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HOS0010.1177/0073275317740268History of SciencePark and Cho

Original Manuscript HOS

History of Science

Science, state, and spirituality:

1­–37
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0073275317740268
https://doi.org/10.1177/0073275317740268
South Korea journals.sagepub.com/home/hos

Hyung Wook Park

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Kyuhoon Cho
Asia Center, Seoul National University, South Korea

Abstract
This paper presents an analysis of the birth and growth of scientific creationism in South
Korea by focusing on the lives of four major contributors. After creationism arrived in
Korea in 1980 through the global campaign of leading American creationists, including
Henry Morris and Duane Gish, it steadily grew in the country, reflecting its historical
and social conditions, and especially its developmental state with its structured mode of
managing science and appropriating religion. We argue that while South Korea’s creationism
started with the state-centered conservative Christianity under the government that also
vigilantly managed scientists, it subsequently constituted some technical experts’ efforts to
move away from the state and its religion and science through their negotiation of a new
identity as Christian intellectuals (chisigin). Our historical study will thus explain why South
Korea became what Ronald Numbers has called “the creationist capital of the world.”

Keywords
Conservative Christianity, developmental state, intellectuals, religion, scientific
creationism, South Korea

Introduction
In 2001, Kim Young-Gil, the Korean metallurgist and founding president of the Korean
Association for Creation Research (KACR, Han’guk ch’angchokwahak’oe), said how
“ironic” it was for his school to be the birthplace of scientific creationism

Corresponding author:
Hyung Wook Park, History Programme, School of Humanities, Nanyang Technological University, 14
Nanyang Drive, HSS 05-14, 637332, Singapore.
Email: park0717@gmail.com
2 History of Science 00(0)

(ch’angjokwahak) in the country.1 As Kim noted, the Korea Advanced Institute of

Science and Technology (KAIST), for which he worked as a professor of materials
engineering, was founded in 1971 as the Korea Advanced Institute of Science (KAIS)
by President Park Chung Hee (1917–1979). Park, the military dictator, supported the
institution as a leverage to “boost economic growth” of his impoverished country
through science and technology. According to Kim, however, “God starts and finishes
His work in a mysterious way that ordinary people may not understand.” “In an era of
scientism,” God urged Christian scientists in a national research establishment to
“oppose evolutionism and promote creationism.” Responding to this divine mandate,
Kim and other KAIST professors, together with several scholars in various schools,
established KACR in 1981, after the American creationist Henry M. Morris (1918–
2006) visited Korea a year earlier. This was the beginning of Korea’s rise as “the crea-
tionist capital of the world, in density if not in influence,” as Ronald Numbers wrote.2
Following its arrival, scientific creationism experienced persistent growth in South
Korea, at least among nonscientists. An increasing number of Korean Christians came to
accept the creationist theory that denied evolution in the name of God’s benevolent crea-
tion of the world in just six days, as written in the Bible. While KACR started with just
117 members in 1981, it boasted 1,125 fee-paying members constituting eight regional
and five overseas branches in 2015 (see Table 1).
Did this growth affect the public perception of evolutionism? A 2009 survey showed
that about thirty-one percent of Koreans rejected evolutionism, because it either had
insufficient evidential support (forty-one percent) or contradicted their religious convic-
tion (thirty-nine percent).3 Although this proportion was smaller than that of the United
States (about forty percent), it seemed higher than most of the European countries’ pro-
portions, except for those of Greece and Turkey.4 Admittedly, it is difficult to measure the
contribution of creationists to this situation in Korea. Among other possible factors, the
underdevelopment of the evolutionary science in Korea must be one, as seen in the
Korean Society for Integrative Biology, which had only thirty-one professional members

  1. Kim Young-Gil, “Looking Back on the Ministry of Creation Science for Twenty Years,” in
Twenty-Year History of the Korean Association for Creation Research (Seoul: KACR, 2001),
pp. 55–76, 56. In this paper, we follow the usual East Asian order in writing names, with
the last name first, followed by given names. We also use the rules of McCune–Reischauer
Romanization. Exceptions are the names of people who are internationally known (including
authors of works in English) and those who consistently used their own spelling and style in
writing their names.
 2. Ronald L. Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 418.
  3. “The Era of God and Darwin,” EBS Docuprime, 9 March 2009; Soo Bin Park, “South Korea
Surrenders to Creationist Demands,” Nature 486 (2012): 14.
  4. In a 2005 survey, thirty-two percent in Greece and fifty-one percent in Turkey denied human
evolution. It is acknowledged and accepted that this survey may not be entirely comparable
to the 2009 Korean survey, due to differences in survey wordings and sampling method.
Stefaan Blancke, Hans Hjermitslev, and Peter Kjærgaard, “Creationism in Europe or
European Creationism?,” in Stefaan Blancke, Hans Hjermitslev, and Peter Kjærgaard (eds.)
Creationism in Europe (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), pp. 1–14, 7.
Park and Cho 3

Table 1. KACR’s membership count, 1981–2015.*

Fee-paying and Members with Total members

permanent members scientific credentialsa
1981 N/A 57 124
1982 N/A 103 322
1998 410 N/A N/A
2000 789 N/A 1512
2004 786 N/A 1970
2015 1115 N/A N/A

*Note: In Ch’angjo, KACR published the number of their members only in 1981, 1982, 1998–2000, and
2004. The number for 2015 came from our interview with an administrative assistant of the association on
14 December 2015.
aThe “members with scientific credentials” were those with a master’s degree or higher in science and tech-

nology. The numbers of these members were published only during the first two years in KACR’s history.
“Memberships,” Ch’angjo 1 (1981): 2; “Announcements,” Ch’angjo 7 (1982): 14.

studying evolution.5 In any event, the public perception of evolution in Korea might help
creationists advance their agenda of ‘balanced treatment’ of both evolution and creation
in education. Indeed, sixty-three percent of all surveyed Koreans stated that evolution
and creation must simultaneously be taught in schools.6
This situation incurred a state of persistent cultural warfare in the country. The
Reverend Kim Joon Gon (1925–2009), who played a crucial role in starting KACR,
argued that its establishment was one of the “three major events in the history of Korean
Christianity” together with the “introduction of the Gospel into the country” and the
“complete translation of the Bible into Korean.”7 However, creationism never became
the mainstream creed among Korean scientists. To many of them, creationism remained
a pseudoscience. For instance, Jang Dayk, an evolutionary biologist, claimed that the
“bad influence” of KACR on the scientific culture was “not small,” because its activity
was no more than an “occult” phenomenon.8 Choe Jae Chun, a Harvard-trained scientist
of animal behavior, was also highly critical about creationism, but regretted that his aca-
demic community was not systematically challenging it. To him, this was due to the fact
that evolution did not attract much attention among Korean life scientists, as most of
them dealt with “physico-chemical” problems rather than “big questions” on life that
could not be addressed without referring to evolution.9 Under these circumstances, the

  5. Inquiry on 16 December 2016. The society has a total of 544 professional members. The
count includes only those with doctoral degrees.
  6. “Era of God” (note 3).
  7. Kim Joon Gon, interview, 29 September 2009. <http://www.kacr.or.kr/library/itemview.asp?
no=3238&type=C&authorname=%C0%AF%C1%BE%C8%A3&category=K02&orderby_1
=subject&page=4> (5 August 2016). Also see Kim Young-Gil, See the Invisible, Change the
World (Maitland, FL: Xulon Press, 2006), p. 43.
  8. Shin Jae-Shik, Kim Yunseong, and Jang Dayk, Religion War (Seoul: Science Books, 2013),
p. 384.
  9. Email from Choe, 9 August 2016.
4 History of Science 00(0)

Korean creationists almost succeeded in removing evolution from school textbooks in

2012, before they were eventually stopped by the Korean Academy of Science and
Technology and a special panel including five scientists of evolution.10
Then, it seems unclear why Kim Young-Gil thought that the establishment of KACR
was “ironic.” Did he mean to imply that KACR was not a scientific organization? Did he
mean that science and religion were polar opposites? Perhaps few creationists will
answer in the affirmative to such questions, because they stress that their claims are
firmly grounded in science. One of the main agendas of scientific creationists in South
Korea, as well as the United States, is that creationism and evolutionism must be treated
equally in academia and science textbooks, because these are comparable scientific
theories.
The meaning of what Kim referred to as an “irony” must be sought in Korea’s histori-
cal context. Indeed, his mention of KAIST and President Park insinuates the cultural and
political landscape in which Korean creationism was born. In an institution representing
a state-controlled scientific growth, Kim and his fellow Christians forged something that
betrayed the will of the dictator. The Korean advocates of scientific creationism did not
follow the behavioral norms imposed by President Park under the slogan of “A Country
Built on Science” (kwahakipkuk). To Park, technical experts had to be faithful subjects
of the nation and contribute all of their time to nation-building through their ground-
breaking research rather than intense religious activities that incurred second thoughts on
contemporary science. Clearly, Kim was doing something that was not highly encour-
aged in the dictator’s country.
This aspect of KACR entails another layer of irony. Strikingly, President Park was
quite favorably disposed toward the Korean Protestant church. Although he was an athe-
ist-turned-Buddhist, he regularly participated in the National Prayer Breakfast (Kukga
choch’an’kidohoe), initiated by Reverend Kim in 1965. He also allowed Christian pas-
tors to proselytize their religion to military officers in the country. Kim’s subsequent
work for KACR after Park’s death thus reveals the complexity of problems surrounding
the nationhood, religion, and science in South Korea. The Korean state, which actively
patronized scientific research and enforced a strict discipline upon practitioners in order
to achieve rapid industrial growth, somehow came to allow for an activity that could pos-
sibly hinder a part of its scientific enterprise. How, then, did the state support for science
in Korea occur in tandem with the support for Christianity? What were the contexts of
their cohabitation? How did this patronage promote the growth of creationism?
We find our answers to these questions in the characteristics of the developmental
state in Korea. Although the notion of the developmental state has complex lineages, it
usually means a centralized state systematically mobilizing its political, social, and cul-
tural resources to secure rapid economic and industrial growth. Historically, this situa-
tion could be found in twentieth-century East Asia, including Japan, Taiwan, and South
Korea, which actively maintained their strong state bureaucracy for controlling, shaping,
and disciplining their industries, technologies, and citizens.11 After Japan initially

10. Soon Bin Park, “Science Wins over Creationism in South Korea,” Nature, 6 September 2012.
11. See Meredith Woo-Cumings, “Introduction,” in Meredith Woo-Cumings (ed.) The
Developmental State (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), pp. 1–31.
Park and Cho 5

constructed its developmental state in response to Western domination, South Korea and
Taiwan – its postcolonial progenies – built their own under American sponsorship during
the Cold War.12 In Korea, President Park’s regime showcased the birth of a developmen-
tal state under a military dictatorship, which was closely associated with chaebŏls – the
family-owned Korean conglomerates. How, then, did Korea manage science and religion
in its efforts to foster its developmental state?
In President Park’s state, science was important. As many historians and sociologists
have documented, science was the foundation of his export-oriented economic and indus-
trial policies. Most of all, Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim have argued that Korea’s
“sociotechnical imaginaries” enabled and fostered the discourse of state-driven moderniza-
tion and industrialization through science and technology.13 Dong-Won Kim and Stuart W.
Leslie have also illustrated the significance of the centralized government and its authori-
tarian ruler in the birth and development of KAIST. During the Cold War, Park Chung Hee
cooperated with the US federal government to construct the major research institute as a
governmental initiative for “winning markets” in the world.14 In other words, Korean sci-
ence under Park’s rule exemplified how a developmental state constructed its research
institutions as political and economic instruments. Even after the dictator’s death, the leg-
acy of his work enjoyed a long life, shaping South Korea’s science policies.
Remarkably, religion, especially Christianity, was not unimportant at this time. In
retrospect, Korea had long associated religion with the matters of the state (kukga), since
the term, religion, was translated into chonggyo in the late nineteenth century. As the
Korean religious studies scholar Jang Suk-Man has shown, the basic unit of Korean reli-
gious belief was largely considered the state or the ethnic nation (minjok) rather than
each individual, at the turn of the twentieth century. Indeed, many Koreans thought that
the rise and fall of kingdoms, ethnic groups, or modern nation-states were deeply engaged
with religions.15 Most prominently, Koreans surmised that the rise of Western countries
in modern times partly stemmed from their religion – Christianity – which Koreans also
needed for their survival in the age of colonialism. After Korea became independent,
Christianity became even more important because it appeared to function as a psycho-
logical shield against North Korea’s communism, which encouraged atheism. During the
Cold War, religion became as important as science in the nation-state.
We argue that while South Korea’s creationism started with the state-centered con-
servative Christianity under the government that also vigilantly managed scientists it

