Han Sang-dong: A Teacher Who Lived Each Day ‘Walking with the Lord’

The Life of Han Sang-dong and the Trace of His Spirituality

Han Sang-dong was born in 1901, so his age and the last digits of the years that became watersheds of Korean history match. The March 1st Independence Movement took place in 1919 and Han was nineteen. In 1945, he was forty-five years old, and World War II ended and Korea was liberated. When the Korean War broke out in 1950 he turned fifty. He lived through the most turbulent years in Korean history: the Japanese occupation era, the chaos of the post-liberation period, the Korean War, the tormenting recovery time period, and then the stage becoming stable. But more importantly, he was a living witness to the growth and suffering that the Korean Presbyterian Church experienced, from the earliest period when the Korean Church was forming its own Christian identity even though it was first nurtured under the guidance of foreign missionaries, to the later years of apostasy, to the chaos of post-liberation, to its rebirth, and to the preparation of the church’s outreach to missions across the world—he was front and center throughout all these periods. In this sense, his spirituality had a significant meaning noteworthy in Korean Church history.
In this context, I will examine how his spirituality was shaped and how it affected the Korean Church.
In 1919, ten years after Japanese occupation, the March 1st Independence Movement broke out in Korea. At the time Han Sang-dong was working as a teacher in a commercial school, and he took charge of making and distributing large amounts of Korean national flags around the area of Dadae-po, Busan, where he lived and worked. But the secret was leaked before the day of the uprising, and he had to escape. We can see here his unusual love for his nation and the strong sense of justice that was exhibited from his youth.
After being baptized at the age of twenty-five, he was actively involved in church life. He had been adopted by his childless paternal first cousin and lived at their home. However, when Han San–dong refused to observe their ancestral rites because of his Christian faith, they disowned him after their clan meeting. Han Sang–dong was kicked out of the family. And at the time, he suffered from tuberculosis. Yet in the midst of these hardships, he went around some villages without churches and planted churches in two villages. While planting the churches, he experienced the power of a prayer life and realized deeply that the church can grow through the guidance of God. The organization that supported this unknown evangelist was the women’s missionary union of the South Gyeongsang Province Presbytery, which was presided over by the wife of Rev. Ju Gi–cheol.
He studied at Pyeongyang Seminary from 1933 through 1936. At the time, he sought the guidance of God in prayer for his future life, entrusting everything to Him. Reading and meditating deeply on the Word of God according to the instructions of his teachers was the center of his study. After he graduated from the seminary in 1936 he went to serve as a jeondosa (a title usually given to a non-ordained pastor) at Choryang Church in Busan. There he found his church experiencing a revival as he and church members prayed hard and lived according to the Word. He felt the presence of the Lord especially strongly in the early morning prayer meetings. At the time, he was only a jeondosa, but the prayer meetings he led drew over a hundred members daily. Thus, he led early morning prayer meetings for the rest of his life without skipping even a single day.
In 1937 the following year, he was ordained as pastor by the South Gyeongsang Presbytery and was installed at Moonchang Church in Masan. This was the year Japan caused the Manchurian Incident and started a war against China, so Japanese militarists who wanted Korea to take part in the war began to force Koreans into Shinto worship. Han had to leave the Moonchang Church in 1939 when he resisted to join in Shinto worship. When Han saw the Japanese police harass his church members for his resistance to Shinto worship, he couldn’t stand their suffering anymore. He suffered heart-breaking sadness because he had to part from the first church he had served as pastor and from the people he had loved with all of his heart. After leaving the church, he orchestrated an organized and nation-wide resistance against Shinto worship. Han Sang-dong was detained in 1940 by the South Gyeongsang Province Police Department and was taken to Pyeongyang Prison where he remained in the terrible hardship of imprisonment until August 17, 1945. This period could be considered the completion of his spirituality. Living in a solitary cell for years and praying in the midst of persecution and torture, he overcame the weaknesses of his physical body. He shared a special love with his Lord in his time of suffering, beginning each prayer with “My beloved Lord.”
Because he had been imprisoned without conviction, he had several opportunities to be released from jail during this period, such as applying for release due to gross neglect or appealing to the judge. However, he refused to use these tactics. He felt responsible for those who were sacrificed in the resistance of Shinto worship, and wished the Korean Church to keep praying for the resistance movement. In addition, Han believed that God had “covered his mouth.” For these reasons, he chose to remain in prison.
