Climate Change, Inequality, and Vulnerabilities in Pre-Modern Korea: Implications for Mission After COVID-19

Korea's late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Chosŏn Dynasty is marked by evidence of climate change. A distinctive feature of this period was the frequent outbreak of plagues such as cholera, dysentery, and typhoid, especially among the less privileged. There was, consequently, a large-s...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Lee, Bright Myeong-Seok (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Sage 2023
In: Transformation
Year: 2023, Volume: 40, Issue: 2, Pages: 95-106
RelBib Classification:KAH Church history 1648-1913; modern history
KBM Asia
KDB Roman Catholic Church
RJ Mission; missiology
ZC Politics in general
Further subjects:B Climate Change
B vulnerabilities
B Catholicism
B pre-modern Korea
B Mission (international law
B Inequality
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:Korea's late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Chosŏn Dynasty is marked by evidence of climate change. A distinctive feature of this period was the frequent outbreak of plagues such as cholera, dysentery, and typhoid, especially among the less privileged. There was, consequently, a large-scale discontentment among the poor. In this milieu, some local Confucian scholars, dismayed by the prevailing corruption in the central government, withdrew themselves from government business, focused on studying imported Catholic texts from China, and converted to Catholicism. The emergence of indigenous religious movements also reflected this social reality. This paper explores the correlation among climate anomalies, decline in agricultural productivity, competition for limited common resources, heightened social inequality, and frequent plagues, and how Catholicism, an indigenous religious movement, and Protestant Christianity impacted and were impacted by these processes in Korea's late Chosŏn Dynasty. It also suggests missional implications of this in the post-Covid-19 era.
ISSN:1759-8931
Contains:Enthalten in: Transformation
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1177/02653788231151228