12. On Japan, see Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1982). On Taiwan, see J. Megan Greene, The Origins of the Developmental
State in Taiwan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). On South Korea, see
Jung-en Woo, Race to the Swift (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).
13. Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim, “Containing the Atom: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and
Nuclear Power in the United States and South Korea,” Minerva 47 (2009): 119–46; Sheila
Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim (eds.), Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries
and the Fabrication of Power (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2015).
14. Dong-Won Kim and Stuart W. Leslie, “Winning Markets or Winning Nobel Prizes? KAIST
and the Challenges of Late Industrialization,” Osiris 13 (1998): 154–85.
15. Jang Suk-Man, “A Historical Study of the Concept of ‘Chong Kyo’ in the Modern Korean
Society,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Seoul National University, 1991.
6 History of Science 00(0)

subsequently constituted some technical experts’ efforts to move away from the state and
its religion and science through their negotiation of a new identity as Christian intellectu-
als (chisigin). By accepting and promoting scientific creationism, the scientists and engi-
neers in KACR stepped out of the nationalistic discourses and conventional roles imposed
by the state. In their ‘divine’ science, they found a novel means to cope with their prob-
lems and satisfy their own – rather than the state’s – desire, which enabled them to form
their identities as Christian literati. However, Korean creationists did not refuse all con-
ventions imposed on them in their country and church. Rather, they selectively appropri-
ated certain religious discourses and scientific practices in the state, and invented their
new roles as intellectuals in their Christian communities.
In investigating this development, we have been inspired by historical literature on
creationism. In particular, we are indebted to Ronald Numbers’s masterful study of
the birth and growth of scientific creationism and intelligent design theories in the
American context, along with Edward Larson’s thorough analysis of creationists’
court battles.16 The studies of the relation of creationism to race, education, and pub-
lic representations have also guided our writing.17 As these studies have discussed,
creationism grew in America as a result of a series of threats perceived by Protestant
Christians, including theological liberalism, higher criticism, fascism, communism,
labor unrest, secular education, and the atrocities of the two world wars. However,
most creationists before the 1960s tried to accommodate recent scientific discoveries,
especially facts on geological ages. In contrast, Morris and John Whitcomb – inspired
by the Canadian Seventh-day Adventist George McCready Price (1870–1963) – were
hyperliteralists, whose ‘scientific creationism’ proposed in the 1960s was based on a
strictly literal reading of the Bible, which prompted them to argue that the earth was
young, having less than ten thousand years of history. South Koreans’ incorporation
of creationism reflected this American development, because KACR was organized
partly due to the efforts of Morris and others to globalize their ministry through the
Institute for Creation Research (ICR).18

16. Numbers, The Creationists; Edward J. Larson, Trial and Error: The American Controversy
over Creation and Evolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Summer for the Gods:
The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion (New York:
Basic Books, 2006).
17. Jeffrey Moran, “Reading Race into the Scopes Trial,” Journal of American History 90 (2003):
891–911; Constance Clark, “Evolution for John Doe,” Journal of American History 87 (2001):
1275–303; Jon Roberts, “Conservative Evangelicals and Science Education in American
Colleges and Universities, 1890–1940,” Journal of the Historical Society 3 (2005): 297–329.
See also Amanda Rees, “The Undead Darwin: Iconic Narrative, Scientific Controversy, and
the History of Science,” History of Science 47 (2009): 445–57, 448–51.
18. From America, Koreans also imported intelligent design creationism, when the Korean
Research Association for Intelligent Design was established in 2004. Yet this association
remained marginal among Korean creationists. With its young-earth creationism, KACR
continued to be the mainstream creationist organization, probably reflecting strict literalism
espoused in a majority of the Korean Protestant churches. For the Korean intelligent design
movement, see Kim Sŏngchŏl, “Those Following Noah’s Belief,” in Twenty-Year History,
pp. 308–19.
Park and Cho 7

As Simon Coleman, Stefaan Blancke, and other scholars have shown, however,
the story of the receiving side is equally important.19 Here, we trace how the socio-
cultural position of Christianity and science in the nation-state formed a condition
for the reception and development of creationism during the twentieth century. We
thus account for how some Korean scientists and engineers accepted creationism,
despite, or because of, their government’s longstanding efforts to use its science and
religion for its strategic resources. In uncovering this process, our paper concentrates
on four key people: Kim Joon Gon, Kim Young-Gil, Kim Jung Wk, and Paul Yang
(Yang Seung-Hun). Although this number may not be enough, we think that it is
meaningful to analyze the work of these creationists as representative figures in
KACR. They were the major contributors to Korean creationism, and three among
them (except Reverend Kim) were affiliated with KAIST or KIST. While these insti-
tutions were not the centers of Korean creationism, some of their professors,
researchers, and students – excluding the majority of scholars with no relation to
creationism – played some roles in KACR’s early years before the 1995 founding of
Handong Global University (HGU) with Kin Young-Gil as the first president. Indeed,
Kim Young-Gil wrote that KACR “was founded within….KIST and KAIST” that
“God chose….to do His work.”20 In 1981, for example, ten out of nineteen charter
executives of KACR were affiliated with KAIST or KIST, and the first student
organization, the Research Association of Creation Science, also started in KAIST in
1992.21 Even HGU’s faculty included some KAIST creationists, such as Chang Soon
Heung and Hyun Chang-Kee. Furthermore, KACR’s Creation Science Exhibition
Hall (CSEH) stayed within the KAIST campus from 2002 to 2010.22 To Korean crea-
tionists in these institutions, what Kim called “His work,” could substantially differ
from President Park’s work.
Unraveling the stories of these Korean creationists, we, like Numbers, have tried
to be respectful toward their religious stance.23 However, we hope to make clear that
we do not accept their theories. As a historian of science (Park) and a religious studies
scholar (Cho), we try to keep our own opinions apart from those we analyze.
Nonetheless, we think that their activities and thoughts deserve serious academic
attention, because they are a product of Korea’s arduous journey in the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries. We are grateful for the creationists who, with frankness, shared
their memories with us.

19. Simon Coleman and Leslie Carlin (eds.), The Cultures of Creationism (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2004); Stefaan Blancke, Hans Hjermitslev, and Peter Kjærgaard, “Creationism in Europe”
(note 4). See also Peter Bowler, Reconciling Science and Religion (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2001); Ralph O’Connor, “Young-Earth Creationists in Early Nineteenth-
Century Britain? Towards a Reassessment of ‘Scriptural Geology’,” History of Science 45
(2007): 357–403.
20. Kim Young-Gil, Syntropy Drama: From Entropy to Syntropy (Seoul: Duranno, 2014), p. 82.
21. “Announcement of Executives,” Ch’angjo 1 (1981): 2; “Introduction to KRACS,” Ch’angjo
82 (1992): 8.
22. “CSEH’s Relocation: A New Step,” Ch’angjo 132 (2002): 54–5. In 2010, CSEH moved out
due to the faculty protest.
23. Numbers, The Creationists, pp. 13–4.
8 History of Science 00(0)

Christianity, evolution, and the Koreans’ struggle for

existence
Arriving in Korea in the seventeenth century, Christianity had a troublesome history
before being fully integrated into Korea. Catholicism, which came earlier than
Protestantism to the Korean peninsula, faced a series of brutal persecutions during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries due to its perceived threat to Confucianism, the ruling
philosophy and religion in Chosŏn Korea (1392–1897). Having observed the numerous
Catholic casualties in this period, Protestant churches tried to become adapted to Korean
society when they came to the country in the late nineteenth century. They offered tangi-
ble benefits such as schools and hospitals to Koreans, including those in the nascent
nationalist community. Among these nationalists was Syngman Rhee (1875–1965), the
first South Korean president and a Methodist, who finished his graduate education at
Princeton University with the funding from the church.24 The schools built by Protestant
missionaries also became significant places for young Koreans to pursue nationalism and
learn modern scholarship during the Japanese Colonial Rule (1910–1945). For example,
the Korean nationalist poet Yun Tongju (1917–1945) was a Presbyterian and was educated
at Yonhi College, established by the American missionary Horace Grant Underwood
(1859–1916). Yonhi and other schools built by Western Protestants, such as Ewha and
Soongsil, grew into major private institutions of higher education.
At the time, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution also came to Korea in the form of
social Darwinism, when there were few scientists pursuing Darwinism as a theory for
their research.25 As many historians have shown, most early nationalists, including Yu
Kilchun (1856–1914), Pak Ŭnsik (1859–1925), Yun Ch’iho (1864–1945), Sin Ch’aeho
(1880–1936), and Syngman Rhee, were exposed to social Darwinism in Japan, China,
and the United States.26 Yu, for example, learned it from the American zoologist Edward
Sylvester Morse (1838–1925) during his American stay, as well as the Japanese writer
and educator Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901), who advocated Japan’s rapid moderniza-
tion as a way to empower his motherland in preparation for the Western expansionism.27

24. Ch’oe Chongwŏn, Syngman Rhee’s Reception of Christianity and His Theory for a Christian
State (Seoul: Booklab, 2014), pp. 94–9; Jung Byung Joon, A Study of Syngman Rhee (Seoul:
Yŏksa bip’yŏngsa, 2005), pp. 87–91.
25. Pak Sangyun, “Reception of Darwinism in Korea,” Hankuk kwahaksa hakhoechi 4 (1982):
145–6; Yi Sŏng Kyu, “Reception of Evolutionism in Korea and Japan,” Kwahak kwa kisul,
October 1991.
26. For social Darwinism in Korea from the 1890s to the 1940s, see Andre Schmid, Korea
between Empires (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), p. 183; Rune Svarverud,
“Social Darwinism and China’s Relationship with Korea and Japan in the Late 19th and
Early 20th Century,” International Journal of Korean History 2 (2001): 99–122; Ch’oe
Kiyŏng, “Social Darwinism,” Hankuksa simin kangchua 25 (1999): 23–40; Pak Ch’ansŭng,
“The Characteristics and Influence of Social Darwinism in the Late Chosŏn Dynasty and the
Japanese Colonial Rule,” Yŏksa bip’yŏng 32 (1996): 339–54.
27. Sung Ho Kim and Whi Chang, “Making of a Korean Patriot,” Journal of American Studies
[Miguk’angnonjip] 31 (2005): 95–130; Her Dong-Hyun, “Forms of Acceptance of Social
Darwinism by the Korean Progressives of 1880s – on the Materials of Yu Giljun and Yun
Ch’iho,” Sachong 55 (2002): 169–93, 176–82.
Park and Cho 9

Remarkably, few of them ever read or even knew of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species
(1859). Among the people we mentioned, only Pak briefly discussed Darwin.28 In a
sense, social Darwinism in Korea seemed to stem not so much from Darwin as Herbert
Spencer and others concerned about political economy at the time.29 But this does not
mean that biological Darwinism failed to land on Korea. From the 1900s, Darwin’s the-
ory was also gradually introduced into the country and was occasionally discussed in
magazines and newspapers, although there were still few researchers interested in it.30
To Koreans, Darwinism held ambivalent meanings. It was inspiring, because it
taught them that they should strengthen their country through education, industrializa-
tion, and hard work in order to survive. Yet it was also troubling, because it could
justify Japan’s increasing dominance in East Asia and its eventual colonization of
Korea. While some nationalists, such as Sin, tried to resolve this contradiction by
incorporating different brands of naturalism, including the Russian anarchist Peter
Kropotkin’s theory of “mutual aid,” others, like Yun, ultimately came to comply with
the Japanese rule in colonial Korea.31
Darwinism brought mild anxiety to some Korean Christians, too. In 1926, two articles
were published in Kidok shinbo (Christian Gazette), a Korean-language newspaper man-
aged by the Methodist and Presbyterian Churches in Korea. One of these papers noted a
recent “debate between progressives and conservatives on the interpretation of the
Bible,” which was spurred by “the modern scientific development in evolutionism.”32 It
is unclear whether there was any debate on this matter in Korea. Rather, this article
seemed to discuss the Scopes Trial in 1925, which was known to Koreans through
Chosun ilbo, a major Korean newspaper. The reporter wrote that “John Scopes, a middle
school teacher, was found guilty….in the Tennessee Court for teaching Darwin’s evolu-
tionary theory that humans came from lower animals.”33
However, these reports did not seek to arouse conflicts. The author of the Kidok
shinbo article stressed that modern science did not violate the truth of the Holy Scriptures.
Scientists, including those believing in God, discovered wonders of nature that could not
have been observed had it not been for the omniscient creator. For example, microbes
living in extreme environments, such as hot springs and the South Pole, demonstrated the
existence of a designer that could make organisms tolerate such harsh conditions. The
“gradual evolution from lower to higher organisms” was just another instance showing

28. Pak Ŭnsik, Ch’ŏnkaesomunchŏn and Mongpaekŭmt’aecho (Seoul: Koryŏsŏchŭk, 1989), p.

132. This is a reprint of the original text of 1911.
29. This partly reflects the immense popularity of Spencer in Japan, where many Korean intel-
lectuals studied. See Yi, “Reception of Evolutionism” (note 25). For Korean nationalists’
discussion on Spencer, see Yu Kilchun, Sŏyukyŏnmun (1895), reprinted as Yukilchun chŏnsŏ,
vol. 1 (Seoul: Ilchokak, 1971), p. 352; “Kamhwap’yŏn,” Taehan chakanghoewŏlpo 1 (1906),
pp. 18–26, 20.
30. The earliest article we found is Kang Sŭngok, “Theories on the Formation of Animal Species,”
Kongsuhakpo 2 (1907): 30–1.
31. J. Michael Allen, “Ambivalent Social Darwinism in Korea,” International Journal of Korean
History 2 (2001): 1–24.
32. “Science and Religion,” Kidok shinbo, 11 April 1926.
33. “Debates on Teaching Darwinian Evolution,” Chosun ilbo, 23 July 1925.
10 History of Science 00(0)

evidence of God’s benevolent creation.34 How could such a great transformation of liv-
ing organisms be possible without a supreme architect, who had already established the
path toward the ultimate perfection of all life on the earth? Obviously, God created the
world through evolution.
Korean Christians attempted to find a middle course between religion and evolution.
For example, another article in Kidok shinbo explained the Book of Genesis using the
day–age and gap theories, in line with the dominant views among American antievolu-
tionists during the 1920s: a “day” in Genesis might not literally mean a day but a geologi-
cal age that lasted millions of years. Equally plausible was the possibility of an “empty
and confusing” period after God had created the earth.35 The Lord apparently began to
forge animals and humans only at the end of this long “gap.” A similar perspective is
found in the Reverend Oh Chun Young’s translation of The Bible Confirmed by Science
(1932) by the Canadian creationist William Bell Dawson (1854–1944), who was an
advocate of the day–age theory. To Korean readers, Dawson argued that God created the
world according to scientific laws throughout the long “geological ages.”36
Similarly, Christian nationalists in Korea were not troubled by evolution, even after
they accepted social Darwinism. Most notably, Syngman Rhee understood social
Darwinism as no more than an explanation for the reality of international politics. Weaker
countries, including Korea, could be plundered and looted by stronger countries. Yet this
still did not prompt Rhee to question God’s role in the world, because it was obvious that
Christian countries like Britain and America were much stronger than others pursuing
Buddhism, Islam, or Confucianism.37 Far from contradicting science, Christianity was
then the cause of success in the world of social Darwinism. From this point, Rhee con-
strued that the best bet for Korea was to induce all its citizens to convert to Christianity
as soon as possible. If all Koreans would become Christians, they could secure a mental
and religious foundation for their modernization and industrialization.
Rhee tried to implement this vision, when Korea was released from Japanese Rule in
1945. Because he was elected the first president of South Korea with the backing of the
United States, he determined to build a “Christian state” following his religious and
political conviction.38 Above all, he strengthened his ties with Protestant Christians in the
Southern half of the peninsula by hiring a large number of Christians in his new admin-
istration. The proportion of Protestant Christians in his government was thrity-eight per-
cent among ministers and vice-ministers, and forty-seven percent among ministers, when
less than ten percent of South Koreans were churchgoers.39 He also assisted in launching

34. “Science and Religion” (note 32).

