Minjung Theology

Inspired by other liberation movements around the globe, minjung theology is one of the original liberation theologies which grew out of people’s movements in Korea during the 1970s. Similar to all genuine liberation efforts, it faced substantial pushback and has often been declared dead. Nevertheless, minjung theology could never be completely silenced and some of its work continues.

Today, as struggles for liberation only gain traction, many of the topics explored by minjung theology are more relevant than ever. As the few at the top consolidate their rule over the many, the many are developing new awareness, strategies for resistance, and are building alternatives. These developments have profound implications for the future of theology and faith communities with the potential to liberate not only the people but also theology and religion itself. That such liberation is necessary is becoming increasingly clear in the present moment, as theology and religion are once again used to support empire rather than the people.

We are grateful to Professor Jin-Kwan Kwon, one of the foremost authorities on Korean minjung theology, for being in dialogue with us and for engaging some of the fundamental concerns of the Wendland-Cook Program that include international and intersectional solidarity as well as interdisciplinary and interreligious work. While the latter topic is implicit rather than explicit here, the minjung always transcends individual religious identities. This contribution and the subsequent engagement with two Ph.D. students in the Graduate Department of Religion at Vanderbilt concludes the three semesters that Professor Kwon spent as a visiting academic fellow of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice at Vanderbilt Divinity School.

Joerg Rieger, Distinguished Professor of Theology, Director, Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice

Contributors: Jin Kwan Kwon, Taeha An, Daniel Cho, Jin Kwan Kwon

Jin Kwan Kwon

June 16, 2026

Minjung theology (MT) may have had an impressive impact on both those working with minjung and on intellectuals, due to its central tenet that minjung are the subjects of history. Since the latter part of the nineteenth century, Korea was under attack from Western and Japanese imperial forces. Minjung theologians and intellectuals observed that it was not political rulers but the minjung, the politically oppressed, who engaged in struggles for independence and directed the course of Korean history. Minjung theologians and intellectuals affirm the minjung remain engaged in struggles for independence still today.

However, factory workers and other urban poor have raised their doubts to minjung theologians and intellectuals asking, “Is it valid that we, uneducated, poor have-nots, can become the subjects of history, even though we are held captive by backwardness and poverty?”

We may claim minjung theology was the outcome of remorse and repentance among the intellectuals, who enjoyed their privileges as professors, ministers, and students, with great promise of promotion and prosperity. They repented and met with young factory workers.

Faced with questions of legitimacy from the impoverished, minjung theologians had to identify elements that would explain how the minjung become subjects of history. They grappled with which sources and elements contributed to increasing the minjung’s potentiality and subjectivity.

In the beginning, to answer the question posed by the minjung, theologians turned to han. Han is a Korean term that expresses an accumulated feeling of sorrow, injustice, helplessness, anger, and related emotions, created by long-standing injustice inflicted upon oppressed people. Minjung theologians claimed han generates immense energy capable of overthrowing the oppressors at a critical moment. When such energy is harnessed as creative power through dan (cutting off the evil cycle of vengeful reprisals), it changes the historical trajectory. This was one of the earliest explanations by first-generation minjung theologians. History tells us that such han-originated revolutionary power can be manipulated by evil minds and result in unbridled power and chaos. Han-originated and han-ridden revolution can become brutal, perpetuating evil cycles of reprisals.

Han is no longer a dominant sentiment among the Korean minjung. South Korea is no longer a wild, dictatorial, military country that oppresses and inflicts violence on the people. Therefore, we need to seek a more relevant explanation of the minjung’s subjectivity and potential. My suggestion about the subjectivity and potentiality of minjung has two elements: objective and subjective.

The Objective Element

The social and structural contradictions the minjung are caught in, can become a source of creative power that can resolve the current system. The space the minjung occupy becomes a hole within the system and destabilizes it. The system tries to amend it, but the system, as it is, is incapable of filling and fixing the hole. The minjung will return again and again, taking up more space each time. The hole, crack, and gap within the system can become the space where a struggle for a new, alternative reality is staged and subjects of the struggle are created.

There are many holes in the system wherever contradictions and injustices exist, such as the issues of migrant workers, environmental destruction, and gender inequality. These holes share a commonality as they are all outside the dominant system that is controlled by the capitalist oligarchy. This location in the system is an objective aspect of minjung’s subjectivity.

The Subjective Element

Let us now turn to a subjective element of the minjung’s subjectivity and potentiality. We can imagine the minjung’s first subjective action taking place at the crux of social and structural contradictions. This action includes their groans, cries, and also their struggles. There are always contradictions, but without the minjung’s cries and struggles, it cannot become a crux that destabilizes the whole. We can designate this as the subjectivity of the masses. It is a slave mentality and subjectivity.

Stories of the Minjung

The first move from the minjung, from the space of the hole, is a cry of agony. Simple groans, cries, and shouts, however, are not heard because they disappear into the air. To ensure others hear them, read them, and join in their cries, they must become stories, narratives, and reports. As the minjung take the stage of society and history, they express their agonies and contradictions in stories, paintings, and songs. That is why minjung arts, stories, novels, and movies proliferated during the minjung movement. Stories are the most accessible means of communication that minjung can employ to communicate their aspirations and their agonies. The late minjung theologian Suh Nam-Dong claimed the story is the language of the body and of God, and therefore revelatory.

I interpret Suh Nam-Dong’s idea of story differently. Rather than being the language of the body, I connect the story to the concept of symptom. A symptom is an event of the body. For the minjung, symptoms are often expressed and felt as bodily suffering, pain, and trauma. These symptoms, expressed through story, reveal the contradictions the minjung are suffering from.

Thus, Suh Nam-Dong’s suggestion that story is the language of the body, as opposed to the language of the head, which facilitates and promotes the dominant system, is understandable. Thus, we may say that the story, as the language of the body, is the language of the symptom that destabilizes the system. Story can provide the motivation to break the dominant system. The task of interpreting the story is to disclose the symptoms and utopian longings of the people.

Good stories are sources and treasures of the minjung’s subjectivity. Stories reveal the truth and foster readers’ sympathy and solidarity. Still, there are living stories that are told by the minjung themselves to cope with their realities. Story is the language of the common minjung, who live by their bodies and labor. Thus, stories are always abundant in the lives of the common people.

Living Stories

What is the role of living stories? A living story is created and told by people who have experienced events and happenings in their lives, whether negative or positive. Negative experiences are those of pain and suffering, and positive ones are successes and resolutions of contradictions and problems. Living stories are the product of the dialectical relation between the subject and the object, or the minjung and the situation. Minjung’s stories change and develop into fuller ones as the situation and people’s understanding of it change and develop. Living stories are in the process of becoming more complete and fuller ones. Stories represent the subjectivity, which refers to the state of having a self-consciousness, of the minjung engaging with contradictions in the situation. A story is not full knowledge of the situation, but it contains some knowledge. Telling a story is a function of the subject and reflects an understanding of the situation.

In conclusion, a story represents the self-consciousness of the people. A story leads people to be conscious of themselves, their relations with other subjects and other classes, and their understanding of the system they are in. Therefore, the people’s story is the base and ground for the minjung, on which theological reflections are based.

Jin Kwan Kwon is a retired professor of the Anglican University in Seoul, South Korea. His major research interests are Constructive Theology and Minjung Theology.