Christian Anticommunism and Enemy-making in Cold War South Korea

To many conservative Christians in South Korea, the 2024 martial law decree was not only justified but righteous in the face of threats posed by “pro-North Korea” enemies to the nation. This paper situates the contemporary politics of enmity by returning to the Korean War (1950–53) and its aftermath to offer historical perspectives on the entwinement of anticommunist nation-building and Christian political imagination in the making of the Cold War South Korean nation and its place in the U.S.-led Free World. By focusing on two particular processes—the violent excision of (internal) enemies and rescuing of Christians (mass killings/rescue) and the incarceration and (re-)making of enemies into good anticommunist subjects (containment/rehabilitation)—this paper examines subject-making and enemy-making as mutually constitutive processes in the violent coherence of Christian anticommunism in wartime South Korea at the height of the US empire’s military power.