35. “Belief Seen from Science,” Kidok shinbo, 6 January 1926; Numbers, The Creationists, pp.
55–87.
36. William Bell Dawson, The Bible Confirmed by Science, trans. into Korean by Oh Chun
Young (Seoul: Christian Literature Society of Korea, 1936), pp. 37, 115; Numbers, The
Creationists, p. 131.
37. Ch’oe, Syngman Rhee’s Reception of Christianity, pp. 147–9; Jung, Study of Syngman Rhee,
pp. 106–11.
38. For his pro-Christian policies, see Ch’oe, Syngman Rhee’s Reception of Christianity, pp.
221–7.
39. Ch’oe, Syngman Rhee’s Reception of Christianity, p. 225.
Park and Cho 11

Christian mass media, starting with Kukmin ilbo, the first Protestant daily newspaper in
South Korea. Simultaneously, he designated Christmas as a public holiday, and settled
down the formats of various state rituals in the Christian way, while appointing official
chaplains in barracks and prisons.
Indeed, Protestant Christians were highly empowered during this period. Some
Presbyterians’ refusal to pay ritual homage to the Japanese shrines in the 1940s
enhanced their nationalistic reputation after the liberation, as opposed to the Catholics
who had conformed to the colonial master’s demands.40 Korean Protestant organiza-
tions also became the medium connecting Koreans to American evangelical Christians
who were eager to help their indigent fellows through their financial support and
other means. To Rhee, this support was a valuable asset, because he had few resources
under his command except for those supplied by Americans.41 Furthermore, after the
Korean War – which had started with the North’s invasion in 1950 – various Protestant
groups worked for Koreans’ education and cared for people who lost their family
amid the warfare, when Shamanism and Buddhism could do little for the devastated
country’s reconstruction. As one of us (Cho) has argued elsewhere, Protestantism thus
became a “model religion” in South Korea.42 According to Don Baker, Christianity,
especially Protestantism, became the paradigm of chonggyo, whose practices and
rituals were soon imitated by other aspiring religious groups. To be regarded as
chonggyo tanch’e (religious organizations), they had to be similar to Christians by
satisfying a set of conditions under an institutional framework, permitted and author-
ized by the state.43
Protestantism was significant to the state in another sense. In the Cold War, South
Korea occupied a strategic place in East Asia, facing the North as well as two com-
munist giants, the Soviet Union and People’s Republic of China. Under these circum-
stances, Korean Protestant churches became a stronghold of anticommunism, a core
ideology of South Korea as well as its patron, the United States. During Rhee’s
regime, the Christian refugees from the communist North became eye witnesses to the
political oppression under Kim Il Sung, the North Korean dictator. As the Korean
sociologist Kang Inch’ŏl has shown, some of these people became successful South
Korean businessmen constituting as much as twenty-seven percent of South Korean
chaebŏls in the early 1960s, while others spearheaded the Rhee government’s violent
crackdown on communists in the peninsula.44 Although numerous civilian casualties
during this quasi-military campaign – including more than thirty thousand deaths

40. Don Baker, “The Transformation of the Catholic Church in Korea,” Journal of Korean
Religion 4 (2013): 11–42, 17.
41. Gregg Brazinsky, Nation Building in South Korea (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North
Carolina Press, 2007), pp. 13–4, 38–9.
42. Kyuhoon Cho, “Another Christian Right? The Politicization of Korean Protestantism in
Contemporary Global Society,” Social Compass 61 (2014): 310–27, 314–5.
43. Don Baker, “A Slippery, Changing Concept: How Korean New Religions Define Religion,”
Journal of Korean Religion 1 (2010): 57–84, 61–4; Korean Spirituality (Honolulu, HI:
University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008), p. 5; Jang, “Historical Study,” p. 97 (note 15).
44. Kang Inch’ŏl, Protestant Churches and Anticommunism in Korea (Seoul: Chungshim, 2007),
pp. 516, 543.
12 History of Science 00(0)

during the Cheju April Third Incident and other carnages such as the Bodo League
Massacre – tarnished their and Rhee’s reputation, there was little opposition under his
authoritarian regime.45
In this situation, Christianity became important in ordinary South Koreans’ everyday
lives, too. Regular attendance at churches demonstrated that they were not communists,
who tended to be atheists. Their church activities demonstrated that they did not follow
Karl Marx and his condemnation of religion as “the opiate of the masses.” During the
‘red hunt’ after the Korean War, the churches thus guaranteed at least a partial protection
from unwarranted arrest, investigation, or even imprisonment.

New nation with religion and science: Kim Joon Gon,

anticommunism, and the developmental state
Reverend Kim became a staunch anticommunist around this time. Born in 1925 in
Shinan, Chŏlla Province, he migrated to Mudanjiang, Manchuria, where he worked as
an agricultural engineer and attended a local Korean church. In 1944, however, he
returned to his hometown, because he did not want to be conscripted into the Kwantung
Army of Manchukuo, the military force of Japan’s puppet state in Manchuria.46
However, Japan, after its surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and the ensuing conflict with
the allied forces, was desperately searching for young people everywhere in its impe-
rial territory, including Chŏlla Province. Although he initially tried to avoid the draft,
he turned himself in to the army after finding that his father had already been arrested
because of him. But he never wished to die in the battlefield for the empire. He thus
managed to escape to Machang, a northern city bordering the Soviet Union. He lived
there for a year, but saw terrible atrocities, when the Russians crossed the border in
1945. He recollected:

At last, three hundred Soviet soldiers came to the village, headed by a captain. Their job was to
disarm the Japanese Army and spread communism. As I heard from imprisoned soldiers,
however, they were literally beasts. Rape and pillage….they got drunk, and shot and raped
whenever they wanted, like a horde of beasts in a jungle. Deeply terrified, some women took
off their dress by themselves and allowed the Russians to molest them. The Soviets hunted

45. The April Third Incident was the genocide on Cheju Island that took place from 1948 to 1954.
Under the banner of wiping out the leftist guerrillas in the island, the South Korean armed
forces, alongside the refugees from the North, ended up killing more than ten percent of the
island’s civilians by the end of the Korean War. The Bodo League Massacre was a similar
anti-communist genocide that started by Rhee’s order of the execution of members of the
Bodo League, created for converting former communists and possible sympathizers before
the Korean War. With the outbreak of the war, Rhee, fearing a possible insurgency by the
members, ordered a rapid execution that led to a massacre of numerous people, including
those who joined the league due to the government’s food rations without any relation to
communism. See Hun Joon Kim, The Massacres at Mt. Halla (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 2014); Dong Choon Kim, “Forgotten War, Forgotten Massacre – the Korean War
(1950–1953) as Licensed Mass Killings,” Journal of Genocide Research 6 (2004): 523–44.
46. Nils Becker, Fireseeds from Korea to the World (Singapore: Campus Crusade Asia Limited-
Mass Media, 2007), pp. 5–8.
Park and Cho 13

women and stole everything, wearing tens of watches around their wrists and carrying a sack
full of large bread, salted pork, and mackerel.47

Kim and his family eventually left the city and moved to the South. Their journey was
dangerous, full of “rape and death.” However, even in South Korea controlled by the United
States, he could not find peace, because the Korean War soon broke out. During this war, the
island where he stayed came to be ruled by communist partisans for three months. In this
period, he painfully recalled, “my father, wife, and family members were all killed in front of
me, and I myself was also waiting for death.”48 Although, fortunately, he escaped and sur-
vived, he became deeply grief-stricken, and doubted the existence of God. But Jesus miracu-
lously called Kim in “the valley of death.” In a desperate situation, Kim’s belief in God
became ever stronger after hearing His voice. Kim said, “I recalled my Savior – God heard
my crying. As I looked upon my Savior on the cross, I renewed my fellowship with Him.”49
This tale should be read with caution, considering the recent historiography on crimes
and massacres committed by South Koreans and Americans, who might have been even
more ruthless and violent during the Korean War.50 Equally, the Russians may have been
less outrageous than as Kim described.51 Probably, Kim projected his current anticom-
munism to his recollection of the past.
However, Kim’s account graphically illustrates the formation of his inner space: his
motherland was colonized and invaded by foreigners, and it also suffered a tragic civil war
perpetrated by communist traitors, who befriended the beastly Russians. In order not to
experience the same national calamity again, Korea should be reunited and stronger, and
the sole way to achieve this was to pursue anticommunism, nationalism, and Christianity,
all under the sponsorship of the United States representing the ‘Free World’. With this
grand aim in mind, he studied theology at the Presbyterian Seminary in Seoul and was
ordained as a minister in 1951. He then went to America to pursue advanced education at
Fuller Theological Seminary. There he met Bill Bright (1921–2003), who founded the
Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC) at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1951.
According to Bright, Reverend Kim learned that CCC’s “simple, basic message was the
key that God could use to open the hearts of men.”52 Evangelizing young college students
was important, because they were the very people who would rebuild and reunite the
nation. Returning to Korea in 1958, Reverend Kim thus established the Korean Branch of
CCC (KCCC) that became the institutional base of his ministry.

47. Kim Joon Gon, “The Liberation of 15 August and I,” in The C.C.C. and the Movement for the
Evangelization of the Ethnic Nation (Seoul: Shun, 2005), pp. 323–9, 326.
48. Kim Joon Gon, “The Movement for the Complete Evangelization of Korea,” 29 January
1980, in C.C.C. and the Movement, pp. 208–29, 209.
49. Bill Bright, “Heart and Seoul,” in John Woodbridge (ed.) More Than Conquerors (Chicago,
IL: Moody, 1992), pp. 186–90, 188.
50. See Kim, Massacres at Mt. Halla; Kim, “Forgotten War, Forgotten Massacre” (note 45);
Charles Hanley, Sang-Hun Choe, and Martha Mendoza, The Bridge at No Gun Ri: A Hidden
Nightmare from the Korean War (New York: Holt, 2001).
51. See Charles Armstrong, The North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2003), pp. 38–57.
52. Bright, “Heart and Seoul,” p. 188 (note 49).
14 History of Science 00(0)

Reverend Kim and his KCCC were highly successful, partly because the time was
favorable. Indeed, he preached to a large number of young postwar baby-boomers
searching for their spiritual wellbeing during the period of rapid industrial growth.
Starting with Kwangju and Daegu, Kim constructed a nationwide network of KCCC’s
local chapters in the 1960s and the 1970s.53
To his young audience, Kim could account for Korea’s troubles and their possible
solutions from a Christian standpoint. In 1976, for example, he described Koreans’ past
hardship in the Japanese concentration camp during the colonial era, and asserted that
“God gives power to the nation to whom He entrusts His Gospel.”54 For example, he
wrote, “the unification of Rome” was God’s “preparation for disseminating the Gospel.”
Likewise, “the Britons colonized every country of the world,” because “God gave them
a power to spread the Gospel.” Why, then, did Korea fail to become a country like Rome
or Britain? Why was it utterly humiliated by foreigners in the twentieth century? The
answer was obvious: Koreans stayed away from Christianity. The “evangelization of the
ethnic nation” (minjok bokumhwa) was thus urgently necessary in order for Korea to join
the league of the world’s leading powers.55 Every Korean must be Christian to save the
ethnic nation (minjok).56
The nationalist credential that Reverend Kim earned through this activity enabled him
to start the National Prayer Breakfast in 1965. Although prayer meetings were occasion-
ally held by some Christians in the Korean government as early as the late 1940s, it was
Reverend Kim who started a more formal politico-religious event involving the head of
the government.57 Initially, Kim heard about the “Presidential Prayer Breakfast” from Bill
Bright, while studying at Fuller Seminary. Thinking that there should be a Korean coun-
terpart to this event, Kim met several notables, including Kim Jong Pil, the founding chair
of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. According to Reverend Kim, they “whole-
heartedly agreed” with this idea and gave him the list of Christian members of the National
Assembly (NA), which included Kim Young Sam, who would become the fourteenth
president of South Korea.58 Reverend Kim was also able to invite the big shot, President
Park Chung Hee, after recruiting NA members. Surprisingly, Park “gladly accepted”
Kim’s invitation. Although President Park did not come to the first event in 1965 due to
some “unforeseen circumstances,” he attended the second meeting in 1966 along with 250
national elites, including members of NA, Christian ministers, and heads of major
chaebŏls. Thereafter, Park kept attending the annual breakfast event (see Figure 1).

