Accounting for North Korea: Korean Reunification, the CCIA, and the Korean Christians Federation

Abstract:During the 1980s, the issue of the peaceful reunification of the Korean Peninsula became of interest to Christian communities in South Korea. In seeking to understand this phenomenon, conventional narratives have focused on the agency of South Korean Christian activists who had, by the late 1970s, identified reunification as a fundamental goal that needed to be achieved in order to address the political, social, and economic maladies that plagued South Korean society. By contrast, this article accounts for the roles played by non-South Korean actors, in particular the Church Commission on International Relations (CCIA) and the North Korean Christian community. The activities of North Korean Christians in the international arena during the 1970s and early 1980s spurred the CCIA to consider the role it should play in fostering reunification and to act as a bridge linking Korean Christian leaders on both sides of the 38th parallel.