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Abstract

This paper aims to demonstrate urban religious aspirations that articulate Protestant
churches’ socio-political location in the Seoul landscape through analyses of some
prominent Korean church founders’ conversion narratives. By historicizing and contextualizing
religious accounts that have mobilized a series of massive conversions in
post-war South Korea, I want to shed light on a nucleus of Korean Christian practices
that arise out of the aspirations that inspire a war-scarred people in search of a
better life in this world and the next. My preliminary comparative analyses of some
Korean church founders’ religious accounts reveal that suffering, whether personal
or national, appears as central in the narrativization of their conversion experiences
and serves to further the church traditions they founded. With comparative analyses
of two religious leaders’ contributions to Christianity, this article discusses the
extent to which past suffering serves to foster a religious aspiration that is reified
with the increasing number of mega-churches in Seoul’s metropolitan landscape, and,
through missions, on the world map.