the year 2000 several members of this religious group were publicly arrested and their core leader sentenced to stiff jail terms.

Subsequently, in the year 2003, Zhang Jian, an official at the State Administration for Religious Affairs of the Peoples Republic of China, listed the northeastern region along with Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region and Tibet as an area at risk of

“splittist” activities. Zhang said that “certain Korean Christian powers" by which he meant South Koreans Church organizations, openly express territorial ambitions” in Jilin’s Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture (Yanbian).

Eversince the year 2008 the U.S. State Department has been reporting of the "closure of Churches in Yanbian" with the apparent aim of rooting out religious groups with ties to foreign nations, for which it lists both South Korea and the Unites States of America itself. At the same time, according to sources familiar with the Dept. of Religion in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, the bounty for providing useful information leading to the capture of North Korean illegals was raised from 500 RMB to at least 8000 RMB during 2008 while the penalty on illegal underground church activities was raised from a simple fine to an obligatory jail term.

In September 2009, the education bureau of Jilin’s Huinan County talked about the “internationalization of ‘the problem of ethnic Koreans in China’” caused by the “infiltration activities” carried out by Korean Christian churches among ethnic Koreans from China who often work temporarily in South Korea (R.O.K.). Reportedly as late as in 2011, the official website of Yushu City in northeastern Jilin Province featured an article on a stability-maintenance conference where local officials were warned of the “illegal proselytizing, infiltration activities, and religious extremism” of Korean Christian groups.

The strong link between Christian and Korean ethnicity in Yanbian Prefecture and adjoining regions in North East China severely complicates the situation for ethnic Koreans in China and caused additional scrutiny from Government organs.

The problem is not only that "underground Churches" are in principal illegal. The problem is also that these Church groups are overwhelmingly Korean, making religion potentially an affair dominated by a Foreign Power, a situation forbidden under the current Law's in China. As Article 36 of China’s constitution clearly reads, it grants “freedom of religious belief” only so long as “Religious bodies and religious affairs are not subject to any foreign domination.”

Public security records from Provinces in northeastern China list several cases of raids and detentions related to Korean house churches from 2000 through 2003, a number that has steadily risen since.

In August 2011, an anti-infiltration action plan was launched in Yanbian’s Longjing City, just south of the Capital Yanji (Yeongil), with the aim of “combatting” Korean churches that harbor “illegal immigrants” from North Korea and collect intelligence along the China-North Korean border.

While the Government was concentrating its repression measures on the North-Eastern Provinces well educated Ethnic Koreans migrated across the Nation in pursuit of job industries and business success leading to growth of Christian Communities in other parts of China.

Most noteably, and internationally covered by media on several occassions in the year 2011, Beijing’s largest house church, Shouwang Church (守望教会), started making headlines when the government banned its outdoor public service and arrested several parishioners. Not by coincidence, Shouwang is led by several ethnic Korean pastors, among whom Jin Tianming (金天明) who is now reportedly under house arrest. Other similar arrest rounds among members of "house churches" or "underground churches" have since taken in place in Henan Province, throughout Gansu Province and even in East-Tibet (Qinghai Province) often including the arrests of ethnic Korean pastors and/or with links to South Korean Christian evangelical groups.