53. “CCC History and Vision.” <http://hisvision.kccc.org/> (8 August 2017).

54. Kim Joon Gon, “Adolescents as the Driving Force of the Evangelization of the Ethnic
Nation,” 19 January 1976, in C.C.C. and the Movement, pp. 129–45, 142.
55. Kim wrote that he first saw the vision of the “evangelization of the ethnic nation” in 1962. See
Kim Joon Gon, “The Vision of the Evangelization of the Ethnic Nation and Prayer,” February
1962, in C.C.C. and the Movement, pp. 496–7.
56. For Koreans’ notion of ethnic nationhood, see Gi-Wook Shin, Ethnic Nationalism in Korea
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006).
57. Kang, Protestant Churches, p. 387.
58. Kim Ch’ŏryŏng, “Reflections on the History and Root of the National Prayer Breakfast,” in
Messages for the National Prayer Breakfast (Seoul: Shun, 2006), pp. 132–42, 133.
Park and Cho 15

Figure 1.  National Prayer Breakfast, 1969. Kim Joon Gon and Park Chung Hee are the third
and the fourth from the left, respectively. Courtesy of the Korea Campus Crusade for Christ.

However, President Park and Reverend Kim had different personal histories. In
particular, Kim had fled from Manchuria, because he did not want to be conscripted
into the Kwantung Army, while Park had been on the other side, serving in the army as
a lieutenant. This part of Park’s past led many Koreans to question his patriotism, but
their voices were utterly silenced under his dictatorial regime.
The rest of Park’s career was also entangled with problems that Christian nationalists
like Reverend Kim would not like. After the Kwantung Army collapsed at the end of the
Second World War, Park returned to Korea as a military officer and joined the left-wing
movement in the South, which resulted in his temporary imprisonment under Rhee’s
anticommunist regime. Although Park was not yet known as a major political figure,
most Christians, including refugees from the North, must have disapproved of his fur-
ther involvement in politics. Yet Park saw a great opportunity when Rhee stepped down
after the Student Revolution in 1960. The ensuing political chaos under Chang Myŏn’s
(1899–1966) incompetent administration prompted Park to stage a military coup in
1961 to become the dictator of South Korea, whose power became stronger after launch-
ing the 1972 Yushin Constitution, which made his regime virtually permanent. During
these periods, some Christians were unhappy to see several Buddhists employed in
Park’s administration.59
However, all these issues did not appear to trouble Kim, probably because his aims
and ideals overlapped with those of Park. As with other anticommunist pastors, for
instance the Reverend Han Kyung-Chik (1902–2000), Reverend Kim eagerly champi-
oned the military government as the agency capable of controlling social chaos and

59. Kang, Protestant Churches, p. 536.

16 History of Science 00(0)

modernizing the country under a charismatic leadership.60 Park’s regime was a means by
which to realize Kim’s dream of national rebuilding and evangelization. Above all, Park,
while hiring some Buddhists in his government, was also highly supportive of Protestant
churches, because of their ardent anticommunist stance. Fearing political attacks on his
leftist past, Park put forth strong anticommunism as the most important national agenda,
which most churches were very supportive of. Park also accepted Kim’s proposal to
preach sermons regularly to military officers over the rank of lieutenant colonel, because
Park agreed with Kim that the evangelization of the military would fortify its “mental
armament” against infiltration of communist thoughts into the barracks.61
Reverend Kim repeatedly expressed his anticommunism through his sermons during the
National Prayer Breakfast that Park attended. In 1969, he said: “People tend to think that poverty
causes communism.” But that was not true, he went on to say, because communism actually
stemmed from “atheism and the materialistic way of thinking.”62 However, this “materialistic way
of thinking” had nothing to do with rich people and their pursuit of money in a capitalist society.
The rich became rich because “God made their wealth.” The poor were poor because they were
“lazy.” One may wonder why almighty God let these poor people be lazy; but Kim, who probably
believed in the Calvinistic Predestination theory, did not provide any clarification.
Reverend Kim also offered a theological justification for his anticommunist state’s
obsession, the export-led economic development. In effect, the promotion of export was
the core part of President Park’s vision of a developmental state. Korea’s economic
growth should be driven by its chaebŏl groups, which, under the patronage and guidance
of the state, would produce and sell a continuing stream of merchandise in international
markets. Considering this vision, Kim said:

Korea, the country of Jesus and the holy people of the East, was blessed by devout prayers
during the Cabinet meetings and other conferences discussing all affairs of the state…. the
belief, honesty, and sincerity of this divine Korea shall guarantee even a screw spike or button
sold in global markets, like a certified cheque.63

This remark partly reflected the reality of the state. A major portion of South Korea’s
business leaders were Christians, constituting thirty-two percent among the Korean
chaebŏls in 1962.64 Forming a core part of the country’s elites – alongside those in the
“Cabinet meetings” of the government – Korean Christians’ activities in the develop-
mental state seemed to realize what Kim declared: “The Bible teaches that God blesses
the body and soul of all conforming people or nations.”
Koreans should conform not only to God, but also to Americans, because God now
gave them a means to govern the world after the fall of the Romans and the Britons. “The

60. On Reverend Han’s career as a leader of the Korean Presbyterian Church and Christian refu-
gees from the North, see Nadine Brozan, “Chronicle,” New York Times, 12 March 1992;
Kang, Protestant Churches, pp. 528–29, 536–7.
61. Kim Joon Gon, “The Movement for the Evangelization of the Military,” 1969, in C.C.C. and
the Movement, pp. 499–500.
62. Kim Joon Gon, “Let’s Bow to God’s Sovereignty,” May 1969, in Messages, pp. 19–29, 22.
63. Kim, “Movement,” p. 213 (note 48).
64. Kang, Protestant Churches, p. 547.
Park and Cho 17

United States of America,” Kim wrote, “is the country that can wield the greatest power
in history.”65 But, he asked, “what is the cause of this power?” He noted that their money
had an answer, because their confession of faith – “In God We Trust” – was printed on
every dollar note. To him, Americans were the power creating the modern civilization
across the world, including Korea. He later asserted that American missionaries in Korea
“built churches, hospitals, welfare institutions, and schools, and brought modernization,
democracy, human rights, freedom, market economy, and the modern era itself.”66
That science was missing in this long list of ‘America’s gift of modernity’ hints at
Reverend Kim’s ambiguous attitude toward it. He stated that “scientific truth, even if it is
based on statistics, cannot explain everything and can never become the ultimate and final
discovery.”67 During the 1970 National Prayer Breakfast, he also claimed that “humans
learned the limitation of science through the Apollo 13 Incident.”68 While the science of the
spacecraft failed, totally, “the prayer of President Nixon and all Americans” eventually
saved the astronauts. However, Kim did not ignore the power of science, because he was
deeply wary of its “stunning speed of growth” and moral implications. He wrote that he
was concerned about the rumor of the “bio-factory” that someone might build in the future.
He also said that “no area on the earth is free from the upheaval and challenge” brought
through the rapid scientific development.69 To him, science was powerful, but was funda-
mentally limited at the same time; and, in any case, prayer was more powerful.
Although there is no evidence that Park openly disagreed with Kim, Park’s view of
science and technology was very different. Unlike Kim, Park was a “true believer in mod-
ern science.”70 While he did not favor all kinds of American influences, he was convinced
that science and technology should be actively promoted, with the patronage of the United
States, for Korea’s modernization and industrialization.71 During the Cold War this con-
viction led him to cooperate with the US federal government, which wanted to stop the
communists’ territorial ambitions. For this purpose, Americans gave substantial financial
backing as well as education to South Koreans, because the country was the Far Eastern
outpost of the capitalist world. Under this arrangement, however, a problem emerged:
many South Korean scientists trained in the United States never returned, probably
because of the poor research facilities and dire funding situation in their country. To Park,
this problem, the so-called “brain drain,” pointed to another reason why the development
of the nation’s scientific infrastructure was necessary.72 By creating an adequate research

65. Kim, “Let’s Bow,” p. 24 (note 62).

66. Kim, interview (note 7).
67. Kim Joon Gon, “The Resurrection and Science,” in CCC (ed.) The Jesus Column: The Third
Movement (Seoul: Kyuchang, 1983), p. 42. This is a collection of newspaper essays Kim
wrote from 1979 to 1981.
68. Kim Joon Gon, “Let’s See God,” in Messages, pp. 30–42, 32.
69. Kim Joon Gon, “Declaration of the Evangelization of the Ethnic Nation,” in C.C.C. and the
Movement, pp. 83–9, 83.
70. Kim and Leslie, “Winning Markets,” p. 157 (note 14).
71. Tae Gyun Park, “The Roles of the United States and Japan in the Development of South
Korea’s Science and Technology during the Cold War,” Korea Journal 52 (2012): 206–31.
72. Moon Manyong, The Formation of a Modern Research Establishment in South Korea: The
Birth and Growth of KIST, 1966–1980 (Seoul: Sŏnin, 2010), pp. 117–58.
18 History of Science 00(0)

environment, Park could facilitate the return of Korean scientists who would become
“industrial fighters” (sanŏpch’ŏnsa) for the ethnic nation.
For this purpose, Park built Korea’s institutional infrastructure of science and tech-
nology. Initially, even before his coup, the International Cooperation Administration
within the US federal government had implemented a “Minnesota Project” to retrain
Seoul National University (SNU) professors in engineering, medicine, and agricul-
ture.73 When this project ended, in 1962, Park, with grants and loans from the federal
government and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), incorpo-
rated the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) in 1966. While KIST, by
cooperating with chaebŏls like Hyundai or Samsung, was becoming a powerhouse for
Koreans’ industrial growth, Park launched another major institution. In 1971, he
founded KAIS as a graduate school in science and technology and appointed a large
number of American-trained scholars as the founding faculty members. After under-
going a series of reorganizations, KAIS became KAIST, a major Korean research
university.74
Under the military dictator’s rule, these institutions represented what Seungsook
Moon has called “militarized modernity.” As Moon has articulated, students at KAIS or
KAIST – most of whom were male – were exempt from the military service under the
“Military Service Special Cases Law,” but had to work in defense industries for three
years after graduation.75 This law resulted from Park and his bureaucrats’ view that there
was a close correlation between scientific modernity and military power. In this environ-
ment, the culture of science education was also militarized, as Dong-Won Kim and Stuart
Leslie have mentioned. A KAIS alumnus recollected:

After the entrance ceremony, we were ‘captured’ by Prof. Park Song Bai and led to the
laboratory: we were not allowed to greet our families or even to take photos. That very night we
were forced to attend a seminar until 11 o’clock where our seniors presented their work, and
Prof. Park gave us homework which was due the day after. When we were finally allowed to
return to the dormitory after midnight, we wondered whether it was easier to go to the army. We
usually went to bed around 2 or 3 a.m., and many students found themselves bleeding from the
nose in the morning. After a year, we found that we really learned a lot….76

This process of disciplining often accompanied scientists’ “apolitical stance.” As Kim

has described, Korean scientists and engineers trained during the military regime
remained apolitical on almost all matters of the state, as far as the government provided

73. For the “Minnesota Project,” see John DiMoia, Reconstructing Bodies: Biomedicine, Health,
and Nation-Building in South Korea since 1945 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
2013), pp. 72–106.
74. Moon Manyong, “Reorganization of Government-Supported Research Institutes in 1980:
Focusing on the Merger of KIST and KAIS,” Hankuk kwahaksa hakhoechi 31 (2009):
505–43.
75. Seungsook Moon, Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 2005), pp. 55–64.
76. Kyŏng Chongmin, “No Youth without Challenge,” in Toward Nobel Prizes (Seoul: Dong-a
ilbo, 1994), pp. 131–45, 137. Translated and quoted in Kim and Leslie, “Winning Markets,”
p. 170 (note 14).
Park and Cho 19

enough resources for their research.77 Of course, this stance did not mean that they were
disengaged from the nation’s politics. They were faithful subjects of the nation and the
key components of the developmental state’s growth engine – unlike scholars in other
academic fields including the humanities, who had different opinions on Korea’s future.78
It is difficult to know what Park, standing at the center of all these matters, would
have thought about Reverend Kim when he hosted the 1980 World Evangelization
Crusade (WEC), inviting several scientific creationists from America. Park might have
perceived that these antievolutionists’ visit posed a threat to the state science he spon-
sored. However, evolutionary biology was not one of the major disciplines of the devel-
opmental state. The Park regime’s support focused on electrical, chemical, metallurgical
and mechanical engineering, together with some basic sciences related to these fields.79
As Sungook Hong has commented, when Park promoted the slogan, “A Country Built on
Science” (kwahakipkuk), he actually meant a country built on technology (kisul), because
science (kwahak) in Park’s era usually meant engineering disciplines.80 In any case, Park
could not do anything about Kim’s event, because he was assassinated by one of Kim’s
men on 26 October 1979.
This incident obviously shocked Reverend Kim, but he saw in Park’s death an occa-
sion for further Christian activity. In the next month, he said that “we saw a national
upheaval when the ethnic nation is still suffering harsh ordeal.”81 Park’s death was a
substantial loss to the nation, but implied that Korean Christians should try harder to
evangelize the country. WEC was a great opportunity in this regard, because ordinary
“elders, deacons, and their wives” in every church could demonstrate their ability to
carry out their Christian mission in front of international participants.
Kim’s invitation of American scientific creationists was a significant part of this event
in 1980. As a fundamentalist skeptic on science, Kim came to know of the problems of
evolutionism in the United States, and occasionally discussed them in his writings. For
instance, one of his essays criticized “science textbooks,” which taught that “every-
thing….was an accident rather than a product of intelligent design.”82 He then asked,
“Who pumps the heart and controls trillions of cells in the human body,” if there was no
God? To him, evolutionism also encouraged sexual corruption, possibly thanks to its
excessive attention to reproduction as a key factor. Because it taught people that “sex is
an instinct,” it furthered sexual debauchery that would encourage “nihilism, insomnia,

