South Korea's churches and temples multiplied after 1960, then began emptying
In 1962 barely one South Korean in twenty called themselves Christian. By 2005 almost three in ten did, and Protestant churches had multiplied more than eightfold in under four decades. Buddhism boomed alongside. Now about half the country says it has no religion, though many so-called nonbelievers may still consult shamans.
Shamanism, guided by practitioners called mu, was the original faith of the peninsula. Buddhism arrived from China in 372 in the northern kingdom of Goguryeo and became Silla's state religion in 552, flourishing under the Goryeo dynasty. The Joseon kingdom that ruled from 1392 to 1910 imposed a rigid Neo-Confucianism, tore down monasteries until only thirty-six remained, and banned monks and nuns from entering towns. By 1900 institutional Buddhism was almost extinct.
Christian groups existed from the 17th and 18th centuries, but only in the 1880s did the crumbling Joseon court let Western missionaries in large numbers, and they opened schools, hospitals and presses with royal backing. Under Japanese rule from 1910 to 1945, Christians refused Shinto rites, tying their faith to Korean nationalism. Christianity was then strongest in the north, and at partition in 1945 more than a million believers fled south.
In the 1970s and 1980s governments campaigned against folk worship, destroying almost every traditional Confucian kinship shrine; the drive was especially harsh under Park Chung Hee, himself a Buddhist. Many people moved their folk practice into Buddhism, which had long blended with it, while others joined churches. Between 1962 and 1997 the count of Buddhist temples went from 2,306 to 11,561, and Protestant churches from 6,785 to 58,046. Buddhists grew from 2.6% of the population in 1962 to 22.8% in 2005, Christians from 5% to 29.2%.
Since 2000 both traditions have been shrinking. The 2015 census, conducted largely online with a 20% sample, showed Buddhism down to 15.5%, a result Buddhists and Catholics disputed as biased against rural believers. A 2025 Korea Research survey found 51% with no religion, 20% Protestant, 11% Catholic and 16% Buddhist. Yet a 2012 survey found only 15% nonreligious in an atheist sense, and scholars say censuses miss shamanism entirely.
Source: Religion in South Korea
