Recent sociological studies have found out that institutional disorganization and loss of social function has been attributed to the modernization of the society. In a religious context, the greatest impact of modernization is the process of secularization which can be described as the process in which religion loses its hold on institutions and human consciousness. In Korea, the process of modernization initially commenced at the beginning of the 20th century a period that was also the end years of the Choson dynasty. However, modernity cannot be held responsible for the existing conflicts in modern Protestant churches in Korea. This also implies that modernization is not responsible for the sudden rise and slow growth of the Korean Protestant churches.
According to recent statistics, the Korean Protestant population excluding that of cults was at 5,859,000 during the year 1980. The church experienced significant growth where the total population of the church accounted for almost 20% of the country’s total population. The situation in Korea at the time that the first American Protestant missionary Dr. Horace Allen arrived at the Korean Peninsula was that the social structure was experiencing some changes with a new consciousness towards a more egalitarian society. The history of the Korean Protestant church traces its roots to the Choson dynasty. The period the followed was a series of the Protestant revolution starting from the emancipation of the oppressed by the Roman Catholic Christianity between the years 1876 to 1984.
At the end of the 2nd world war, Korea was reed form the control of Japan and the country later split to the North and the South. The political, military and social structure during this period provided a favorable setting for the rapid growth of the protestant church. However, this rapid growth slowed as a result of modernization which largely boosted the leisure industry. The rapid growth of the Korean Protestant Church can therefore be attributed to the political instability during the early years. The decline in the growth of the church therefore is as a result of political and economic stability which has led people to engage in pleasure oriented activities.