77. Dong-Won Kim, “Two Chemists in Two Koreas,” Ambix 52 (2005): 67–84, 79, 84.
78. For the political activities of “scholars in other academic fields,” see Namhee Lee, The
Making of Minjung: Democracy and the Politics of Representation in South Korea (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2007). Also see Myung-Lim Park, “The Chaeya,” in Byung-Kook
Kim and Ezra F. Vogel (eds.) The Park Chung Hee Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2013), pp. 373–400.
79. Kim and Leslie, “Winning Markets,” pp. 161–9 (note 14).
80. Sungook Hong, “The Relationship between Science and Technology in Korea from the 1960s
to the Present Day,” East Asian Science, Technology and Society 6 (2012): 259–65, 263.
81. Kim Joon Gon, “Let’s Save This Ethnic Nation through Contrition and Confession,” in C.C.C.
and the Movement, pp. 175–80, 175.
82. Kim Joon Gon, “Monkey’s Report,” in CCC (ed.) The Jesus Column: Eternal First Love
(Seoul: Kyuchang, 1983), p. 115. This is a collection of newspaper essays Kim wrote from
1979 to 1981.
20 History of Science 00(0)

global madness, and the mood for suicide.”83 Thus, as he attempted to evangelize every
facet of Koreans’ lives during WEC, the problems of evolutionism should be addressed
by experts, especially those invited from the United States.84 At that time the American
creationists welcomed Kim’s invitation, because they were already globalizing their mis-
sion.85 As a result, four scholars, including Morris, Duane Gish, Walter Bradley, and
Charles Thaxton, came and held a meeting – titled, “The Origin of Life: Evolution or
Creation?” – at KCCC’s main conference hall in Seoul, on 13–15 August. A number of
Korean Christian scientists also attended the meeting, where they first saw the advocates
of young-earth creationism that had not yet spread into the country.86
That this conference eventually brought about the establishment of KACR does not
mean that Reverend Kim would subsequently become the leader of antievolutionism in
Korea. Learning scientific creationism from Americans, he certainly thought that evolu-
tionism was a great menace to Koreans’ faith, but it never became a main subject of his
own speeches and writings, in which he continued to deal with his usual topics, such as
faith, morality, politics, and sexuality. Kim played a key role in starting scientific crea-
tionism in Korea, and kept working for it as a member of KACR’s advisory board.
However, the leadership had to be passed on to younger Christians with scientific cre-
dentials, who inherited only a part of Kim’s legacy: Kim Young-Gil, a KAIST professor,
was one of them.

Kim Young-Gil and the making of a Christian intellectual

Kim Young-Gil was born in Andong, Korea, in 1939.87 His family belonged to yangban,
the traditional aristocratic class, ruling Korea based on their landownership as well as
Confucian scholarship. Like his forebears, Kim’s father thus taught Confucian philoso-
phy to his son. However, Young-Gil was more interested in science and technology. After
finishing his high school education, he chose metallurgical engineering as his major
when he entered the College of Engineering at SNU.
As Sungook Hong has shown, SNU’s College of Engineering produced young stu-
dents acquiescing to the state. Unlike the College of Arts and Sciences in downtown
Seoul, the College of Engineering was located in Kongrung-tong, a suburban district far
from the city center. There, engineering students’ lives were considerably different from
those of other SNU students, who enjoyed the vibrant intellectual life of the capital city

83. Kim Joon Gon, “Religion of Evolutionism and Humans,” The Jesus Column (Seoul: Shun,
1999), p. 249.
84. Lee Eunil, interview, 23 December 2015; Kim Joon Gon, “Observing KACR’s Twenty
Years,” in Twenty-Year History, pp. 52–4, 52.
85. Numbers, The Creationists, pp. 399–431.
86. Kim, See the Invisible, pp. 33–4. It is unclear whether Thaxton and Bradley also argued for
young-earth creationism at the time. Most books on creationism published in Korea before
1980 did not endorse young-earth creationism, even though some of them mentioned it. For
some postliberation literature, See Han Haksu, Kidokkyo wa kwahak (Seoul: Yŏngŭmsa,
1973), p. 386; Fritz Ridenour, Who Says God Created?, trans. into Korean by Ch’oe Hanggyu
(Seoul: Saengmyŏng ŭi malssŭmsa, 1973), pp. 187–90.
87. Kim, Syntropy Drama, pp. 39, 80.
Park and Cho 21

that often encouraged political radicalism against the authoritarian government.88 Alumni
of SNU’s College of Engineering were thus similar to later KAIS or KAIST graduates,
since both were expected to be apolitical and compliant. As Hong has mentioned, these
engineers were often called derogatory terms like kongdori (engineering boys), which
could also mean low-paid factory workers.89 Their college itself was dubbed as yushin
kongdae (the Yushin Engineering School), when its students did not join other SNU stu-
dents’ protest against President Park’s Yushin Constitution.
In a sense, both the faculty and students in the College of Engineering were far from
what Koreans conventionally meant by the term chisigin (literati, or intellectuals).90 Korean
engineers were not literati, because they were not considered able, or at least not expected,
to address presumably broader and deeper problems regarding morality, politics, and
human relations, which were the traditional subjects of Confucian philosophy. This may
perhaps not be a uniquely Korean problem, because a similar distinction between the
humanities and the sciences can be found in Britain, as described in C. P. Snow’s The Two
Cultures (1959). But the Korean context was different. According to Yung Sik Kim, mod-
ern Korean engineers were thought to be the heirs of chungin (the “middle people”) in
Chosŏn Korea.91 Just as these middle people dealt with practical matters rather than morals
and politics that only yangban could handle, modern engineers were not supposed to inter-
vene in problems of contemporary literati, mostly educated in the liberal arts.
Indeed, Kim Young-Gil was an exemplary engineering student under Park’s regime.
When he came to America upon finishing his undergraduate education at SNU, he was a
hardworking and dedicated young engineer, willing to contribute to the home country
through his technical expertise without troubling himself with radical politics in down-
town Seoul. As he later recalled, his ultimate aim at the time was to “learn world-class
technology and apply his knowledge to actual problems at the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA), before returning to Korea.”92 In many ways he achieved
this aim, at least partly: after earning his master’s degree at the University of Missouri,
he finished his doctoral training at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in just three years. He
then worked briefly at the Ministry of Defense of the United States, before getting his
dream job at NASA in 1973. The problem was that he did not immediately return to
Korea even after learning enough at NASA, partly due to his religion.
Kim became a Christian during his training as an engineer. Initially, his fiancée urged
him to go to church, because she said that she would not marry a nonbeliever. He had to
comply, because his marriage had already been arranged by his conservative parents; but
he did not really believe in God, even after his honeymoon. He, with his wife, went to a
nearby Korean church, but it was regarded merely as a place for meeting his countrymen
and eating Korean foods. According to his autobiography, he could not understand the

88. Lee, Making of Minjung.

89. Hong, “Relationship between Science and Technology,” p. 260 (note 80).
90. Yung Sik Kim, “Some Reflections on Science and Technology in Contemporary Korean
Society,” Korea Journal 28 (1988): 4–15; “Natural Knowledge in a Traditional Culture,”
Minerva 20 (1982): 83–104.
91. Kim, “Some Reflections” (note 90).
92. Kim Young-Gil, “Riddles of Miracle,” in KACR (ed.) Opening the Spiritual World (Seoul:
Kukmin ilbo, 1991), pp. 11–34, 12.
22 History of Science 00(0)

miracles described in the Bible, because these seemed scientifically impossible. However,
his autobiography also stresses, he later became a very serious Christian, because of two
major factors. First, he came to join a prayer meeting in NASA, where he found a large
number of scientists and engineers praying fervently to God. They obviously knew sci-
ence well, but their scientific education did not appear to hinder their belief. Second, he
came across Hal Lindsey’s The Liberation of Planet Earth (1974) in a local bookstore,
which made him “see the spiritual world opening up before” him.93 Lindsey, an American
evangelical, vividly illustrated the formation of his belief through his own life story. Kim
was highly impressed by this uneducated American who, despite his birth in a Christian
family, became a true Christian only after an accident that led him to end his obsession
with “sex and booze.”94 Lindsey, a “born-again believer,” then explained the nature of
sin, propitiation, and redemption with easily-understood analogies, which persuaded
Kim. In a sense, Kim also became a “born-again believer,” because he truly embraced
Christianity long after he had begun to go to church.
Thereafter, Kim started to change, as his autobiography explains. He understood the
“aim of life and value of his existence” through Christ. In the church, he sang the hymn,
“In the Name of Jesus,” while clapping loudly, full of joy. While praying, he also
“sweated like a pig,” as he “entered an unfathomable spiritual world.”95 But, more
important in his spiritual awakening was his shifting self-identification. In effect, he
deliberately tried to depart from his past. As we have noted, he had been educated in a
Confucian family and earned his bachelor’s degree in engineering at yushin kongdae; but
his Christian belief, he thought, changed his way of identifying himself. For example,
Kim wrote that he had “learned the Confucian drinking etiquette from his father,” but his
acceptance of Christianity prompted him to quit alcoholic beverages by “emptying out
all his wine bottles into a sink,” because the Bible, he believed, forbade drunkenness.
The Confucian father’s teaching became less important to the awakened Christian, even
though the legacy of his past never completely disappeared. He also wrote that he was
somehow “living a cut-and-dried life as an engineer,” in contrast to his emotional and
compassionate wife. After his awakening, however, he and his wife could share their
thoughts within their common belief. According to Kim, they were “truly united by find-
ing Christ between” them. However, what might be more striking than this change was a
stereotype of engineers that he projected on his own life and his declaration of departure
from it. He no longer lived a “cut-and-dried life,” although he was still an engineer.
Kim identified himself as a different kind of engineer. First of all, he did not return to
Korea, even though he had already acquired sufficient engineering knowledge at NASA.
While the brain drain never ceased to be a problem for President Park, Kim chose to sat-
isfy his own “desire of working at a company where he could apply his knowledge” rather
than conforming to the state’s desire of facilitating economic growth after returning to
Korea.96 Curiously, he wrote, his God came to assist him in satisfying his personal desire

93. Kim, Syntropy Drama, p. 51. Also see Paul Seung-Hun Yang, “Creation Science and Caring
for the Creation in Korea,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 50 (1998): 279–83.
94. Hal Lindsey, The Liberation of Planet Earth (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1974), p. 14.
95. Kim, “Riddles of Miracle,” p. 21 (note 92).
96. Ibid., p. 22.
Park and Cho 23

at the right moment. When he was searching for a new job, he happened to meet a vice-
president of the International Nickel Company (INCO) during the vice-president’s visit to
NASA. Kim wrote that the vice-president was impressed not only by his technical
achievement but also his quasi-scientific explanation of the nature of the Trinity. When
the vice-president – who was also a Christian – asked how he could account for the Trinity,
Kim explained, “Water’s molecular structure is H2O, but when it freezes it becomes solid
ice. In [sic] room temperature, it turns into liquid water and when it evaporates, it becomes
a gas or vapor.” Similarly, God had three different manifestations, in the form of the
Trinity. They might look different, but nevertheless belonged to the same deity. Fortunately,
the vice-president was quite happy with this answer and came to like Kim. Kim wrote that
even though he was not entirely sure if this conversation was significant with regard to his
job application it “took place in [his] journey as a Christian.”97 INCO soon hired him as a
researcher, in spite of the requirement of permanent resident status for its employees. The
company even used its lawyers to submit a petition to the federal government; according
to Kim, the petition claimed that “Dr. Kim’s return to Korea due to his visa issue means a
loss to the United States.” Although it is unclear how much loss Americans could suffer
because of his return, it is clear that Kim cared less about the loss to Korea that might be
incurred because of his nonreturn.
Although Kim did eventually return to Korea, this had little to do with concerns for
the nation. After working at INCO for four years, he suffered “homesickness,” and
wanted to save his parents and brothers – who did not yet believe in Jesus Christ. He then
prayed earnestly in the church to ask what God would want him to do. Replying to Kim
by way of the church pastor, God told him: “My beloved son, go….without hesitation. I
have prepared the way for you.”98 In 1978, he therefore returned to Korea as a faculty
member in the materials engineering department at KAIST.
As a KAIST professor, Kim met a number of Christian scientists who would later
become the charter members of KACR. Initially, he joined a Bible study group led by the
Reverend Hah Yong-Jo (1946–2011), which included a number of future creationists,
such as Noh Ch’ŏngku, Song Mansuk, Harriet Kim, and Kim Jung Wk.99 At KAIST, the
metallurgist also found several junior scholars who would soon lead KACR – Suh
Byung-Sun, Kwon Hyuk Sang, Chang Soon Heung, and Paul Yang.100 When Reverend
Kim and KCCC held the first Korean conference on scientific creationism, during the
World Evangelization Crusade (WEC) in 1980, many of these people showed up, and
Kim Young-Gil himself delivered a speech. In the next year, they formally started KACR,
with Kim as the first president.
Kim’s leadership of the fledgling organization furthered the transformation of his self-
identification. He became a Christian intellectual, because he could now talk about broader
issues outside of his narrow specialty. However, he initially hesitated when he was asked to
speak as a Korean representative in the 1980 conference. When an assistant administrator of
KCCC approached him on behalf of Reverend Kim, Kim Young-Gil refused to be a speaker,

