From Religious Conversion to Political Revolution: Women’s Christian Missions in Colonial Korea

Key findings from this study

This research indicates that:

• Greater exposure to female missionaries strongly predicts female political activism during colonial Korea, with no measurable effect on male activism.
• Female role models and informal networks through Bible classes and home visits served as primary mechanisms for linking missionary presence to political participation.
• Effects of missionary exposure on female political activism persisted in women's political representation after 1945, indicating durable institutional impact beyond the colonial period.

Overview

The study examines how exposure to Protestant female missionaries in colonial Korea (1910-1945) influenced women's political participation, addressing a gap in existing research focused primarily on education and fertility outcomes. Female missionaries, arriving beginning in 1885, established Bible women networks that created educational and organizational spaces for Korean women under Joseon Confucian restrictions. The research quantifies the relationship between missionary presence and female activism during this colonial period.

Methods and approach

The analysis employs historical mission records alongside independence activist data to establish exposure measures. Gender-specific ordinary least squares regression compares effects on female versus male activism. Missionary children serve as an instrumental variable to strengthen causal identification. The study identifies mechanisms through female role models and informal networks, particularly Bible classes and home visits.

Results

Exposure to female missionaries significantly predicts female political activism, with the effect concentrated among women rather than men. The instrumental variable approach confirms this gender-differentiated causal relationship. Informal organizational structures—Bible classes and home visits—operated as primary mechanisms linking missionary presence to activist participation. The analysis reveals that female missionary networks provided both role models and institutional platforms for political mobilization.

Effects persisted beyond the colonial period, with missionary exposure predicting female political representation after 1945. This long-term persistence suggests that missionary-facilitated networks generated durable shifts in women's civic engagement rather than temporary activism. The results provide systematic quantitative evidence distinguishing missionary impacts on gender-specific political participation from documented effects on educational access.

Implications

These findings reframe missionary influence in colonial contexts beyond cultural or educational dimensions to include substantive political empowerment. Female missionaries created institutional pathways for women's political voice when formal political structures excluded them, suggesting that non-state actors shaped gendered political outcomes during colonialism. The persistence of effects into the postcolonial period indicates that missionary networks established foundations for women's subsequent formal political participation.

The research suggests mechanisms of political mobilization through informal networks merit greater attention in studying colonial political change. Gender-disaggregated analysis reveals how institutional exposure produces differentiated political effects between men and women, relevant to understanding political empowerment in contexts where formal access diverges across gender lines.

Scope and limitations

This summary is based on the study abstract and available metadata. It does not include a full analysis of the complete paper, supplementary materials, or underlying datasets unless explicitly stated. Findings should be interpreted in the context of the original publication.