Christian missionaries are involved in rampant conversion activities in Nepal despite the fact that religious conversions are illegal in the Himalayan nation. These are South Korean missionaries who are involved in forcible conversions because they believe the locals are ‘financially and spiritually poor’.

The South Korean evangelists are reported to have converted a large number of people and even entire villages to Christianity in Buddha’s birthplace and former Hindu kingdom before communists came to power and made Nepal a ‘secular state’ in 2015. The country has an anti-conversion law that came into effect in 2018. However, returning to the Hindu Dharmic fold is the best bet for Nepal to escape the evil clutches of the Christian conversion mafia.

In what should set alarm bells ringing, it has come to light that Nepalese Christian communities rank as one of the world’s fastest-growing ones due to the increased footprint of South Korean missionaries. Most of the converts belong to the underprivileged social classes (communities the West loves to label as Dalits).

“Korean pastor Pang Chang-in has overseen the opening of nearly 70 churches in his two decades in Nepal, mostly in Dhading district, two hours north-west of the capital Kathmandu. The community, he says, donates the land and Korean churches help pay for the construction”, reports BBC.

Pang also claims that churches are being constructed in almost every mountain valley. According to the national Christian community survey, Nepal, which is still largely Hindu, has 7758 churches. It must be highlighted that South Korea has emerged as the world’s largest nation with overseas Christian missionaries.

As per the data provided by Korean World Mission Association, just two decades after it started sending proselytizers abroad, South Korea has around 22000 missionaries overseas. Koreans are also known to be aggressive in their Christianization efforts often visiting the hardest-to-evangelise corners of the world, even though they are even expelled from these places at times.

Pang and his wife are part of a community of around 300 Korean missionary families currently in Nepal. Interestingly, the evangelists are on business or study visas and some run restaurants while others have charities.

The Pang couple arrive in Nepal in 2003 when the Hindu royal family was on the throne. “I was shocked to see so many idols being worshipped,” says Pang. “I felt Nepal was in desperate need of the gospel”, Pang says. However, it was the disbanding of the Hindu monarchy that aided the acceleration of evangelism in Nepal.

Five years later the 240-year-old monarchy was abolished following a decade of civil war, and a coalition government came to power, declaring Nepal a secular republic in 2008. Pang described 2008 as “the golden age for missionary work”. Is this a lesson for Hindu-majority Bharat where the same brand of ‘secularism’ has done more harm to Hindu Dharma and Hindus?

“It’s spreading like wildfire. Cultural identity is at stake. The fabric of national unity is at stake. Missionaries are working behind the scenes and exploiting the poor and ignorant people and encouraging them to convert to Christianity. This is not a case of religious freedom. This is a case of exploitation in the name of religion”, argues former deputy prime minister, Kamal Thapa about the Christian missionary mafia. Thapa believes Korean missionary work is an organized attack on Nepal’s cultural identity and is lobbying for Nepal to become a Hindu state again.

The missionaries have a misplaced sense of ‘saving souls’ syndrome which stems from the fact that Abrahamic religions believe that theirs is the only ‘true path’ unlike Dharmic faiths that allow the devotee to choose from a pantheon of deities based on his/her state of spiritual evolvement.

Missionaries like Pang target remote villages for their conversion activities where they can easily fool people in the name of ‘miracle cures’. “In the cities, the anti-conversion law feels much more real. But in the countryside, there are fewer eyes watching,” says Pang. Additionally, students who travel from Nepal to Korea for studies are the most vulnerable and Korean missionaries are exploiting this. They present Bible in the Nepali language and use their loneliness to convert them to Christianity.

“Doing evangelical work within Nepal is a challenge. So we have alternative ways,” he says. “Our mission is to convert – as Pastor Dilli Ram Paudel was a Hindu priest when he was younger (who went to Korea to study) – any souls we can, so we must remain undercover”, a Korean missionary has been quoted by BBC as saying on the condition of anonymity. These Korean missionaries were Covid superspreaders and have no takers among the Korean youth.

The Unification Church, formally known as Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, is a controversial organization labelled as a predatory cult that preaches Judeo-Christianity. It was founded in South Korea by Sun Myung Moon in 1954. Its mass weddings and spiritual sales where people are talked into buying expensive items have turned the organization into a social problem. It is known to be a predatory cult that targeted university campuses in Japan to push its agenda and expand its reach.

“Korea, once a land where Catholic laity had to grow its own church without any priest and produced hundreds of martyrs in an extremely short period of time, now sends out tens of thousands of missionaries a year to the rest of the world. As a nation of 50 million people, it now ranks second in the world in sending missionaries, behind only the United States. Koreans are known to be zealous in their faith, in and outside Korea”, says Mercatornet.

The article then goes on to highlight that Korean Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic, has failed to attract the youth. Radical feminism and LGBT movements, uber materialism and consumer capitalism, rejection of the concept of prosperity being linked to Christianity, Church corruption scandals, allegations and rape convictions of pastors, and liberal Western influence and thought are cited as some of the reasons for youth moving away from churches.

No wonder, Korean missionaries are looking for fertile pastures in nations like Nepal where they can harvest souls by tricking them into believing their ‘miracle healing’.