  97. Kim, Syntropy Drama, p. 69.

  98. Ibid., p. 73.
  99. Kim, “Riddles of Miracle,” p. 26 (note 92).
100. This was confirmed by our interview with them in December 2015 and May 2016.
24 History of Science 00(0)

because he had no expertise in biology.101 When Kim finally accepted the invitation, as a
result of KCCC’s persistent requests, he was given “ten foreign books on creation and evo-
lution,” which greatly surprised him. He came to believe that these books – written by
American young-earth creationists at ICR – taught him the ‘scientific basis’ of God’s crea-
tion, of which he was unaware.102 During the conference, he accounted for several problems
of evolutionism that these Americans had addressed, including its apparent violation of the
second law of thermodynamics and the incomplete fossil records. He then asserted, “People
say that science is the only hope that can solve numerous problems of humanity, yet there is
a limitation.” Science could not explain the “reason for humans’ existence and moral
problems.”103
Thereafter, with his strong evangelical enthusiasm, Kim discussed extensively these
“moral problems” related to evolutionism and “scientism.” In a short essay, he pointed to the
scientific fallacy of evolutionary biology, and argued that it was morally wrong as well. To
him, evolutionism encouraged “atheism, Nazism, racism, laissez-faire capitalism, imperial-
ism, all sorts of pantheistic philosophies and religions, and pseudosciences.”104 He also
wrote that the Scopes Trial in 1925 allowed for the “domination of evolutionary philosophy”
that fostered “naturalism, humanism, socialism, and animalistic ethics.”105 But, Kim was
neither consistent nor original in putting forth these arguments. If scientism was wrong,
how, then, could creationism rely on science to make it more trustworthy? How could evo-
lutionism simultaneously promote humanism and Nazism, which should be very different?
How were socialism and laissez-faire capitalism compatible with each other? Some people
might even ask if the Bible could also sanction racism.106 In any case, none of these ideas
were his own: although he never cited the sources, his arguments were no different from
what many American creationists had asserted since the early twentieth century.107
However, a more important point was not what Kim achieved but, rather, what Kim
thought about himself. After accepting young-earth creationism, he began identifying
himself as an intellectual (chisigin), qualified to discuss all social, political, and philo-
sophical problems, at least within his church and KACR.108 No matter what problems
might be found in his remarks, they implied that he had became a scholar willing to

101. Kim, Syntropy Drama, pp. 83–4. For an account by the assistant administrator of CCC, see
Shim Young Ki, “How Can We Not Believe in Creation?,” in Twenty-Year History, pp. 179–
85. Shim simultaneously approached several people, but only Kim accepted the invitation.
102. Kim, See the Invisible, p. 35.
103. Kim, “Riddles of Miracle,” p. 28 (note 92).
104. Kim Young-Gil, “Creation Science Column,” Ch’angjo 29 (1986): 16.
105. Kim Young-Gil, “At the Frontier of Creationism,” Ch’angjo 22 (1985): 1–5, 1.
106. Ronald Numbers, “That Social Darwinism Has Had a Profound Influence on Social Thought
and Policy, Especially in the United States of America,” in Ronald L. Numbers and Kostas
Kampourakis (eds.) Newton’s Apple and Other Myths about Science (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2015), pp. 139–46, 143; Susan Trollinger and William Trollinger,
Jr., Righting America at the Creation Museum (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2016), pp. 185–6.
107. Larson, Summer for the Gods, pp. 27, 34–5, 215–7; Numbers, The Creationists, pp. 55–9, 81,
103, 247, 368–70.
108. Kim, “At the Frontier,” p. 5 (note 105).
Park and Cho 25

Figure 2.  “Historical changes of human thoughts.” From Kim Young-Gil, Syntropy Drama: From
Entropy to Syntropy (Seoul: Duranno, 2014), p. 159.

discuss a topic that his fellow engineers in Korea might not like to talk about. He entered
a discursive domain that had traditionally excluded technical experts.
Kim’s shifting self-identification can also be found in his later publications. In his
autobiography, he discussed the “historical changes of human thoughts” by synthesizing
thermodynamics and intellectual history. Accompanying a figure illustrating these
changes (see Figure 2), he reviewed ideas of major European philosophers, including
Francis Bacon, Immanuel Kant, and Friedrich Nietzsche, whom ordinary Korean engi-
neers might not feel confident to discuss.
From a paradise in Genesis, humanity consistently fell into ever deeper moral cor-
ruption with the ascendency of humanism, rationalism, and materialism, just as stead-
ily-increasing entropy furthered the degree of disorder in the universe. More recently,
humanity had conceived socialism and capitalism, which aggravated their difficulties.
After Britain started the Industrial Revolution, class strife became a serious social
problem, and some people promoted socialism as a response, contributing further to
the chaos. On this issue, Kim was not unbiased. Despite his earlier diatribe against
“laissez-faire capitalism,” he appeared to favor capitalism over socialism. While he
refrained from criticizing capitalism – especially that of his own country, whose growth
relied on many underpaid workers’ backbreaking labor for long hours under unhealthy
conditions – he never hesitated to denounce socialism as a menace to human salvation,
especially because it was fostered by evolutionism. He wrote, “Marx’s materialism
was reinforced by the theory of evolution which was introduced by….Darwin.”109
Kim thought that his role was crucial in this situation, as he explained through an image
made up of the Chinese character standing for “engineering” (kong,工) (see Figure 3).
This character stood between the “entropic fall” and “syntropic restoration,” indicat-
ing that engineers like him should alter the course of human history.110 Although

109. Kim, Syntropy Drama, p. 163.

110. Ibid., pp. 207–8.
26 History of Science 00(0)

Figure 3.  “From the entropic fall to syntropic restoration.” From Kim Young-Gil, Syntropy
Drama: From Entropy to Syntropy (Seoul: Duranno, 2014), p. 207.

humanity continued to “fall” after Adam’s disobedience, engineers should stop this fall
and place humans back in God’s “New World.” In this task, engineering somehow
encompassed traditional Confucian virtues that he was familiar with, such as honesty,
integrity, and knowledge, as well as a new economic state captured in the buzzword
“globalization.” It is unclear how engineering could facilitate all these things, but this
image depicted what he had in mind when he discussed what a “Christian leader” should
be like.111 With an academic background in engineering, he became a Christian leader by
fostering a new identity that filled the mental space formed in his childhood in a
Confucian family but left vacant after he became an engineer. Being a creationist and a
Christian intellectual, he fulfilled his Confucian father’s moral expectations, while
remaining an engineer. His new identity made sense of his past and present.
In this way, Kim Young-Gil became similar to Reverend Kim. Both were politically
conservative and tried to offer a general solution to what they perceived as the social evils.
In doing this, however, they cared little about actual mechanisms of social problems,
because they tried to find the cause of all troubles in bad ideologies or mysterious evil
forces. In particular, the two Kims avoided tracing the complexity and dynamics occurring
in the ideological confrontation between capitalism and communism in the twentieth cen-
tury. To them, the confrontation was a consequence of either the inevitable increase of
social entropy or the spread of materialism. The two Kims’ standpoint thus differed signifi-
cantly from that of Korean champions of civil society, who struggled to build participatory
democracy by concentrating on internal problems of industrial capitalism.112

111. Ibid., p. 238.

112. See essays in Charles Armstrong (ed.), Korean Society: Civil Society, Democracy, and the
State (London: Routledge, 2007). Also see Lee, Making of Minjung; David Steinberg, “Civil
Society and Human Rights in Korea,” Korea Journal 37 (1997): 145–65.
Park and Cho 27

Despite this shared view, Kim Young-Gil was not entirely the same as Reverend Kim.
Whereas Reverend Kim tried to reform the ethnic nation, Kim Young-Gil did not worry
much about it. He certainly became politically motivated, as he embraced Christianity
and creationism in full. He came to sympathize with the right-wing politics of conserva-
tive Korean Protestants such as Reverend Kim. However, Kim Young-Gil did not men-
tion any specific political figures or issues in Korea. Discussing socialism and capitalism
in highly schematic terms, Kim’s politics was somewhat abstract without being rooted in
the country’s situation in its modern history. In this regard, his earlier condemnation of
“laissez-faire capitalism” and his later change of mind were very revealing, because most
conservative Christians, such as Reverend Kim, were more consistent on this matter.
Although the political economy of the Korean developmental state was far from “laissez-
faire capitalism,” few church ministers raised concerns about it due to their common
hatred of communism, its perceived enemy. As such, Kim Young-Gil’s political vision
became personal rather than national, because his own political awakening was more
important than the reality of his country.
This dimension of Kim’s self-identification can also be seen in his responses to his
critics. When his work for KACR began to provoke criticism, he drew on his aca-
demic resources to defend himself without referring to its nationalistic relevance.
Indeed, Ha Tubong, an SNU biologist, claimed that “it is a serious illusion to regard
creation as a scientific fact.”113 Similarly, Paek Kwangho criticized Kim by stressing
that evolution was “an objective fact” supported by “numerous pieces of paleonto-
logical evidence.”114 At the time, Kim’s work for the association also prompted ques-
tions about his job as a KAIST professor, because it indicated that he did not devote
his time fully to scientific research for the ethnic nation, something still taken for
granted even after President Park’s death.115 Fortunately, he received a NASA Tech
Briefs Award in 1981 for his contribution to NASA’s efforts to commercialize its
space technology.116 To other KAIST professors, even this modest American award
– which recognized any invention approved for publication in NASA’s official maga-
zine, NASA Tech Briefs, with a small cash prize – was a contribution to the nation’s
glory, because it implied that a Korean’s work had made an international impact.117 To
Kim, however, it had nothing to do with such a nationalistic celebration. According to
him, more important was the fact that “many journalists who had been critical of
me….became supportive friends.”118 Because many newspaper articles praised his
achievement, he felt secure from the critiques of his digression from the role that he
was supposed to play in the ethnic nation.

113. Kang Sin’gu, “Life: Product of Evolution or God’s Creation?,” Kyunghyang shinmun, 17
February 1981.
114. Yi, Kwangyŏng, “The Root of Humanity Is Not Creation,” Hankuk ilbo, 2 November 1982.
115. Kim Yŏngae, “Those Invited to the Ministry of Scientific Creationism,” in Twenty-Year
History, pp. 255–92, 266.
116. “Oxide-Dispersion-Strengthened Superalloy,” NASA Tech Briefs 5 (1980): 320; “About This
NASA Publication,” NASA Tech Briefs 5 (1980): A2.
117. “NASA’s ICB Awards,” Tech Transfer 3 (2010): 12. In 2010, the prize came with US$350 per
inventor.
118. Kim, See the Invisible, p. 44.
28 History of Science 00(0)

Thereafter, Kim’s research continued, producing additional means for protecting himself.
He developed new alloys with interesting properties, which attracted the Korean engineers’
and politicians’ attention as a possible benefit to Korea’s export industry. He thus received
the King Sejong Cultural Award in 1986 and became a “Scientist of the Year” in 1987.119 For
him, however, the real significance of these awards was not to be found in his contribution
to the country, but in its side effect. As a result of the awards, few questioned his scientific
credentials. He thus wrote that his enemies were silenced, because “God placed medals on
my shoulder.” Kim’s god took care of Kim’s own difficulties rather than those of his nation.
In a sense, however, these attacks were not so much a real problem that needed God’s
help as they were events revealing His true intention. In KACR’s Twenty-Year History
(2001), Kim proudly described all the critical comments and KACR’s responses in a section
titled “Nonjaengdŭl” (debates), as if there were actual scientific controversies between two
expert groups advocating equivalent theories.120 He believed that God led him and other
creationists to participate in serious academic debates, which would contribute to letting the
public know about creationism. As such, Kim did not think that he and his colleagues were
scientifically discredited by their critics, just as the public criticism on creationism broadcast
in the United States during the 1960s even furthered its spread.121 Perhaps some evangelical
Christians might have seriously considered creationism, but more important was that Kim
himself reconfirmed his identity as a learned guardian of the faith.
Seen from this angle, Kim’s career and shifting identity was an exemplar of the impact
of creationism. Starting from being an engineering student under Park’s military regime, he
transformed himself into a member of the Christian literati who would supposedly make a
central contribution to saving the world from corruption and debauchery. His efforts were,
seemingly similar to those of natural scientists in Victorian Britain, who – as Frank Turner
has shown – promoted the conflict between religion and science as a means to establish
themselves as new cultural authorities.122 However, while the Victorian British scientists
invoked the conflict as a way to secure their cultural identity as secular intellectuals, Kim
aroused controversy from the side of creationism during his changing self-identification
into a Christian intellectual. Other creationists’ lives were similar, but not entirely the same.

