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1. Blaming the victim: South Korea's anti-missionary backlash
Bae Hyung-kyu, associate pastor and co-founder of suburban Seoul's Saemmul Presbyterian Church, was found shot to death with 10 bullet wounds in his head, chest, and stomach, reports the Associated Press. His killers say they belong to the Taliban in Afghanistan, where Bae had led a group of 23 church volunteers (18 of them women) on a medical aid trip. The group was abducted last week while traveling in Ghazni by minibus. An unnamed police official says Bae, who suffered from lung disease, was killed because he had become too sick to walk. It was his birthday.

Bae's death has escalated outrage in South Korea and around the world. But the outrage seems directed at least as much against South Korean Christian aid workers and missionaries as against the Taliban.

"Religious groups should realize once and for all that dangerous missionary and volunteer activities in Islamic countries including Afghanistan not only harm Korea's national objectives, but also put other Koreans under a tremendous amount of duress," the large-circulation Chosun Ilbo newspaper said in an editorial Monday, before Bae's death.

It reiterated its view in a Tuesday editorial: "Volunteer work is good. But in a multicultural and multi-religious age and especially in a place like Afghanistan, where there is a sharp hatred of Christianity, a deeper understanding of indigenous conditions must precede the dispatch of volunteer workers."

The Korea Times agrees. "Religious organizations are asked to refrain from engaging in excessive missionary activities in risky areas, which will cause anxiety for the people and the government as well," said an editorial Sunday.

"Some of the abductees' own online postings have sparked anger here [in South Korea]," Chosun Ilbo reported in a news piece. "One of them posted a weblog entry about singing Christian hymns in an Afghan mosque. The group also posted a photo of themselves posing next to a South Korean government sign banning travel to Afghanistan."

Christians who aren't angry are concerned. "At this point, we should reflect on where we are and reconsider where we are heading to in our missionary work," Park Jong-soon, head pastor of Choongshin Church in Seoul and former president of the Christian Council of Korea, told Yonhap News Service. "Korean missionaries have strong emotional fervor but they are weak in strategy. Missionary work is about humbling ourselves, listening to what locals say, what other missionaries there say. … We cannot be combative delivering God's words."

The debate isn't just occurring in Korea and Afghanistan. Chris Cork wrote to The Times of London from Bahawalpur, Pakistan, that he has "not a shred of sympathy" for the Koreans. "Having lived and worked in Afghanistan and Pakistan for many years and seen the trouble that proselytizing [Christians] get themselves into fairly regularly — I have lost all sympathy for them," he wrote. "They consume vast amounts of resources when they are being extricated and queer the pitch in ways they simply do not understand for others in the aid community. Insecurity increases for all of us as a result of the activities of these God-driven lunatics. We have enough God-driven lunacy here — we don't need any more of it than we have already."

As Rob Moll noted in Christianity Today's March 2006 cover story, South Korea sends more missionaries abroad than any country but the United States.

2. After Lina Joy case, Malaysia's top court rules Islamic law
Malaysia's Federal Court ruled that disputes between Muslim and non-Muslims should be handled in civil courts, not Islamic Shari'ah courts, even in religious and family matters, New Straits Times reported today. Non-Muslims, Judge Datuk Abdul Hamid Mohamad explained, "can't be present to defend themselves in the Shari'ah courts."

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July (Web-only) 2007, Vol. 51