Public Trust Lost and a Sign of Retroflexion: The Socio-Political Ecology of the Korean Church during the COVID-19 Pandemic1

DAVID W. KIM (BTh, Brisbane, Australia; MA, University of Queensland, Australia; PhD, University of Sydney, Australia) is Visiting Fellow at the School of History, Australian National University, and Associate Professor of Asian History in the College of General Education at Kookmin University, Seoul, South Korea. He is Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society (FRAS), United Kingdom, and serves as Editor for Book Series inModern East Asian Religion and Culture (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK). He is the author, most recently, of Sacred Sites and Sacred Stories Across Cultures: Transmission of Oral Tradition, Myth, and Religiosity (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021); New Religious Movements in Modern Asian History: Socio-Cultural Alternatives (Lanham, Boulder, New York, and London: Lexington Books, 2020); Daesoon Jinrihoe in Modern Korea: The Emergence, Transformation, and Transmission of a New Religion (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020); Colonial Transformation and Asian Religions in Modern History (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018), Religious Encounters in Transcultural Society: A Transnational Movement (Maryland: Lexington Books, 2017); and Religious Transformation in Modern Asia: A Transnational Movement (Leiden and New York: Brill, 2015). His articles have appeared in The Journal of Religion in Japan, International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society, The Review of Korean Studies, Journal of Church and State, Journal of Korean Religions, European Journal of Korean Studies, Journal of Asian History, Asian Studies Review, Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, Religious Studies and Theology, Irish Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of Theology in Scotland, Studies in World Christianity: The Edinburgh Review of Theology & Religion, Biblica, Journal of Coptic Studies, Augustinianum, and Journal of Religious History. Kim’s primary scholarly interests include history, modern East Asia, Korean culture, new religions, and Christianity. 1. Since this is initial research on COVID-19 and the Korean Church, some sources are based on official reports published by the health authority (KCDC: Korea