However, at the time, his sickened body was already weakened to the point of being incapable of withstanding the hardship of imprisoned life. Nevertheless, he embraced death in his spirituality, and the Lord granted special grace to him who chose death and he experienced the miracle of survival. The spirituality of Pastor Han can be summarized as the spirituality of walking with God; the spirituality of striving to walk with the Lord constantly, in every moment.
During this period when many believers had to face unspeakable suffering because of their opposition to Shinto worship, the general situation of the Korean Church was bitter enough to be called an era of apostasy. At the end of World War II, where the church was being pressured into Shinto worship and war, the Korean Church was pressed hard by the physical force of Japanese militarists. It was a time when most pastors preserved their churches by approving of Shinto worship and Misogi Barai, and by bowing to the east where the Japanese emperor resided. Distinction between denominations like Presbyterians and Methodists disappeared and they only existed as the Korean branch of Japanese Christianity. Church worship became a tool of war. Religious offerings and even church bells were seized to provide for Japanese military supplies.
The few who wanted to keep their faith and resisted the Japanese annihilation of Korean Christianity were shunned, and faced contempt and unspeakable persecution from other Koreans who went with the flow of the time. The traitorous pastors and church members ridiculed the resistors as fanatics and drove them out of their churches. However, during this trial, the distinctive spirituality of the Korean Church was being formed among the suffering believers. Such spirituality was the product of three Korean church leaders who were jailed. Pastor Ju Gi–cheol emphasized “giving one’s life for one’s faith,” Pastor Ju Nam-seon taught “faithfulness unto death” and Pastor Han Sang-dong stressed “walking with the Lord.” The lives of faith with such intensity and tenacity were the spirituality for those who desired liberation of their nation and a pure Korean Church. The lives of such believers pleased God and the spirituality of “walking with the Lord” had an enormous influence on shaping the church that would arise in the new Korea: the Korean Church.
In order to explain that the faith that chooses death in jail is not made of fanatic narcissism, we need to turn our eyes to the west where the same thing was taking place. We can see similar incidents in Christian life in Germany around the same time. A war-minded Nazi Germany put the German church under the ideology of militarists, a move which was opposed by the German Confessing Church. Bonhoeffer (1906–1945), one of the leaders of the church, did not attempt to avoid this period of suffering and conflict. While he was visiting America, friends of his who cherished him advised him to work in America so that he would remain safe.
He answered, according to his letter to Reinhold Niebuhr, “If I do not share this suffering with my people now, I won’t have any right to join in the reconstruction of the German Church after the war is over.” Reinhold Niebuhr called this decision “the most beautiful logic of a Christian martyr.” Bonhoeffer returned to Germany to be with the suffering German Confessing Church and was arrested in 1943. He was executed in a Flossenburg encampment a few days before the Allied Forces arrived on April 9, 1945. Until the moment he was executed he lived as a minister in prison and served little sheep of Christ as a saint in the midst of pain. In the same way, in the spring of 1944 at the blooming of the azalea, the great Korean pastor, Ju Gi–cheol was martyred and a year later, along with the falling of the azalea, the great German pastor Bonhoeffer died as a martyr.
Han Sang-dong experienced miraculous healing while in prison along with the sense of impending defeat for Japan. So he prayed for three things for the Korean Church: 1) For the corrupted pastors with numb consciences to repent under the Japanese rule, so that the future Korean Church could start anew and unhindered; 2) for the establishment of a theological seminary so that they can raise ministers who would be faithful to the truth; and 3) for the ministers from the seminary to make this nation a Christian nation through dedicated outreach.
On August 17, 1945, Han got out of Pyeongyang Prison along with others and served Sanjeonghyun Church, where the martyr Pastor Ju used to serve. However, the joy of freedom was short-lived and suppression from the communist party of North Korea began as the nation divided into North and South. Finally, in 1946, Han Sang-dong escaped to South Korea, beyond the 38th parallel.
While a newly liberated country should have been able to start fresh, it suffered extreme chaos politically, ideologically, culturally, and economically; indeed, in all areas. Likewise, in Christendom, although there was public sympathy among Christians for renewal to be carried out because of the disposition of the established pastors staying in power, those who had given in to Japanese demands. In this context, Christians, who had struggled for their faith against Japanese religious oppression, had to undergo the painful struggle again in opposition to ecclesiastical authoritarianism.
In order to examine this situation more objectively, we should look into writings of the scholars of Korean Church history.

