Living with the Enemies: Japanese Imperialism, Protestant Christianity, and Marxist Socialism in Colonial Korea, 1919–1945

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During the Korean War, conflicts between right-wing Protestants and radical socialists escalated and erupted into massacres, killing thousands of Korean civilians. Such extreme violence and tumultuous events afterwards—including Korea’s division into two separate states and the Cold War system—eclipsed the imbricated interactions between Protestant Christianity and socialism under Japanese colonial rule. While focusing on Korean Protestantism and socialism to probe their contest and compromise for survival, this article traces the tripartite relationship among the followers of Protestant Christianity, Marxist socialism, and Japanese imperialism as it evolved throughout colonial Korea between 1910 and 1945. These 35 years comprised a period of multiple possibilities for interaction among Korean Protestants, socialists, and Japanese authorities in the changing global environment. The international organizations with which they were associated influenced Korean Protestants and Marxist socialists while facing the common crisis of Japan’s assimilation. Namely, the Korean Protestant churches affiliated with Western missionaries’ denomination headquarters in their home countries and world Christian conferences, while the Korean socialists allied with Moscow’s Comintern and other radical political movements abroad. Within this broader context, these two religious and ideological forces competed for supremacy, cooperated in a joint struggle against the colonial regime, and antagonized each other over their divergent worldviews. By examining their complicated tripartite relationship, this essay comprehensively depicts the dynamic history of the Western-derived religious and political doctrines meeting a non-Western empire in a foreign land.