Late 19th C. Anglican Church of Korea and Ko Uhn- "Anglo-Catholic Buddhism"

For  Arch-Great Master Professors NB, JL, JM, RD, MG


During the Japanese occupation of Korea, there was some kind of veil of hidden and absconded protection for Korean Christians under the Church of England and its relation with Anglican Church of Japan, 1850, with its Founding Mission, which precedes the Korean Anglican Missions by 45 years. It is quizzical to state what the exact the political relations were between the Japanese colonial government and Japanese Anglican Church. This question has not been fully historically explored, and the aim of this entry is not to resolve this question.

To state on the record, the Founding Missionaries were Missionary Sisters of the Community of St. Peter, who arrived at Chemulpo, Inchon in 1895. It was the very Late extension of the Oxford Movement to Korea.

What is interesting is that that Ko Uhn, the foremost Anglo-phone poet of S. Korea, was discovered and translated by an British Anglican Bishop.

Ko Uhn was a Buddhist monk, and political protestor for the democracy movement in Korea since the the aftmermath of the revolt against the corrupt Syngh Mahn Rhee government. It remains a private mystery as to what Koh Uhn's religious confession is whether he is an Anglican or a Buddhist, Christian, Confucian, or folk-lorist Taoist, since he embraces the most revolutionary idiomatic poetic diction of classical and modern Korean tradition.