Moon Joon-kyung

Life

Moon Joon-kyung was born on February 2, 1891, in Sugok-ri, Amtae-myeon, Sinan County, South Jeolla Province, the third daughter of Moon Jae-kyung, who had three sons and four daughters. Because she was a girl, she was not taught to read as a child. In 1908, at the age of seventeen, she married Jeong Geun-taek of Jeungdo. Her husband set up a household with another woman, leaving her effectively alone to care for her parents-in-law; during this period she is said to have learned Hangul from her father-in-law. After her father-in-law died, she moved to Mokpo, where her eldest brother lived, and supported herself by taking in sewing.

In Mokpo, through the witness of a local woman, she began attending a Holiness church. The minister of that church at the time was Lee Sung-bong, who later became a renowned revivalist. Some sources date her first attendance to 1927, while others place it after her father-in-law's death in 1928. She went on to complete catechumenate instruction and receive baptism, and she became a deacon. At Lee Sung-bong's urging, she entered the Kyungsung Bible Institute, the Holiness Church's seminary; sources give her year of enrollment as either 1931 or 1932. The school required students to spend a set period each year in field evangelism, and Moon chose the islands of Sinan, near her hometown, as her field.

In 1943 she is said to have been tortured at the Mokpo police station for refusing Shinto shrine worship. During the Korean War she was arrested and imprisoned, and she was released when the North Korean army withdrew. Concerned for the believers on Jeungdo, however, she returned to the island, and on October 5, 1950, she was killed on a sandy beach on Jeungdo by North Korean troops and leftist forces. She was fifty-nine. Some sources identify the place of her martyrdom as the beach in front of Jeungdong-ri, while others name the beach at Ujeon-ri.

Ministry and Achievements

Beginning with Jinri Church on Imjado in 1933, she founded churches including Jeungdong-ri Church, Daecho-ri Church, Bangchuk-ri Church, and Ujeon-ri Church. She is said to have traveled by boat among some 120 inhabited islands in the Sinan area to evangelize. Lee Sung-bong testified that in a single year she wore out nine pairs of rubber shoes. Accounts of the number of churches she founded vary widely, ranging from six or eleven to about one hundred if prayer stations are included.

Her evangelism involved entering into the daily lives of the island residents. She opened her home to care for the sick, orphans, and widows. Some recollections also report that she delivered babies and even prepared the bodies of the dead for burial.

Influence on the Korean Church

Jeungdo is described as an island where the great majority of residents (around 90 percent) are Christians, and Moon's ministry is regarded as the foundation of this. More than one hundred pastors are said to have come from Jeungdo. Those directly influenced by her include Kim Joon-gon, founder of Korea Campus Crusade for Christ; Lee Man-shin, a former president of the General Assembly of the Korea Evangelical Holiness Church; and the Rev. Chung Tae-ki.

In 2005 her grave, which had been on the hill behind Jeungdong-ri Church, was moved to the seashore in front of the site of her martyrdom. The Korea Evangelical Holiness Church began working toward the construction of a martyrdom memorial hall in 2007, and with offerings from churches nationwide and support from the General Assembly, the Evangelist Moon Joon-kyung Martyrdom Memorial Hall opened in Jeungdong-ri, Jeungdo-myeon, in 2013. The gravesite, the memorial hall, and the area around Jeungdong-ri Church have become a pilgrimage destination.

Assessment

The Holiness Church honors Moon Joon-kyung as the denomination's first female martyr. She is also remembered beyond her own denomination—Presbyterian martyr memorial organizations, for example, present her as a martyr—and she is frequently described as "the first female martyr of Korean Protestantism." A substantial portion of the record of her life, however, relies on testimony within the church and on materials produced by commemorative projects. As a result, details such as the year of her conversion, the year she entered seminary, the number of churches she founded, and the place of her martyrdom differ from source to source. No significant criticism of her ministry is widely known.