As Japan-South Korea dispute rages on, can Christians make a difference?

As ties between the neighbours worsen, Christians from both countries are pressing ahead on people-to-people relations with their counterparts

Some say they are trying to foster the personal connections lacked by the likes of Moon Jae-in and Shinzo Abe in a bid to bridge recent and historical enmity

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A man passes in front of a huge wall painting for South Korea’s Catholic martyrs at Solmoe Shrine in Dangjin, 85km southwest of Seoul. Photo: AFP

Published: 9:30am, 11 Sep 2019Updated: 3:45pm, 11 Sep 2019

For Jung Jae-won, the head of Missions TV at the Christian Broadcasting System (CBS) television station in Seoul, being called chinilpa – a derogatory term for Koreans friendly towards Japan – is something she brushes off, especially in recent months as ties between the neighbours worsen.

As part of a project she leads at CBS Japan, a branch of the broadcaster, Jung is still organising trips for South Koreans to visit historical Christian sites in the southwestern port city of Nagasaki – despite calls for Koreans to boycott Japanese products and tours as Tokyo and Seoul remain at loggerheads over historical and territorial disputes.

“We stand by our purpose,” Jung said. “And there are people who agree with us and are willing to go along on the trip when a lot of people are cancelling their trips to Japan.”

The bilateral tiff, which flared up in July on the back of a South Korean court ordering Japanese companies to make reparations to wartime Korean forced labourers, has seen Japan remove South Korea from a list of its preferred trading partners, and Seoul’s termination of an intelligence-sharing pact with Tokyo.

CBS Japan is among the handful of Christian groups and individuals in South Korea pressing ahead on people-to-people relations with their Japanese counterparts, in the hope of closer contact between citizen organisations and people across borders with different upbringings.

The Unesco-listed “Hidden Christian Sites” in Nagasaki show how Christian communities lived in hiding from the 17th to the late 19th century, when the religion was prohibited in Japan. In 1597, military ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi executed 26 Christians in the city as the faith’s followers grew to the point it was perceived as a threat to the established religions of Shinto and Buddhism.

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