This research studies on the nature of the activities of the lay leadership of the two Industrial Missions in the 1970’s : Inchon Industrial Mission and Youngdeungpo Industrial Mission. It attempts at overcoming hitherto studies on the Industrial Mi...
This research studies on the nature of the activities of the lay leadership of the two Industrial Missions in the 1970’s : Inchon Industrial Mission and Youngdeungpo Industrial Mission. It attempts at overcoming hitherto studies on the Industrial Mission in some ways. Traditional studies on the Industrial Mission have focused on the activities of the clergy staff of the Industrial Mission centers, or on the activities of the centers themselves. These traditional studies overlooked very important part of the Industrial Mission : the activities of the lay persons both on the staff of the centers and in the trade unions. The present study discovers that the lay leadership in the Industrial Mission was as important and crucial as the clerical leadership. The important figures of the lay leaders, whom the present researcher calls the second generation leaders of the Industrial Mission, are such people as Hwang Yonghwan, Choi Younghee, Kim Keuntae, Kim Dongwan, Myong Nosun, Shin Cholyoung, Chung Kangja, The present research argues that these young leaders were integral part of the Industrial Mission. In addition, this research argues that Korean Protestant Church was ambivalent toward the Industrial Mission, because leading members of the Church were conservative and among them were company owners. In addition, this researcher argues that in the latter part of the 1970’s the union workers and leading industrial workers became independent of the Industrial Mission and took initiative in their activities for reforming the oppressive labor conditions and for protecting for their own human rights.