Environmentalism and creationism: Kim Jung Wk as a

Christian civil activist
KACR’s growth is geared to the cooperation of conservative Korean megachurches and
their leading pastors who shared their political and evangelical outlook with Reverend
Kim. Among them, Reverend Hah and his Onnuri Church were highly important, because

119. “Korean Cutting-edge Technology Exported to an Advanced Country,” Kyunghyang shin-

mun, 19 February 1986; Chang Chaeyŏl, “Mysterious Metal That Becomes Stronger at
Cryogenic Temperatures,” Joongang ilbo, 17 August 1986; “Five Recipients of the Sejong
Cultural Award Announced,” Chosun ilbo, 9 October 1986; “Scientist of the Year,” Chosun
ilbo, 20 December 1987.
120. Kim, “Looking Back,” pp 68–9 (note 1).
121. Hee-Joo Park, “The Creation–Evolution Debate,” Public Understanding of Science 10
(2001): 173–86.
122. Frank Turner, Contesting Cultural Authority (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993), pp. 171–200.
Park and Cho 29

they provided both financial and institutional support for creationism. Offering monetary
assistance to KACR, Onnuri Church also hosted a number of KACR’s meetings and
prompted some of its believers to become active leaders, including Jeong Kye-Heon
(fourth president) and Lee Eunil (sixth president).123 Other major churches and their
ministers also welcomed creationism, because they were advocates of literalism.124 In
particular, the cooperation of major Protestant leaders, such as Han Kyung-Chik and
David Yonggi Cho, in KACR’s board of trustees was significant in legitimating creation-
ism in Korean churches.125
However, Korean creationists with scientific backgrounds were not entirely the same
as these pastors. Experiencing identity change at a critical period of their lives, many, if
not most, of these creationists came to live different lives with distinct identities as lite-
rati. During this change, some of them became different from their anticommunist pas-
tors who still supported Korea’s conservative government.
Kim Jung Wk’s career is a pertinent case illustrating this change. During his youth,
he recalled, he was a smart yet conceited boy, because his exam scores were always
outstanding.126 He thus entered SNU with little trouble and studied environmental
engineering in the Graduate School at the University of Texas. In 1977 he successfully
finished all his education and returned to Korea as a researcher at KIST. At the same
time, he became a Christian, after marrying a Christian woman, and joined KACR
through Kim Young-Gil’s ministry in KIST and KAIST. However, Kim Jung Wk recol-
lected that, at the time, he did not change much: he still had a very secular outlook and
was deeply arrogant. He was confident that he just “finished the basics of life, and was
ready to be famous and earn money.” The problem was that the life at KIST, with its
strict staff hierarchy, was never easy to accept for this arrogant young man. According
to him, he failed to curry favor with his boss, although he kept publishing important
papers in major journals. He wrote:

I came to know that my hard work was not properly compensated for. Exploding in anger, I
asked [my boss] why he was ignoring such a capable and sincere man as me. I also made a
petition and tried to find a new job, but all these efforts got nowhere. The harder I tried to do
so, the more severe my pain became.127

123. Kim, Syntropy Drama, p. 114; Lee Eunil, interview, 23 December 2015; Jeong Kye-Heon, 28
May 2016. Most of KACR’s international conferences were held at Onnuri Church, including
the All Asian Creation Conference of 2016. <https://www.allasiancreation.com/1st-aacc-1>
(7 August 2017).
124. Jang Sukman, “Historical Currents and Characteristics of Korean Protestantism after
Liberation,” Korea Journal 44 (2004): 133–56; Timothy Lee, “Beleaguered Success: Korean
Evangelicalism in the Last Decade of the Twentieth Century,” in Robert E. Buswell and
Timothy Lee (eds.) Christianity in Korea (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006),
pp. 330–50.
125. “List of Executives,” Ch’angjo 2 (1981): 3; Kim Kyŏng. “Continuing Acts of the Apostles,”
in Twenty-Year History, pp. 200–26.
126. Kim Jung Wk, “Arrogance and Blind Faith in Science,” in Opening the Spiritual World, pp.
73–80, 73.
127. Ibid., p. 76.
30 History of Science 00(0)

When his boss finally attempted to dismiss Kim, he met the pastor in his church and
made this promise: “if God really exists, He should show up before me, and I will pray
hard for six months.” He also wrote, “Of course, I did not believe in the power of prayer,
so I did everything possible while praying to God.” Miraculously, he wrote, God listened
to this skeptical man, and led him to get a new post at SNU’s Graduate School of
Environmental Studies in 1982. Thereafter, he became not only a true Christian but also
a critic. He now projected his former self onto science as a whole, because he claimed
that science should not be arrogant. As he had done, people tended to worship science
like “an idol” and expect that it would enable…[them]…to cope with all their problems.
But he now thought that science could “not reveal the essence” of important matters. It
could always fail, as his former self, and Darwinism, exemplified.
This awareness transformed him into a Christian environmental activist. In a sense,
this was a reflection of his field; but, he stressed, not all environmental engineers would
become environmental activists. Since few of his SNU colleagues became activists like
him, it was his spiritual awakening rather than his discipline that prompted him to criti-
cize the government’s civil engineering projects that appeared to destroy “the order of
God’s creation.” Denouncing the country’s developmentalism since President Park, he
indeed argued that Koreans “ignored environmental problems owing to their obsession
with economic growth” and blamed environmentalism as “treason.”128 The worst among
all governmental projects was probably the nuclear program initiated by Presidents Rhee
and Park, because it could irreversibly destroy nature created by God. The Saeman’gŭm
Project (1991–2010) also exerted a highly destructive influence on the ecosystem in the
mudflats facing the Yellow Sea. However, this activity prompted the government to label
Kim as a troublesome intellectual. He painfully recalled that his lectures were often
under police surveillance.129 Undaunted, he became a leader of the Christian Alliance for
Environmental Movement (CAEM) in Korea, similar in view to left-wing political activ-
ists – whom most conservative evangelical pastors in the country condemned.
Kim’s activities illustrate a correspondence between environmentalism and young-earth
creationism, which was far stronger in Korea than in the United States. Probably inspired by
Kim, several leaders in KACR stressed the significance of the environment as a product of
God’s creation in six days. Kim Young-Gil, for example, discussed the importance of “the
ecosystem and the creation order,” threatened by humans’ unbridled exploitation.130 CSEH
also had some artwork panels illustrating environmental problems, including the 2007
T’aean Oil Spill Incident, caused by a ship collision on the Yellow Sea. The theory of the
young earth stressed in other parts of the hall showed how closely the concerns on environ-
ment were interlaced with KACR’s main agenda as well as the standpoint of the member
who primarily contributed to establishing this relation. Indeed, Kim Jung Wk rejected geo-
logical uniformitarianism and questioned the validity of radiocarbon dating, while stating
his view that the earth had probably been created between 7,000 and 12,000 years ago.131

128. Kim Jung Wk, “Crying for the Preservation of the Order of Creation,” Kidok shinmun, 17
February 2014.
129. Kim Jung Wk, interview, 19 December 2016.
130. Kim, Syntropy Drama, p. 207.
131. Kim Jung Wk, “When and How Was the Earth Created,” Ch’angjo 40 (1987): 2–7.
Park and Cho 31

However, the promotion of environmentalism using creationism was not very con-
vincing to some. In particular, the Korean theologian Shin Jae-Shik wondered how sci-
entific creationists could ever contribute anything to protecting nature if their God was
so almighty.132 Wasn’t their God able to eliminate all sorts of pollution in less than a
minute, just as He had created the world in just six days? If this miraculous restoration
ever occurred, would all human efforts become irrelevant?
To Kim Jung Wk, however, his self-identification and motivation were more impor-
tant than this theological problem. He identified himself as a chisigin, as his recent book
illustrated: Na nŭn pandaehanda (I Oppose, 2010) revealed his firm determination to
promote his own voice as a learned critic of Korea’s developmental state. Attacking the
controversial project of “Four Major River Restoration” (2008–2012) actively promoted
by President Lee Myung-bak, a conservative politician, Kim claimed that this project
would totally disrupt the natural balance of the rivers’ wildlife. He believed that Lee’s
project was highly sinister, because the rivers were the products of God’s careful design.
Clearly, Kim’s deity designed two important things – the beautiful natural world, and
Kim’s own identity and career as a Christian intellectual. Since both were threatened by
the state, he had to struggle hard.

Creationism and the history of science in Paul Yang’s

career
Paul Yang’s career illustrates a more dramatic change. As a physicist trained at KAIST,
Yang was one of the earliest members of KACR. Together with Kim Young-Gil, Kim
Jung Wk and Song Mansuk, he was the most active lecturer in the association. He deliv-
ered his speeches almost everywhere around the country, including churches, secondary
schools, technical colleges, universities, and even governmental research institutes.133 At
the same time, he, along with other KACR members, co-authored several major books
on creationism, including Chinhwa nŭn kwahakchŏk sasilinka? (Is Evolution a Scientific
Fact?, 1981) and Chayŏnkwahak (Natural Science, 1990). Moreover, he frequently con-
tributed articles to Ch’angjo (Creation), the official journal of KACR.
Significantly, these writings illustrated his view of science and religion based on his
study of the history of science, which began with his acceptance of scientific creationism
in the early 1980s. According to his own recollection, Yang’s interest in the historical
dimensions of science led him to think that “science is not value-free.”134 Initially, he
read Hendrik van Riessen’s The Christian Approach to Science (1960) after defending
his doctoral dissertation at KAIST in December, 1982. The book prompted him to think
that in science there were certain important factors that lay behind observation and
experimentation and that, among these factors, Christianity appeared the most signifi-
cant. He soon read other well-known monographs, including Herbert Butterfield’s The
Origins of Modern Science (1949) and Stephen Finney Mason’s A History of the Sciences
(1962); but perhaps the most impressive book for him was Reijer Hooykaas’s Religion

132. Shin Jae-Shik, interview, 28 December 2015.

133. See, for example, “Current State of Activities,” Ch’angjo 3 (1981): 4.
134. Email from Yang Seung-Hun, 10 August 2016.
32 History of Science 00(0)

and the Rise of Modern Science (1972). Yang absorbed Hooykaas’s argument that
Christianity played a crucial role in the birth of modern science during the Scientific
Revolution. From Hooykaas’s book, Yang learned that the Europeans’ empirical approach
to nature stemmed from their religion, which eventually led them to overcome Aristotelian
rationalism to seek empirical evidence for God’s handiwork in nature.135 To Yang,
Hooykaas explained why modern science was born in Europe despite its persistent per-
secution of “unorthodox” sciences, such as the heliocentric astronomy of Galileo Galilei.
Modern science was a product of European civilization, with its long-standing Christian
values.
However, more important to Yang was the relevance of this past to the contemporary
world. If Christianity was so significant in securing the methodological and epistemo-
logical foundation of modern science in the seventeenth century, then it would be equally
vital for the contemporary sciences. Among them, scientific creationism was the most
successful, because it embraced Christianity fully as its core value.
Yang wrote several papers to propound this idea. He defended young-earth creation-
ism, which, he thought, could be demonstrated through current scientific methods. All
other theories were wrong, including the gap and day–age theories. He stated that the gap
theory was conceived to make the Genesis creation story compatible with the long his-
tory of the cosmos stipulated by contemporary astronomers. However, he claimed, these
astronomers’ estimations of the age of the cosmos were based on a set of questionable
assumptions, which he did not detail. To him, there were also many pieces of evidence
for the young earth, which failed to be accepted in academia due to their conflict with
evolutionism. Similarly, he criticized the day–age theory. Yang asserted that it seemed
correct to interpret a day in the Bible as an actual day, because this interpretation was
“biblically acceptable and scientifically unproblematic.”136 Theistic evolutionism was
similarly wrong, because it could not account for humans’ depravation and expiation,
which were the main themes in the Book of Genesis.
However, this standpoint could give rise to some questions. Was not Yang supposed
to follow experimental protocols rather than the Scriptures in his own laboratory work?
To what extent was his research Christian, and how did this Christian dimension affect
its validity? Not surprisingly, he did not seem to worry much about these enquiries.
Because he was already a devout Christian, his exploration of the Christian foundation
of science in both history and the contemporary world allowed him to harmonize his
activities in the laboratory and in church. Moreover, he later stated, his awareness of the
historical role of Christianity in scientific growth enabled him to approach the problem
in a different way. He said that he could avoid the “idolatry of science” through the his-
tory of science, which was a “story of humans rather than that of cold-blooded
machines.”137 Because he viewed science as a construct of “humans,” its cultural, philo-
sophical, and religious complications became manifest.

