International and Domestic Sources of Religious Movements: Korean Missionaries in High-Risk Countries

Why do some local religious organizations, particularly Christian foreign mission groups, send missionaries to culturally and politically risky states where they face personal high risks and political entanglements? I argue that local religious groups’ goals and motivations are driven by their involvement in international religious networks, which is a key factor in dispatching missionaries to high-risk countries. These religious activities are driven by constituted identities and expected behaviors from the international networks. I utilized a qualitative analysis of documented sources from domestic and international religious networks and 37 semistructured interview records with South Korean Protestant missionaries and church leaders to probe international influence on local actors’ motivations of religious activities. I also used quantitative data of the number of Korean missionaries collected from the Korea World Missions Association and the Korea Research Institute for Mission to assess several hypotheses describing the influence of global religious discourse on local actors’ motivations and practices. I built a framework of an interaction pattern of local actors and international religious networks and depicted how the shared idea of reaching high-risk countries among global religious actors influenced national actors. The study findings indicate that motivations of religious actors risking their lives in high-risk countries are connected to the power of discourse of “unreached people groups” shaped among global actors, and such discourse is actively constructed by global, national, and local actors.