Country Profile: South Korea
Visit our website: www.omkorea.org (Korean only)
The Land of the Morning Calm, the Republic of Korea, South Korea or simply ‘Korea’, as it is more commonly known, encompasses the southern section of the Korean peninsula. The peninsula is bordered by China and a small part of Russia to the north with Japan to the east. While this nation is no longer the hermit nation it was once known as its people maintain a traditional mindset shaped by Confucianism. South Korea today is progressively accepting more and more of the West’s values and lifestyle creating sharp contrasts between generations.
South Korea boasts many cultural treasures including the martial art taekwondo, unique traditional costume known as ‘hanbok’, foods unlike anywhere else such as kimchi. It is a beautiful country covered largely by mountains with lowlands, located in the west and south east, taking up about 30% of the country. South Korea offers the world entertainment through Korean popular music (kpop) and TV dramas and movies which are especially popular in Asia and growing in popularity in the rest of the world. In addition to this South Korea offers much new technology through large corporations like Samsung and it offers its people the fastest internet in the world! Education is a major focus and a large percentage of the population hold university degrees. A common opening question with a new acquaintance is, ‘what’s your major?’
While the land of Korea has a very long and proud history of a few thousand years the church is still considered young with about one hundred years of history. The first protestant missionaries arrived at the end of the 19th century. From the 1960s to the 1980s, the church saw large and rapid growth. Sadly, while South Korea now boasts some of the largest protestant churches in the world, the church is in decline due to struggles with controversy and the secularisation of the young people. Today about one third of the population identifies themselves as Christian with about 19% being Protestant. A slightly smaller third are Buddhist and the rest are non-religious or are involved with various traditional or new cults and other religions. South Korea is one of the largest missionary sending nations.
OM KOREA
Since OM Korea was established in 1990 over 1200 missionaries have been sent out through OM Korea. Today there are 245 Korean missionaries serving in 35 OM fields around the world. OM Korea consists of the Seoul Headquarters and Training Centre, as well as branch offices in the major cities of Seoul, Daegu, Daejeon, Busan, and Gwangju.
OM Korea co-operates very closely with board members and church leaders in serving and mobilising people from local churches throughout the country. In order to help us in mobilising Koreans into action and in setting up new ministry initiatives we need committed, flexible and willing people to serve with us in various capacities. There are also opportunities to serve in the OM offices, requiring a good knowledge of the English language and at least one year of OM experience from another field. Please contact us for details.
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Visit our website: www.omkorea.org (Korean only)