After World War II, German church leaders who cooperated with Hitler gathered in Stuttgart in October, 1945 and voluntarily handed over leadership of the church to people who had fought for the independence of the church from politics without yielding to Nazis. It is in stark contrast to our church leaders who attempted change to maintain their vested interests even after liberation.

Since seminary reformation was critical for church renewal, Han Sang-dong and Ju Nam-seon started Goryeo Seminary in Busan along with other like–minded friends. In the midst of the chaos, Goryeo Theological Seminary, through the efforts of Han Sang-dong and Park Yune-sun, continuously produced leaders with reformed spirituality from 1946 to 1960 and expanded the foundation on which the church of new spirituality could grow. In 1960, Goryeo Seminary suffered the staggering loss of Dr. Park Yune-sun, but the return of graduated scholars who had been studying abroad heartened the school’s efforts on the reformed Korean church. And the spirituality of Pastor Han Sang-dong made all of this possible.
Through his efforts, Han managed to give the new denomination a fighting chance. After Korea’s liberation, the spirituality of those recently released from prison clashed with that of existing pastors. The sentiment of the Korean church at the time was that they should start fresh, led by the Christians now released from prison. No small amount of pastors and laymen repented of their past sins and joined the line of truth. They called this movement of repentance the “life movement” or “truth movement.”
However, a majority of the established church authorities were not so enthusiastic about settling the painful Christian past under Japanese rule. They ignored public outcries and tried to preserve their own churches, working to suppress those who argued for purification and renewal of the church. Such chaos continued for a span of six years after liberation, during which Han Sang-dong continued his efforts to reform the Korean Church from within. Finally, the church authority barred the reformative group following Han’s line from the General Assembly in 1951. This caused the division of the Korean Presbyterian Church after liberation. And the party earned the name of Goryeo sect, and is expanding the church with the same belief now.
To make things worse, the general assembly ordered church members who had been excluded from the general assembly to leave the church building they were using. This is the time when the legal problem of whether a church building and its annex property belonged to its congregation or the general assembly was raised. In the turmoil, Pastor Han calmly decided that causing a dispute within the church was not pleasing to God. And even though Pastor Han had more popular support, he willingly handed over his church building and simply began a new church called ‘Samil Church.’ This incident in 1951 was a great decision of faith, and it became widely talked about among the people around Busan. That single moment, when the very first worship service began in the rain, you could see that almost the entire church had decided to follow Rev. Han no matter where he went. That moment was the result of Han Sang-dong’s spirituality, a spirituality that looked only to Jesus. And Han ministered to this church for twenty-two years until he retired.
Church authoritarians can only create organizations that fall apart over time. They don’t have a spirituality that they feel like they must hold on to with their very lives. Many denominations quickly spring up and just as quickly disband. The Korean Church would fail as an organization. However, the spirituality of the Korean Church is different. The spirituality of the Korean Church was carried through the hardship undergone by some Christians at the end of the imperial Japan era in the burning hearts of the Korean believers who loved only Christ. And such burning hearts can be found throughout Korea, in the pastors who repented after liberation and were renewed, as well as in the faith of grassroots laymen. That spirituality came to be rooted in all the denominations as the representative characteristic of Korean Christianity, and as time passed by the newly formed church embraced and reflected it. Further, such spirituality has been reflected in the lives of a new era.
Through post-liberation and the Korean War, we lived in such poor and chaotic times. In the time of the Liberal Party, public officers, teachers, and soldiers couldn’t even make a living on their salary alone. It was a time when the regular wage was far from enough, no matter how hard you worked. People struggled to survive. Writers of the day called those times the “days of irrationality.” It was a time when people said that life was like a misfired bullet that flew without purpose. But Han Sang-dong preached a simple message to members who were living in such hard times: “Even so, let’s live a righteous life.” Even in such dark times, church members decided to follow him in tears, believing that if they followed God and lived righteously the road would be open. This was an aspect of Korean Church spirituality beautifully exhibited in the midst of suffering.
When asked whether the Korean church is a church of Jisachungseong [Faithfulness unto Death], that of Ilsagakoh [Single-minded Preparation for Death] and that of Yeojudonghaeng [Walking with the Lord], modern Christians may hesitate to answer the question, considering the ease of today’s Christian life. However, when they are asked whether the pursuit of such spirituality is right, most people in the Korean Church would answer yes. This was the direction the entire Korean Church congregation believed to be a worthwhile cause. That’s why we call it Korean Church spirituality.