The progressive Christian church and democracy in South Korea

Journal of Church and State, Spring, 1998 by Chang Yun-Shik

It should be noted, however, that the church's active involvement in the labor movement ceased in the 1980s when the role played by the church was taken over by student activists who joined the movement disguised as industrial workers. The entry of the students marked a new stage in the labor movement.(43)

As an extension of its urban industrial mission activities, the Protestant church launched an aid program for the urban poor. This program began in 1970 with the establishment of the Capitol Area Mission Committee (CAMC). Similar committees were organized later where poor people were concentrated in the areas surrounding Seoul. The committee's activities consisted mainly of helping urban residents who had recently migrated to the capitol city and who lived in illegal housing in the fringe areas to organize themselves into a collective unit in their resettlement negotiations with the city government. The CAMC helped those "illegal settlers" to persuade the city to recognize their property rights for the domiciles they had built illegally. When settlers were removed from these unlicensed settlements, the CAMC helped them to get resettled into "citizens' apartments" built by the city. The CAMC also worked closely with the apartment residents' autonomous committee to ensure that City Hall properly maintained their apartment building facilities.(44) When appeals or petitions failed, the CAMC helped residents stage protest demonstrations against the city government's indifference to their problems. The committee's ultimate goal was to help the urban poor to exercise their citizens' rights and regain their human dignity.

Whereas the Protestant church focused its attention on urban areas, the Catholic church went to the rural areas to help protect farmers' interests and welfare through the establishment in 1966 of the Catholic Farmers Association (CFA), previously the Catholic Rural Youth Association.(45) The official structure of the CFA had three levels. At the village level, Catholic farmers--if there were more than five within a village--formed a branch association. Branch associations within each province fell under administrative control of the provincial federation, which in turn consisted of farmer leaders and priests selected from within the province. The CFA's political actions were usually carried out by a provincial federation. Policy decisions were made centrally at the national headquarters. The main goal of this organization was to protect farmers' fights and interests by helping them to organize themselves into an autonomous collective force or by facilitating democratization of the rural community.(46)

Farmers were facing problems that were, in the CFA's assessment, not solvable within the rural community through reform efforts by individual model youths or model farm households.(47) The CFA attributed the problems to government agricultural policies that shortchanged farmers in the wake of the economic development drive by keeping the prices of agricultural products low and by allowing the import of foreign agricultural products. Furthermore, farmers were deprived of their right to self-autonomy by the military regime's imposition of a system in which the government appointed the director of the local agricultural cooperative. The local cooperative thus became an organ carrying out government agricultural policies rather than an organ representing farmers' interests. The democratization of farmers' cooperatives was deemed a necessary step toward the democratization of the rural community.