T HAPPENED BACK IN 1943 DURING the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula. Japan invaded China and other East Asian countries and attacked the United States. At the same time, it made Korea a military outpost and logistical base for the war, forcing Koreans to become subjects of the emperor. It was one of the darkest periods in Korean history.

But what is not often remembered is that it was not merely a political war. It was also a religious one. Korean Adventists came under persecution; and Pastor Chae Tae Hyun, the leader of the Adventist Church in Korea at the time, was imprisoned and tortured for refusing to obey the demand of the Japanese colonial governor-general in Korea to disband the Adventist church.

This is his story.

Forced
Koreans suffered much during the occupation. Many young men were forced into the battlefields in the Pacific War, and many young girls coerced into becoming comfort women for the imperial soldiers. Those not coerced into the army were compelled to labor for the imperial causes.

Identity was also attacked, Koreans being obliged to change their names to conform to Japanese name style and participate in forced enlistment and labor for the Japanese empire. All schools and government offices were made to use the Japanese language, and the Korean language was forbidden. Religious beliefs were controlled, and Shrine worship of the emperor was expected and required, including in all schools. The only way to avoid Shrine worship in the schools was to close them.

For a while other forms of worship were permitted, but no one was allowed to sing hymns containing words such as King, Jesus, Advent, or heavenly home. These terms had to be either deleted or changed. Most of what we would normally publish became unprintable; and, accordingly, the Korean Signs of the Times and the Korean Church Compass were forced to shut down. Many Adventists rejected these imperial measures and the demand for participation in Shrine worship at the risk of their lives.

As the crisis deepened, the imperial threat forced all missionaries to leave Korea, and church leadership was turned over to nationals. That’s how Pastor Chae came to be elected  president of the Korean Union Mission.

Imprisoned and Tortured
As loyal subjects, Korean Christians were forced to bow and worship ancestors of the emperor, the activity being promulgated not as religious but as a national civic duty. However, many felt it was religious and thus unacceptable for those wishing to be true to the commandments. Pastor Chae was one of them, refusing to submit to imperial intimidation. Through four months of internment and unthinkable torture he continued to resist. 

No Longer a Cult BY LEE JONG KEUN In Korea, Adventists have always been regarded as a cult. Adding insult to injury, church history textbooks in the country list them as being among the first to submit officially to Japanese shrine worship in 1935, under the threat of the Japanese governor-general. In light of such bad press, the recent revelation of heroism and patriotism within the local Adventist communities of Korea has resulted in the best media coverage we’ve had for almost 100 years. A follow-up feature of Adventists who hid in the mountains in horrific circumstances so they could avoid bowing to shrine worship will be even bigger, I believe. The place they hid has officially been designated a historic site by the municipal government of Kapyung. I see this focus on the events of the past as a contextual form of evangelism.

Intent on dismantling Korean identity and remaking Koreans into their own image, the Japanese authorities set out to revamp their culture and rewrite history. But the occupying army did not realize the depth of Adventist faith and fidelity. They could not have anticipated how offensive it would be for an Adventist to participate in worship of the Emperor and his ancestors.

Pastor Chae, then president of Korean Sahmyook College (now Korean Sahmyook University), was arrested with several other Adventist leaders and imprisoned on February 4, 1943. The Japanese authorities demanded he disband the Adventist Church and persuade his fellow Adventists to participate in Shrine worship. Refusing to do either, Chae was considered  in violation of the national security law, and they set about to force his compliance. He was accused of being a spy for the Americans through his connection with missionaries and the world church, and was commanded to give up his faith and announce the same to all the churches in Korea, declaring his willingness to cooperate with Japan in all things. Above all, they called on him to voluntarily disband the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Korea. 

Pastor Chae testified to his torturers that God intended that the world should be peaceful and without war. He told them he believed that God had nurtured and honored all nations, and that therefore he could not condone or accept Japan’s lust to conquer and desecrate other peoples—especially when that policy included forcing others to abandon their identity and religion. With this belief, however much they tortured him, he would never consider recanting his faith or his nationality.

When they could not force him either to cooperate or to recant, his torturers attacked his faith directly. They asked him: “Who is higher, God or the Emperor of Japan?” “Will Japan also be destroyed at the Second Advent?” If his answers displeased them, they did unspeakable things to him.

But their punishment could not shake his faith. For four months they beat and tortured him with electric shock, water treatment, and chili pepper powder. Twelve times he was beaten unconscious. Finally, at 9:00 a.m. on June 2, 1943, he lost consciousness for the last time. His torturers, panicking because he had not been sentenced to death, rushed him to Kyung Song Yo Yang Hospital (now Seoul Adventist Hospital) for emergency treatment. But he never regained consciousness. He passed away that evening, around 8:00.

The First Martyr
From February to June 1943 Pastor Chae was tortured because he’d been true to his faith in Jesus and because he’d rejected Japanese imperialism.

In regard to his last moments, we have the testimony of deaconess Lee Ok Kyun (the wife of Yoo Joon Hyun, a faithful church elder and financial supporter of the church in Korea). She’d been a nurse trainee at our Adventist hospital when Pastor Chae was brought in. Now 75, she recently gave this testimony:  “When I saw him I could not recognize him, because his face was smashed out of shape by the torture, and his body was covered with bruises. When he arrived at the hospital he was unconscious, and he never revived.” She told us how she and her coworker had washed his face, feet, and hands, and moved his body to the mortuary. 

