Easter in Korea

 Happy Easter everybody! It certainly IS a happy Easter for me! Not because of the chocolate, the Easter egg hiding, hunting or colouring or Easter celebrations with friends and family, (there won't be any of that) and not because of the holiday, (we don't get one here in Korea) but because I'm back to work and all signs point to a better situation. I was getting a bit worried that I'd have to go without work for a semester again, or even worse, accept work in China or Saudi Arabia. But I got this job after the deadline. March 1 was starting day for most uni gigs here in Korea, but I started April 1. And that's no April Fool's joke!

You may be wondering about Easter in Korea. A better place to start would be Christianity in Korea. If you live here as long as I have, or for a month, you will get a sense that Korea IS a Christian country. Statistically, about 46% of people have no religious affiliation. That surprises me! About 20% are Buddhist and a whopping 33% are Christians. Here is a really good article on how that came about. I would also encourage you to read the article so that you don't think the next few things I'm going to say are the products of my imagination/any sort of prejudice, but are opinions shared by many, including members of Korean Christian groups.

Christianity in Korea is a different animal! While Christian Mammonism has always been one of many sources of confusion for me in ANY church, I haven't seen an integral connection between God and prosperity to the extent it exists in Korean Christian churches. You can find many instances throughout history of prosperity being linked to God's favour and even superiority of race, but there are few rags to riches stories like the "Miracle on the Han River." In about 50 years, Korea went from a nation of uneducated and destitute farmers to one of the top dozen economies in the world! It's no huge wonder that the people of that generation were deliriously happy at their good fortune! Short of saying exactly the following, the above article certainly hints at it: Korean pride, (and considerable xenophobia which led to the nickname "hermit kingdom") would not allow them to give full credit to the foreign countries upon which they were more dependent than most nations on earth, so they chose to believe it was their own hard work and God that created the miracle. This gave rise to the only miracle that surpassed the Korean economic miracle: the Korean religious miracle. Churches were filled with zealous worshippers faster than they could be built. 

In a discussion last week with one of my students about culture shock, he said short skirts on the girls and the number of churches were to two most shocking things for him when he first arrived in Korea. There are about 17 million Christians in Korea, which is the size of the state of Indiana. About 81.5% live in the cities, so you can imagine what it's like walking down any city street. There seems to be a church on every corner! When I first came here in 1997 I was asked about once a week if I was a Christian. 

Nowadays the churches are still there, but the zeal is not. The Korean economy couldn't possibly have sustained the trajectory that created that zeal. Things have levelled out and while the beneficiaries of the economic miracle of the second half of the 20th century still maintain their wealth and their belief that somehow God factored into it, the younger generation isn't prospering as miraculously. So here we have identical sentiments among the last couple of generations as we have in most capitalist countries in which unchecked capitalist aggression and greed has created unprecedented wealth gaps and funneled almost all the resources and power into the hands (and bank accounts) of so few. The younger generation here are discouraged by employment and happiness prospects. The term "Hell Chosun" has been created to describe their feelings. And you can bet that some of the tin-eared older generation believe that the youngsters need to work harder and get their asses to church instead of complaining.

As for Easter, it's not even a holiday here! I will work a full day Easter Monday. Christmas isn't big either. With the church being so dominant, and a third of the people I meet every day being Christians, it's just colossally confusing to me how Easter is such a non-entity here! It feeds into the belief, and once again, not just MY belief, that Korean Christianity is first and foremost a kind of socio-economic cartel of like minded people giving each other preferential treatment. How real is the zeal? 

I imagine conversation between the generations might be similar to the meme war we often see around Christian holidays between Christians and non-believers online. The Christians will be all like...

And Easter non-celebrants might be all like...

and maybe they'll refuse to go to church. The miracle generation might think, "Hmmm... that WOULD explain the Easter eggs and chocolate bunny rabbits. I've always wondered about them. I mean, like, wouldn't a phoenix have been a better symbol for Easter? Jesus wasn't really a symbol of fertility or spring or growing or mating and he didn't really get reborn, he rose from the dead." But then they will probably get all up in the faces of the younger generation saying things like, "This is exactly WHY things are going so badly for you!"

To which the younger generation might reply, "Come on Grampa, give it a rest you zombie worshipper!"

And maybe the logic of that might go through the heads of the elder generation. They might even recall chilling, and confusing Bible verses they'd read. Like...

 or...

... but they'll say, "Jesus gave his life for you!"

The young and cheeky will reply, "Well, not really. He was actually only inconvenienced for three days. Then he returned and scared some people."

"Don't be blasphemous! Jesus died for your sins. We celebrate Easter here in Korea, not with a day off, but by thanking Jesus for saving us and washing away our sins."

"Again Grampa, he was dead, but only for, like, two and a half days, and if the wages of sin are death, but those who believeth in Jesus will have eternal life, and if God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost are all One, then isn't he technically saving us from himself? Couldn't we have all been forgiven without all that?"

"All that? You dismiss the crucifixion and the suffering of our Lord as 'all that'?"

"It's because I'm not so sure I believe in 'all that.' I think maybe Jesus puts the 'fiction' in 'crucifixion.'"

"Get out of this house!" 

"Fine! See ya later. I'm gonna go out and drink some Cass beer, meet up with friends and maybe commit a few sins... because:

"Yeah, sure, GO! Drink your beer! Do your partying! Coast through life working your measly 12-hour shifts taking advantage of the blessings that your ancestors worked so hard for! I'll go to church and pray for you! Lousy younger generation... mumble grumble... Don't know how GOOD they got it... mumble grumble..."

I'm not saying for sure that this is the way things go here, but I wonder... 

At any rate, I am celebrating Easter and my good fortune this year. The job is going very well! I will get immigration taken care of next week and submit my curricula for both online and face-to-face classes, then the next week is exam week so it's a week off for me! And the Wednesday of that week is my birthday so I'll be celebrating that most likely. 

Just in case it seems like I was favouring the Atheists this post, I will ask if any of the Atheists are going into work Easter Monday. What about Christmas? What do you say during sex? Just asking. And in case any Atheist gets too cocky, here's your fucking soup:

 

So, how 'bout we just get along? All religious and non-religious people? Maybe THAT'S what we could celebrate on Easter. Yeah, right! Happy Easter from Korea anyway!