God of Hills and Valleys - Dia nam Beann’s nan Gleann
Beijing Cart
In 1885, the Manchurian Mission was transferred to Mukden (Shenyang), and mission stations, hospitals and schools sprung up along the roads and valleys creating a network of routes for missionaries travelling from one settlement to another. The preferred mode of transport was the traditional horse-drawn ‘Beijing Cart’, dating from the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD), when chariots were an important item of battle equipment in which warriors stood to fight the surrounding enemy. It was the ideal conveyance for carrying religious pamphlets and books into the Korean valleys where they were distributed.
Uprising and Baptism
During the period of Bible distribution a peasant revolution broke out in Korea, known as the “Donghak Uprising”. The fighting and turmoil drove people living in the northern provinces to the Chinese side of the Yalu (Amnok) River, where they found safety. In 1884, John Ross and another missionary, Rev. James Webster, visited this region and baptised eighty five refugees living in three valleys. It was an encouraging time for the growth of the mission, but the situation in Korea deteriorated and it became unsafe for John and the other missionaries to remain in Manchuria. Many missionaries returned to Scotland until the troubles subsided.
The Bible-Women
By the 1860s, Chinese and Korean women were given opportunities through Christian work to leave the home and engage in education, evangelism, and medical services. They received a religious education from women missionaries and worked alongside them, evangelising in homes and villages. In 1892, a training school was opened in Mukden (Shenyang) providing reading and writing instruction for local women and girls, and by the 1888s, missionary societies allowed “Bible-women” to publicly evangelise and teach the Bible to local groups.
“The village of Sorae served as the cradle of Protestant Christianity in Korea.”
Dr. George L. Paik, 1884
Uiju Church
There were two seedbeds of Protestantism in Korea. One was in Uiju, in Northwest Korea, near the border with China. A church was started here by a small group of Koreans, who had come in contact with Rev. John Ross on one of his visits to the Corean Gate, where they received copies of the Chinese New Testament and religious tracts. The young Koreans formed a group to study the Christian truth and became involved in the translation of the first Korean Bible, with Rev. John Ross and Rev. John MacIntyre, leading to the first Koreans to be baptised in the late 1870s, before the opening up of Korea to western missionaries. The group were sent by Rev. John Ross to evangelise their family and friends in the Uiju area in c.1882, and this date can be regarded as the real beginning of the Uiju Christian communities.
Sorae Church
The second seedbed was Sorae, on the west coast, the home town of one of the first Protestant evangelists. The family of Sangryun Seo lived for generations in a settlement on the banks of the Yalu (Amnok) River bordering China, regularly travelling on business between China and their homeland. Seo, the eldest son became ill while in China, when he came in contact with the Rev. John MacIntyre who took him to the mission hospital at Newchwang (Yingkou) where he soon recovered. Seo went to Mukden with John Ross to assist in Bible translation and printing and was baptised in 1879. In 1884, Seo and his brother, Kyungjo Seo, returned to Korea as evangelists with portions of the translated New Testament gathering together the first group of worshipping Protestants. They went on to build the first Protestant Church in the village of Sorae, in Hwanghae Province. John Ross’s version of the New Testament was the foundation of the early church in Korea.
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