135. Yang Seung-Hun, “Christian Faith and the Development of Natural Science,” Ch’angjo 13
(1984): 8–11.
136. Yang Seung-Hun, “Biblical Creationism,” Ch’angjo 16 (1985): 4–9, 5. But he did not show
any details of why this interpretation was right.
137. Email from Yang Seung-Hun, 10 August 2016.
Park and Cho 33

Since Yang found the problems in science as a cultural activity, he recognized the
culture of contemporary Korean churches as another problem, which originated from
their “dualism.” He wrote that the churches’ dualistic standpoint led believers to sepa-
rate their Christian activities from their quotidian lives. Consequently, they tended to
focus on the one while neglecting the other. A typical example of this separation was
found among those who virtually “abandoned their Christian viewpoint and became
nominal believers,” because they faced severe competition and complicated human
relations in their workplaces. In contrast, many churches were interested only in
“increasing the number of believers, purchasing church buses, and extending their
buildings” rather than a well-rounded education of all believers and a broader under-
standing of God’s world.138 In this situation, some Christian students were excessively
engrossed in their missionary work, even though they were failing in their schools.
Furthermore, most churches “defined their mission so narrowly that they emphasized
only individuals’ redemption of their souls, but did not have a proper understanding of
humanity and society” as a whole.
According to this argument, Yang identified himself as a radical commentator on
Korean Protestant churches. He recognized the multiple problems of major mega-
churches and wanted to do something as a Christian critic. For him, many, if not most,
Korean Protestant churches were obsessed with external growth and failed to lead their
believers to adopt a wider and more detailed outlook on the role of Christianity in broader
social contexts.
Overall, however, Yang remained conservative, as he articulated in his paper, The
Illegitimate Children of Evolutionism. In the paper he denounced a number of politi-
cians and political theorists, whom he thought were heavily influenced by evolutionary
ideas, including those of Adolf Hitler, Karl Marx, and Vladimir Lenin.139 The target of
his criticism did not exclude less radical thinkers and literary figures such as Sidney
and Beatrice Webb, John Maynard Keynes, and George Bernard Shaw. Associated
with social Darwinism, these people – Yang claimed – were all materialists champion-
ing the view that power and competition were the fundamental principles of organizing
society. They extended the rationale of Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection to
society in its entirety by assuming that the struggle for existence was the only valid
force in nature. Yang asserted that Korean Christians should stay away from their anti-
biblical ideologies.
This remark reveals that Yang did a job that only nationalists – rather than any-
body in the nascent scientific community – did in the formative phase of the Korean
nation; namely, a critical engagement with social Darwinism. Admittedly, Yang did
not have an accurate historical understanding of social Darwinism, the nature, impact
and even reality of which have been controversial.140 Moreover, Yang, like Kim
Young-Gil, was not very original, since he merely reiterated American creationists’

138. Yang Seung-Hun, “Scholarship and Faith,” Ch’angjo 14 (1984): 4–11, 6.

139. Yang Seung-Hun, “The Illegitimate Children of Evolutionism,” Ch’angjo 21 (1985): 1–5, 3.
140. Numbers, “That Social Darwinism” (note 106); Paul Weindling, “Genetics, Eugenics, and the
Holocaust,” in Denis Alexander and Ronald Numbers (eds.) Biology and Ideology (Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press, 2010), pp. 192–214; Mark Francis, Herbert Spencer and the
Invention of Modern Life (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007).
34 History of Science 00(0)

longstanding critiques on social Darwinism. However, he proposed an idea on a

topic that had concerned nationalists many years earlier, but which declined as a
discursive subject after Korea regained its sovereignty.141 Notably, he placed social
Darwinism in a different context. While the nationalists had grappled with social
Darwinism with a deep concern for their nation, Yang flatly rejected it due to its
moral implications. Furthermore, he totally ignored the nationalistic meanings in
Koreans’ social Darwinism. The reason why social Darwinism was bad should
be found not in its relation to the ethnic nation, but in its influence on each
churchgoer.
With all these ideas, Yang became much more than what he was supposed to be
through his training at KAIST. Rather than a technocrat, he became a conservative
intellectual, qualified to comment on a broad array of topics, including history, phi-
losophy, church activities, and science education. In particular, he taught scientific
creationism in the College of Humanities at Kyungpook National University, which
had initially hired him as a physics professor.142 He also introduced a history of science
course at the same university, with his strong belief that a historical perspective would
be useful for broadening students’ understanding of science. With this belief, he later
edited and published Kwahaksa wa kwahakkyoyuk (History of Science and Science
Education, 1996), which compiled several Korean experts’ works on the value of his-
torical lessons in scientific training.
However, the most important turning point in Yang’s career was his establishment of
the Vancouver Institute for Evangelical Worldview (VIEW) in Canada. Initially, he
wanted to broaden his activity beyond the discipline of physics, and tried to create a
graduate school for a new kind of Christian education in Korea. But, he found that most
Korean Christian universities were too conservative to consider his plan, and so he
approached other schools outside of the country, including the Trinity Western University
in Canada, which agreed to cooperate with him in establishing VIEW. Leaving
Kyungpook National University in 1997, he therefore abandoned his work in physics
altogether to become VIEW’s first president and professor in charge of various courses,
including creationism, history of science, and the “foundation of evangelical world-
view.” Interestingly, most of his students at this school were Koreans, although the
school awarded Canadian university degrees.
However, Yang’s transforming identity ultimately led him to modify his original
creationist creed. For this change of mind, his work in the history of science again
played a vital role. Indeed, he kept studying the history of science, while continuing
his activities for KACR. He met a number of Korean historians and even became a
regular member of the Korean History of Science Society. But he realized that he
needed to learn more through a more formal education, preferably in the United
States. This was the reason why he went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison in
1990, where he earned his Master’s degree under the tutelage of Ronald Numbers.
According to Yang, he and Numbers had different views of creationism, but he suc-
cessfully finished his thesis – which dealt with American creationists’ debate on

141. Ch’oe, “Social Darwinism,” pp. 39–40 (note 26).

142. “Open Lecture on Creation Science,” Ch’angjo 20 (1985): 15.
Park and Cho 35

radiocarbon dating during the 1950s – possibly because he then studied history, not
science.143 Nevertheless, this history did have an effect on his science: although he
initially “chose the topic on radiocarbon dating to demonstrate that it was nonsense,”
his close reading of the relevant literature prompted him to realize that he did not
know enough.144 Henceforth, he decided, he would scrutinize scientific evidence by
himself, especially after establishing his new school in Vancouver; but all his efforts
showed that his previous belief could not be substantiated. After a long and painful
deliberation, he thus determined to give up Henry Morris’s theory based on his flood
geology, which remained orthodox in KACR.
Yang proposed a new theory by appropriating the French naturalist George Cuvier’s
(1769–1832) old idea, which he called the “Theory of Multiple Catastrophe.” By inter-
preting Cuvier’s theory in biblical terms, Yang claimed that continued catastrophes were
the means that God employed in His creation: He created new species after each instance
of repetitive destructions, among which the Genesis Flood was the most recent.
Postulating the earth’s long history as well as many catastrophes, this theory, Yang
asserted, had an advantage of explaining the data from the radiocarbon dating as well as
the records of the Bible.145
Yang’s theory did not please other KACR members. He discussed it in front of scien-
tific creationists as well as lay Christians, but it led them to suspect that another serious
heresy had arisen within the association. While tolerating Yang’s argument for a while,
KACR decided to reconfirm its members’ allegiance to young-earth creationism by cir-
culating a “form of declaration” among them.146 Probably based on the result of this
declaration, KACR notified him that he would be discharged unless he agreed to imme-
diately retract his theory. According to Yang, KACR wrote to inform him that he exerted
a “very negative influence on KACR and substantially damaged their honor.”147 However,
he said that his theory, like other scientific theories, should be subjected to rigorous test-
ing. If anybody could find that it failed to account for empirical evidence, he would dis-
card it at any time. Unfortunately, KACR did not want to do anything about it. In
September 2008, Yang left KACR, which had occupied “a crucial part of [his] life” for
thirty years, from his twenties to his fifties.
This episode reveals an irony. In the early 1980s, Yang embraced scientific creationism
and the history of science almost simultaneously. Thereafter, his historical study of sci-
ence bolstered his belief in creationism and assisted in his transformation into a

143. Yang’s thesis was published in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, an official journal
of the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) supporting theistic evolutionism that he did not
accept. See Yang Seung-Hun, “Radiocarbon Dating and American Evangelical Christians,”
Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 45 (1993): 229–40. ASA’s turn to theistic evolu-
tionism had its origin in the 1940s. See, Numbers, The Creationists, pp. 194–204.
144. Yang Seung-Hun, “Four Reasons Why I Left Creation Science,” NewsM, 21 December 2014.
145. Yang Seung-Hun, “Reconsidering the Multiple Catastrophism,” T’onghap yŏnku17 (2004):
24–80.
146. Pak Chiho, “Focus on Research Rather Than Public Campaign,” NewsM, 6 October 2008;
Kim Jung Wk, interview, 19 December 2016.
147. Yang Seung-Hun, “Leaving the Korean Association for Creation Research,” Christian Today,
13 September 2008.
36 History of Science 00(0)

conservative Christian intellectual. However, his historical perspective also led to his ulti-
mate rejection of the orthodox theory of KACR, which henceforth had to dismiss him.

Conclusion
How can we explain the rise of creationism in Korea? Korea appears to have firmly
established its scientific institutions, but it has simultaneously come to have a sizeable
group of scientific creationists who deny one of the core theories of contemporary sci-
ence. This may seem curious, because Korea has never been a Christian country.
However, evangelical Protestantism was highly important in Korea’s nation-building
from the late nineteenth century, and the roles of Protestantism in the country can account
for why creationism, with its origin in American evangelicalism, proliferated. Indeed,
creationism started when four American creationists were invited to visit the country in
1980 by Reverend Kim, a conservative evangelical pastor and fervent nationalist.
Thereafter, creationism steadily grew in Korea with the support of its Protestant churches.
However, this paper uncovers another facet of this phenomenon. While creationism
initially came to Korea through Reverend Kim, KACR’s scientists and engineers there-
after became its leading figures. Unlike Reverend Kim, the creationists with scientific
backgrounds distanced themselves from the state. Creationism guided them, when their
desire did not match that of the state, which managed both religion and science in the
country. To KACR members, creationism should be “scientific,” because it could then
entitle them to contribute to their Christian communities as technical experts.
Simultaneously, creationism prompted them to cope with their limitations as technical
experts and with forging their new identities. In a sense, these creationists were not anti-
intellectual, as some critics argued.148 Despite all their attempts at denying the conven-
tional rules in contemporary scientific communities, they became intellectuals, at least
from their own perspective and within their own Christian organizations and institutions,
such as KACR, VIEW, CAEM, and Onnuri Church.
Of course, the creationists were all different. Although all the early regular members
of KACR had to have a “master’s degree or higher” in science and technology, they dif-
fered from one another because of their distinct education, career, and social experi-
ences.149 Among the people we have reviewed, Kim Jung Wk’s liberal civil activism was
poles apart from Kim Young-Gil’s conservative evangelicalism. Yang’s interest in the
history of science led him to develop his own creation theory, rejected by other KACR
members. The few women in KACR – whom we will deal with in another paper – also
had different experiences. On the one hand, they remained minorities in the conservative
Christian organization; and, on the other, they successfully negotiated their roles in
KACR, which happened to make leeway for some women to become active leaders.150

148. The historical precedent can be found in the American journalist H. L. Mencken, who viewed
the Scopes Trial as a development of the evangelical Americans’ anti-intellectualism. See
Larson, Summer for the Gods. Numbers also says that creationism did not belong to an “anti-
intellectual” tradition. See Numbers, The Creationists, p. 369.
149. Kim, “Looking Back,” p. 59 (note 1). Around the mid-1990s, KACR abolished this requirement.
150. Harriet Kim’s role was quite notable. See, for example, Kim, “Those Invited,” pp. 255–92,
262–65 (note 115); Kim, “Looking Back,” p. 61 (note 1).
Park and Cho 37

However, we would argue that there were certain experiences shared by at least some
major members in KACR. They forged their new roles and identities in a developmental
state, whose structures and imperatives never discontinued despite a substantial modifi-
cation after 1980.151 They also became at least partially different from leaders in many
conservative Korean Protestant churches, which supported the state’s conservative poli-
tics.152 We thus believe that their stories can partly explain why it has been so difficult to
dismantle creationism in Korea. In spite of many scholars’ continuing attacks on its logi-
cal fallacy and narrow religious purview, creationism has not only survived but also
flourished in the country, because it gave its believers what their state did not offer.

Acknowledgments
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Ronald Numbers and Hee-Joo Park, as well as
two anonymous referees, for their helpful comments and constructive criticism.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.

Author Biographies
Hyung Wook Park is an assistant professor of history at Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore.
Kyuhoon Cho is a research fellow of the Asia Center at Seoul National University, South Korea.

151. Joseph Wong, “The Adaptive Developmental State in East Asia,” Journal of East Asian
Studies 4 (2004): 345–62. Those who argue for the decline of the developmental state do
not say that it came to an end. See Yun Tae Kim, “Neoliberalism and the Decline of the
Developmental State,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 29 (1999): 441–61.
152. Many Korean Protestant churches became even more conservative and politicized in the
early twenty-first century, although there were a number of progressive churches. See Kang,
Protestant Churches, pp. 26–32; Cho, “Another Christian Right” (note 42). Timothy Lee
stated that “within Korean Protestantism itself there exists two main subgroups – Evangelicals
and….non-Evangelicals – and that between them, Evangelicals predominate by a margin
even larger than that between Protestants and Catholics.” See Lee, “Beleaguered Success,” p.
330 (note 124).