(ZENIT News / Seoul, 01.05.2024).- South Korea is a Presidential Republic with 51,966,948 inhabitants. There are now 53 Catholic legislators of Korea’s Democratic Party, in the Opposition, who obtained a seat in the National Assembly, after the elections held on April 10. Sixteen belong to the Popular Power Party in Government. The other 11 belong to other parties, including the New Reform Party.
The Catholic legislators represent 27% of the Parliament’s seats, which has grown by 2% in four years. The number of Catholics in South Korea is over 5.8 million believers, representing 11% of the total population, as opposed to the 5% that existed in 1985. There are 100,000 Baptisms every year, according to the data of the Archbishopric of Seoul. The Church has 5,360 Priests and 11,736 Religious, spread in 1,730 parishes, although their growth has slowed down over the last years.
According to official estimates, half of South Korea’s inhabitants describe themselves as Catholics, and 22.8% of the population is Buddhist. The Christian faith is the most professed in the country: 50% of the believers say they are religious. The Catholic Church has grown faster since the end of the 1980’s decade. South Korea is the second nation with the largest number of missionaries.
The real influence of Catholicism in South Korea’s elites is very high. Moon Jae-In, who was President of the country from 2017 to 2022, is a fervent Catholic. Many Catholics belong to the ruling classes; others send their children to Christian schools as symbol of modernity.
Freedom of worship is guaranteed by the Constitution; there is no State Religion. After the legislative elections, the Korean Bishops showed a survey, carried out among the main political parties, with a questionnaire on work, national reconciliation, social welfare, bioethics, ecology, women, justice, peace and youth. The Bishops stressed that the governing parties and those of the Opposition differed on several points of view, although they had hoped that the Parliament would focus on the people’s wellbeing and important social topics. The Opposition Democratic Party was victorious in the April 10 election, winning 161 seats. President Yoon Suk Yeol’s Popular Power Party got 90 seats.
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