Paper short abstract:

This paper examines North Korean refugees' Christian encounters throughout their perilous migrations to South Korea, North America, and Europe in comparative perspectives. Based on ethnographic data, it discusses the intersections between the national and transnational aspirations.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines North Korean refugees' Christian encounters throughout their perilous migrations to and settlements in South Korea, North America, and Europe in comparative perspectives. It investigates how some of them become voluntarily or involuntarily converted to Christianity, and ordained as professional missionaries, while others are indifferent, critical to, or disenchanted from the religion in accordance with the host societies. Their conversion to Christianity is often depicted as a sacred signifier of the national evangelization in South Korean evangelical discourses, which consider North Korea as evil threatening the "God blessed" South and the United States. Such evangelical churches and missionary organizations have provided for the refugees the secret shelters in China, and the "Underground railways" through Southeast Asian countries to South Korea and other western countries. South Korean ethnic churches in western societies are so crucial that the individual refugees tend to rely on such co-ethnic community during the initial period of their resettlement. Given the fact that most North Korean refugees come to experience social discrimination in the context of South Korea, this paper compares the different roles and the effects of the churches that are successful or not in hosting North Korean refugees in England, Germany, Americas, and South Korea. Therefore, this paper discusses the intersections between the national and the transnational aspirations of the refugees.