Chae was the first Adventist martyr in Korea. And although he was a significant person in the Adventist community—having served as both college president and union mission president—many Adventists dared not attend his funeral. To identify with Pastor Chai was to court trouble at the hands of the authorities. Only a few family members took the risk. He was buried at Mangwoori Cemetery on the outskirts of Seoul, where his body remained for the next 26 years. In 1969 his remains were transferred to the Pochun Adventist Cemetery where a monument was erected in his honor.

Dark Moment for Adventists
After Pastor Chae’s martyrdom church administration was paralyzed as other Adventist leaders were thrown into prison. Eventually those leaders capitulated to the Japanese threat and signed documents officially disbanding the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Korea. It was December 27, 1943. The next morning the document was delivered to every Adventist church in the country. With the church dismantled, believers scattered around the country. It was a dark period for the church, and a time of great pain for the members. 

Thus the church in Korea suffered with the nation as a whole. It shared in the nation’s humiliation, being disbanded and cast on the trash heap. But it survived this dark time—at great cost to its dedicated members.*

Pastor Chae was not the only Korean Adventist martyr. His sacrifice was followed by that of other pastors: Kim Nae Chun, Lee Sung Eui, and Lee Myung Choon in Korea, as well as Bae Kyung Soo in Japan. These all paid the ultimate sacrifice for their faithfulness. At the same time, many faithful believers fled into inaccessible places to avoid detection and to have the freedom to practice their faith. They gathered in several secret communities in the deep mountains around the country, pursued relentlessly by the new authorities. These were true Christians and real patriots who did not submit to Japanese imperialism. 

One of the most outstanding of these secret communities was the Chongmongni community in Kapyung,  30 miles (50 kilometers) northeast of Seoul. The place where they hid and suffered was  recently designated a historic site by the provincial government in recognition that these citizens had kept true to their faith and had treasured their identities as Koreans in the face of Japanese occupation. Their sacrifices and hardships have not been told and can hardly be imagined. Barely surviving, they remained undaunted. They prayed for religious freedom and for independence from Japanese occupation. When Korea and Koreanness seemed doomed, they were the wicks of hope that remained smoldering in suffering. From such as these Adventist faith has been reignited and revived. And because of them, it survived.

Why Share This Story Now? 
Some have questioned whether this revisiting of the past is the task of the church. Should we “waste our energy” revisiting history? Shouldn’t we rather spend our time preparing as many as possible for the future?

I believe that because we have neglected to share these stories with the public, it has given license to detractors to create prejudice against our church, a prejudice that often forms the greatest obstacle to the preaching of the end-time message.

There’s always the risk that we will fail to esteem adequately the heroes of the past; that we will undervalue the worth of their contribution. We are in danger, further, of not merely expecting our heroes not to be honored, but actually relishing their neglect together with our own rejection. In the end, the greatest tragedy is that by keeping our heroes to ourselves, we lose them, in the sense that they no longer touch us. And as we neglect them, the world and we are also denied the privilege of drawing needed inspiration and resolution from some of God’s greatest servants. When we glimpse our own ancestors with the eye of awe and respect, our identity with them is renewed and our interest in our own identity is revived.

That’s why some of us have dedicated ourselves to reviving the memories of those who’ve gone before; of those who paid such a heavy price to preserve Adventist faith and their own native culture. We offer them back to Korean society as public property.

In His Honor
Fifty-seven years after his death Pastor Chae was honored by his nation, but few knew about it. 

In 1949, four years after World War II and four years after Korean independence from Japan, the Chae family applied for recognition of his heroism. In 1977 the government decided to honor him, but no one was notified. In 1990 this recognition was upgraded to Kun Guk Hun Jang Aee Kug Jang (a high-level certificate of honor for dedication for the nation), one who dedicated his life for national independence and progress. However, neither his family (who’d by then migrated to the United States) nor his church was aware of the honor.

Pastor Chae’s sacrifice had been forgotten. His medal and certificate of honor gathered dust in a storeroom in a government office. He’d been honored posthumously as a national hero, and we didn’t know it.

However, three years ago in the process of researching the records of Adventists’ sacrifice for their country, we applied to the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs for recognition of Pastor Chae’s martyrdom. Only then did we discover that he had already been recognized. On October 7, 1999, Pastor Chae’s posthumous decoration was made known to the general public, and his medal and certificate were given to his son, Herman Chae. That’s more than a half century after his father’s martyrdom for his faith and nation!

The story was featured in national newspapers and has now been made into a television drama special that will be shown to the public in the near future. 

For a hero whose country failed to recognize and honor him in an adequate and timely way, and who has largely been forgotten by his own church, it is appropriate that we reflect on his courage and faith. May the telling of his story revive the sense of indebtedness we owe to our faithful spiritual ancestors—not just in Korea, but in other places around the world.  

*In a letter to the Review, Iris Uyeda (writing for Japan Union president Takashi Shiraishi, who read and concurred with the sentiments of this piece before publication), thought it important to emphasize that “the Adventist Church in Japan was also disbanded during World War II. Forty-two ministers and laypersons were imprisoned, and some of them even gave their lives for the sake of the Adventist faith.”—Editors.

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Lee Jong Keun, is professor and director of the Sahmyook University Museum in Seoul, Korea. An Old Testament scholar and specialist in ancient near Eastern studies, he has had a burden to have Adventist heroes of faith remembered by their church and recognized by their country.