"I've never seen a more pious nation (than Korean) before." Recently Gao Xiaosong, a well-known celebrity in China, shares his impression and review about his travelling to South Korea in an online talk show "Xiaosong Pedia" last Friday.
Gao, a top Chinese intellectual, composer, songwriter, music producer and director, says that Korean people are so pious meanwhile they love beauty so much.
He says he had heard the piety of Korean Christians before visiting the country. He was shocked at the news of 23 South Korean missionaries captured and held hostage by Taliban in 2007. For this even revealed their high devoutness for the Lord. In Gao's eyes, it should be devoted and bold enough to evangelize in Afghanistan, such a dangerous country where rare western missionaries stay, given its Islamic religion and the background that Christians who preach there caught are identified as pagans, even combined with the fate of facing being beheaded.
You can imagine how zealous Christians are in South Korea.
Moreover, he found that local Korean churches are the most enthusiastic and pious ones when living in Los Angeles.Yet these are indirect sayings or impression, this time he felt truly astounded on this land.
First of all he mentioned women were dancing at Seoul squares on a cold day, who were thought as middle-aged and retired square dancing women. But he came to know that they were Christians who sang songs with zeal on the stage and off the stage Christians provided social service including hair cutting and distributed food to the poor, disabled and lonely elderly people.
He found that almost the poor filled the seat, identified due to the smell, however, Christians served them with enthusiasm despite this. This moved Gao very much.
Besides, numerous Christians "sing for Christ" in the streets. Gao confesses that he has never seen such a pious place where he feels "the love for the Lord" in the far east country.
Then he explains several reasons why such love for the Lord is found in Korea.
From one aspect, Christianity gave much comfort to the Korean people, an "Asia orphan" and Christian charitable organizations gave them a lot of relief and care.
Meanwhile the religion played an important role in the Korean War and their culture preservation. Furthermore, churched cultivated many revolutionary martyrs who sacrificed to break away from Japan's colonizing in its modern history.
"They devoted themselves to their country and people, therefore, Christianity developed well in South Korea.Many people involving the subsequent president Syngman Rhee were Christians." Said Gao.
It surprised him most that it had reached 100,000 to 20,000 Christians in Korea only after over a decade since the missionaries came to Korea in 1884, much later compared to that of China and Japan. What's more, it began sending missionaries out in 1912, while other countries have Christian traditions of thousands of years. "This is so interesting", he said.
