Suh Nam-dong

Life

Suh was born in South Jeolla Province. During the Japanese colonial period, he studied theology at Doshisha University in Japan. After Korea's liberation, he worked in pastoral ministry and theological education and taught at Hankuk Theological Seminary (now Hanshin University), which is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea. He later served for many years as a professor in the College of Theology at Yonsei University.

In the 1970s, under the Yushin regime, he took part in the Christian democratization movement, and as a result he was dismissed from Yonsei University. In 1976 he was arrested, along with Ham Seok-heon, Moon Ik-hwan, and others, in connection with the so-called March 1 Declaration for Democratic National Salvation incident. He died in 1984.

Ministry and Contributions

Suh was quick to introduce new currents in Western theology to Korea, which earned him the nickname "the antenna of theology." Among the ideas he introduced were the thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and secularization theology.

In the 1970s, through his encounters with people suffering in prisons and at labor sites, he made the minjung (the common people) the central theme of his theology. His 1975 article in the journal Christian Thought (Gidokgyo Sasang), together with an article by Ahn Byung-mu published the same year, is commonly regarded as the starting point of minjung theology. He proposed the following concepts:

• The confluence of two stories: The idea that the minjung tradition of the Bible and church history merges with the historical experience of the Korean minjung, which includes folk culture such as Donghak, mask dance (talchum), and pansori.
• Han (恨): He treated the pent-up suffering of the oppressed minjung as a theological theme. He is also known for his theological reading of the works of the poet Kim Chi-ha.
• The social biography of the minjung: He held that theology should draw its material from the concrete life stories of the minjung rather than from doctrine.

His major works include Explorations in Minjung Theology (Minjung Sinhak-ui Tamgu), published in 1983.

Influence on the Korean Church

Suh's minjung theology provided a theoretical foundation for the social engagement of progressive Korean Protestantism and for the human rights and labor movements. His theology influenced theologians and ministers associated with the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea and the National Council of Churches in Korea. It was also introduced to the international theological community as "a contextual theology from Korea" and found a place in discussions of Asian theology.

Assessment

Supporters maintain that he did not merely transplant Western theology but was an original theologian who drew his theology from the historical experience of the Korean minjung. They also regard him as having embodied the unity of theology and practice under military rule.

Conservative denominations and theologians in the evangelical and Reformed traditions raise several criticisms:

• By treating the minjung as though they were the agents of salvation, he weakened the unique redemptive work of Jesus Christ and undermined Christology.
• He subordinated the authority of Scripture to the experience of the minjung.
• He made light of the church's traditional confessions of faith.

Even within minjung theology circles, some point out that his concepts were never systematically developed. Others note that his early death prevented him from fully refining his thought.