[Buddha-l] on the South Korean hostages

[Dan Lusthaus]

Joanna,

> What is "do the math" supposed to imply?

Do the math. What does it add up to? Korea -- which has until today, and
against the suppression of Buddhism during the hundreds of years of the
Choson dynasty, best preserved authentic East Asian Buddhist traditions as
they were practiced in Song China -- is no longer a Buddhist country.

>
> The distribution of all main religious outfits in South Korea has little
if
> anything
> to do with the article, which is about Christian missionizing.

These are not unrelated, and the article does point out that *every* town in
Korea has at least three churches. One thing that struck me while in Korea
is that once one leaves a big city like Seoul, the towns are small and all
nestled into crooks in the base of mountains, and the highest and most
prominent building in every town -- visible from a distance -- is a church.
That is true for the entire way from Seoul to the southern tip of Kyongju.
The Korean brand of Christianity is primarily aggressively evangelical -- 
they have vandalized Buddhist temples, and aggressively prosthelytize at
home. In fact, a large percentage of the early waves of Korean immigrants to
the States came here to prosthelytize, to bring what they believed was
"real" Christianity to the West, where, they believe, it does not exist yet.
That mission hasn't proved very successful, and they've scaled back.

As for paying the ransom -- it's the old story: if you pay the ransom that
only encourages the terrorists to grab more people for ransom. This is not
the first time things like this have happened -- you might remember a
similar situation involving Japanese in Iraq; Japan also paid the ransom. As
did the Italians. As the arrests in Germany show, this sort of appeasement
doesn't work, and, as the Koreans themselves are beginning to realize,
setting missionaries loose in such zones is an expensive mistake.

Some years ago a student in one my classes spent his mid-semester break as
part of missionary group prosthelytizing in Dubai. Such activity is illegal
there. They were arrested, put on house arrest in their hotel, their heads
were shaven, and they were subjected to a variety of intimidations, such as
being threatened with interminable prison sentences. Everything had to
remain completely hush-hush, no media, while the State Dept. struggled for
their release. I would send the reading assignments, etc. to the student's
mother, who would forward them on. After a little over a month, Dubai
released them. He returned, bald-headed, and humbled. I asked him if he
planned to go back. Without hesitation, and a slight look of terror in his
eyes, he immediately replied: "No!"

As for why Karzai, et al. are allowing them entry, etc, remember who votes
for Republicans.

For instance, in today's Washington Post, part of the report that Belgium
plans to prosecute Scientology, includes this:

---
In Washington, the State Department said that if Belgian authorities "have
evidence that individuals violated Belgian law, they should take appropriate
legal steps consistent with Belgium's international obligations to protect
freedom of thought, conscience and religion."

"We would, however, oppose any effort to stigmatize an entire group based
solely upon reglious beliefs and would be concerned over infringement of any
individual's rights because of religious affiliation," the State Department
spokesman's office said.
---

http://tinyurl.com/3cqodw


How much moreso for those spreading the Gospel?

Dan