Korean Language Textbooks and Christianity

My study of the Korean language is progressing only slowly, especially since I’m neither enrolled in any serious program of language study here nor am I in Korea where I might use the language daily. I supplement the study of various textbooks and the use of my flashcard software with a number of language exchanges with Korean friends of mine. Their patience and kind explanations have been the most crucial to my attempt to gain proficiency while I’m in Japan.

I have been using a number of textbooks of varying quality. All of them have little attached sections which introduce the culture and history of Korea itself or the city of Seoul. None of these little sections have (yet) taken up the topic of Christianity in Korea and its strong evangelistic tendencies, which, prior to my study of the Korean language, has been the feature of Korea that I took greatest notice of.

However, in two of my textbooks, Christianity does pop up indirectly in the instructive language material of the text itself, and it does so in a way I have seen in no textbook for the Japanese or Chinese languages…

Before I look at the textbooks I will mention a related story. When I took a single semester of Korean at Columbia University in the Fall of 2001, I was in a class full of Korean-Americans. They were all young undergraduates, many of which were coming to the study of their parent’s language with little or no spoken or hearing ability, despite the class’s designation as a “heritage class” (I begged my way into the only offering of the class I had time to take). They were all friendly to me and helpful to a non-heritage speaker who didn’t really even belong in the class.

Like many Korean-Americans on the university campuses of the US, a considerable majority of these students were active in evangelical Christian organizations on campus, some (but not all) of them specifically targeting the Korean-American student community. Many of these students proudly wore their Jesus and other salvation T-shirts in class and shared news about their upcoming events before class.

When thanksgiving came around, I had a very uncomfortable experience. During class, and in Korean, I was asked if my family prayed before eating Thanksgiving dinner and whether we went to church at Christmas. I responded that my family didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving and that at any rate I wasn’t Christian.

This was met with a visible degree of shock and surprise not only from my religious classmates, but from my instructor. She then asked, “Why not?”

I don’t remember what I responded, most likely because of my own shock and surprise at being asked such a question in a language class.

This no longer seems as surprising to me when both of the textbooks I currently use for Korean, one published in the US and the other, for Japanese and published in Japan have Christian references built in.

My Japanese Korean language text occasionally puts in Christian references in its sample sentences. For example, in today’s lesson number 30 from Hajimete no Kankokugo, I found the following sample sentence:

“Our family prays before they eat dinner.”

A second textbook, used at Columbia, Integrated Korean the first lesson of the second book in the series, which I’m starting, includes the following song taught in Korean with music, attached vocabulary, and the following translation:

The heart that has no greed

The house that I want to live in – a small straw-roofed house
the clothes that I want to wear – white hanbok jacket
the thing that I want to eat – roasted corn-on-the cob
the book that I want to possess – a small Bible.
People, don’t blaime my heart that has no greed.

I was once a believing Christian myself, actively attending youth groups, debating biblical/ethical issues with my favorite pastors, and exploring various denominations until I was confirmed as a Lutheran at 15, all despite the fact my unreligious parents only had me baptized, “just in case.”

I abandoned the religion with something of a vengeance in high school when I became fascinated by Asia and everything mysterious and Oriental I could get my hands on through the Waldenbooks bookstore at the local mall. I continued to be fascinated by various evangelical flavors of Christianity, and especially their organizing power in the university setting, in Western Washington University’s case through the Campus Christian Crusaders (for those of us who were often the target of proselytization and sometimes fooled into attending what turned out to be religious events, they were known as the KKK).

The reason I mention this is that the above perfectly innocuous seeming religious references in the textbooks reminded me very much of an extremely effective tactic used by the organizations on campus in my undergraduate years. They would sponsor or hold events across campus which did not immediately appear to be religious but which either turned into sermons, bible-study meetings or which were led and organized by active members of Christian organizations such that there would be subtle Christian messages throughout.

For example, students would be invited to a “cool Root-beer float party” only to find that half way through their drink that the organizer would begin reading a chapter from the bible. Or an “academic debate on evolution vs. creation” would turn out to be sponsored by the CCC and instead of a debate would be a lecture by a prominent Creationist theorist who would kindly, on the behalf of the absent evolutionists, present his opponent’s case before destroying it in the name of the Creator. Or a meeting in the dorm lounge on hunger in the world would conclude with singing a few happy hymns on the guitar. Or the weekly “The Inn” youth party, complete with rock concert, would turn out to be a rockin’ sermon at a Presbyterian church followed by a handing out of anti-mormon pamphlets (titled, “How to help your Mormon friends find the true path to Christ”).

My entry has turned into a nostalgic return to my own past, but I will just conclude with a few comments on my original topic: the religious references in the textbooks were not introduced as cultural features of Korea (unless the song is to be interpreted as a “traditional Korean song”) In contrast to my memories of undergraduate life above, however, I don’t believe that any of the authors of the textbooks had a conscious desire to use the textbooks as a medium for missionary work. Instead, I suspect the authors felt it was perfectly natural to have sample sentences about going to church, prayer before the meal, and a song dedicated to a pure heart that yearns for a Bible. If directly pressed, they would remark that for anyone going to Korea, where Christianity is as strong as it is, not knowing these words will put them at a disadvantage.

The point is, however, that we find no such mentions in Chinese or Japanese textbooks. Not even my most Communist of textbooks from China’s 1970s would give me a sample sentence such as, “As I go out to the field this morning, I will remember to study the example of Lei Feng”

Instead, I learned about “studying Lei Feng” in a third-year text which took Communist ideology as its target of analysis. In the same way, none of my Japanese language textbooks over the years taught me religious songs. I do, however, distinctly remember a second-year text which was dedicated to a discussion of a survey in which 60% of Japanese described themselves as agnostic yet the lesson later passed on to us the classic stereotype of Japanese following Shinto Christian Buddhist rituals at appropriate moments in their life (birth, marriage, death). Again, this was raised as the target of discussion, not mentioned innocently in passing.

I doubt this observation can be taken anywhere too interesting. Chinese and Japanese language textbooks and curriculums have a host of their own interesting features that deserve just as much discussion. However, this appears to confirm, at the very least, my suspicions about a certain intensity of religion in Korean society about which I still know very little. I hope that any time I get to spend in Korea next year will teach me more about this.