SEOUL (UCAN) - In South Korea's 15th general election April 11, 61 Catholics were elected lawmakers, 20.4 percent of the 299 elected nationwide, an increase of eight over the 14th National Assembly, which had 53 Catholics.
The Catholics include 20 members of the ruling New Korea Party (NKP) of President Kim Young-sam and 23 of the main opposition National Congress for New Politics (NCNP) led by Thomas More Kim Dae-jung. Eight won conservative United Liberal Democrat (ULD) seats, six won opposition Democratic Party (DP) seats and four won independent seats.
They include former prime minister Olaf Lee Hoi-chang (NKP), former National Assembly president Joseph Lee Man-sop (NKP) and former Seoul mayor Augustine Choi Byong-ryol (NKP). Others include human rights lawyer Augustine Lee Sang-soo (NCNP) and Paul Jei Jung-ku (DP), an advocate for the urban poor and other alienated people.
Kim Dae-jung, South Korea's most prominent Catholic political figure, was not reelected but his son John Kim Hong-il of the NCNP was. The NCNP unexpectedly got too few votes to make the elder Kim, a three-time unsuccessful candidate for president, a lawmaker as the 14th party candidate for the proportional assembly seat system. A surprise winner was Philip Hur Hwa-pyong, running as an independent from jail, where he is detained for his alleged role in the 1979 military mutiny and May 1980 military crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Kwangju. Yok-sam parish in Seoul archdiocese has three assembly members, Raphael Hwang Byong-tae (NKP), Peter Lee Dong-bok (ULD) and Joseph Chung Sang-chon (ULD). Five Seoul parishes and one Inchon diocese parish have two each.
Protestants may have won 90 seats and Buddhists 53 seats, but the numbers are tentative and expected to increase slightly since the religious backgrounds of some winners were not yet disclosed.
According to the Social Statistics Survey by the National Statistical Office of the government in 1994, only 49.9 percent of 44.4 million South Koreans answered that they have a religion.
Only 24.4 percent said they were Buddhists, South Korea's largest religion; 18.2 percent said they were Protestants; 5.9 percent said they were Catholics; and 1.5 percent said they had other religions.
According to the Catholic Address Book 1996, published by the Catholic Conference of Korea, South Korea had 3.3 million Catholics at the end of 1994, or 7.51 percent of the population.
UCAN 24. april 1996