Ham Sok-hon

Life

Ham was born in 1901 into a Christian family in Yongcheon, North Pyongan Province. In 1919, while a student at Pyongyang Higher Common School, he took part in the March First Movement and afterward left the school. In 1921 he transferred to the Osan School in Jeongju, where he studied under Ryu Young-mo and others. From 1924 to 1928 he studied at Tokyo Higher Normal School, where he was deeply influenced by the Bible studies of the Japanese Christian thinker Uchimura Kanzō. In 1927 he joined Kim Kyo-shin and others in founding Seongseo Joseon, a coterie magazine (a journal published jointly by like-minded contributors).

After returning to Korea, he taught at the Osan School from 1928 to 1938. In 1940 he was imprisoned for about a year in connection with the Gyeu-hoe Incident. In 1942 he was again held for a year as a pretrial detainee in Seodaemun Prison during the Seongseo Joseon Incident, which arose over Kim Kyo-shin's essay "Jowa" (Lament for the Frogs). After liberation, he was imprisoned by the North Korean authorities on charges of having orchestrated an anti-communist demonstration by students in Sinuiju, and he is reported to have moved to the South in 1947.

Beginning in 1956, he wrote political and social commentary for the magazine Sasanggye (World of Thought). In 1958 he was detained over his essay "Only a Thinking People Will Survive," which criticized the Liberal Party government, but he was not indicted. Under the military governments, he took part in the movements against the constitutional amendment permitting a third presidential term and against the Yushin system, and he was imprisoned several times. He died at Seoul National University Hospital on February 4, 1989. In 2002 he was posthumously awarded the National Foundation Medal (Geonguk Pojang), and his remains were reinterred at Daejeon National Cemetery.

Ministry and Achievements

• Historical writing: From 1934 to 1935 he serialized "Korean History from a Biblical Perspective" in Seongseo Joseon. The work was later revised to tone down its particular denominational coloring and retitled Korean History in Light of Its Meaning.
• Ssial-ui Sori: In April 1970 he founded the monthly Ssial-ui Sori. Ssial (literally "seed") was his term for ordinary people, the minjung, and expressed his conviction that the true agents of history are not the powerful but the ssial. Because of government repression, the magazine was repeatedly shut down and revived.
• Nonviolent peace thought: Drawing on the Bible as well as Eastern and Western classics, he articulated ssial thought, which championed nonviolence, democracy, and peace. For this reason he was sometimes called "the Gandhi of Korea."

Influence on the Korean Church

Ham was not an ordained minister, nor did he serve as a pastor in any denomination. He worked outside the institutional church, through Bible lectures and writing. Beginning around the 1960s he attended Quaker meetings and became one of the few Quakers in Korea. He criticized the Korean church, arguing that it should move beyond "magical" faith and take the lead in promoting social morality and justice, and that church members should become moral and rational believers. His faith-based resistance to dictatorship is frequently cited in discussions of the church and the democratization movement.

Assessment

Ham is highly regarded as a thinker devoted to the independence and democratization movements, and he is reported to have been nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize.

He has also been the subject of controversy. He regarded Quaker silent worship, Buddhist Zen meditation, and the contemplation emphasized by Laozi as essentially similar religious practices. Interpretations differ on how this inclusive attitude toward other religions should be viewed within the framework of Christian faith. Critics have also argued that his thought shows the influence of Social Darwinism (the theory that societies, like organisms, develop through competition). In response, Kim Sang-bong, a member of the editorial board of Ssial-ui Sori, published a rebuttal in the magazine in 2010.