Misin tapa undong

The "movement to destroy the worship of gods" (Hangul: 미신 타파 운동 misin tapa undong, also "to defeat the worship of gods"), also described as "movement to destroy superstition", as 미신 misin is often translated after the movement, comprises a series of waves of "demonisation" and forceful eradication of Korean shamanism, folk religion, and mythology that took place in the period between the late 19th century and the 1980s. It started in the 1890s with the rise of influence of Protestant missionaries, and culminated with the "gods' worship destruction movement" that formed within the New Community Movement of the 20th century, in South Korea, which physically destroyed most of the indigenous cults, which were replaced by Christianity.

Protestant missionaries showed in dark light, as "devil worship", Korean indigenous religions and mu (shamans) since the 19th century. The missionaries reported of "fetish" burnings, great bonfires of ancestral tablets, shamans' tools and clothes, and harborages of spirits that were "destroyed as were the books in Ephesus". They circulated stories of shamans converted to Christianity who encouraged themselves the destruction of the ancestral religion. The exorcistic struggle between a shaman and a Christian even became a literary motif with Kim Tongni's colonial-period novella Portrait of a Shaman.

Missionaries found allies in the Korean intellectuals of the twilight years of the Joseon kingdom, producing together the Independent (Tongnip Sinmun), the first newspaper published in Korean language. The newspaper promoted iconoclasm and addressed government officials on the necessity to eradicate the indigenous religion.

In 1896 the police began to arrest shamans, destroy shrines and burn ritual paraphernalia, acclaimed by the Independent. At one point the Independent also criticised Buddhist monks.

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Wikipedia