Trans-Asian Pieties: Korean Missionary Women in 1960s Pakistan

This research addresses a critical gap in the historiography of World Christianity by documenting the overlooked history of South Korean female missionaries. While scholars have extensively analyzed Western women’s roles, non-Western missionary agency remains significantly under-researched. This study uncovers a 1960s "vanguard" of Korean women who pioneered missions in Pakistan—a predominantly Muslim society—a decade before their male counterparts. It explores how these women transitioned from traditional Confucian roles to autonomous transnational agents and contributed to South-South missions. Grounded in archives across Korea and the U.S., this study challenges "West-to-Rest" narratives. It demonstrates that World Christianity in the Global South was not a passive reception of Western ideas, but a dynamic movement led by a non-Western, female-led vanguard that redefined Asian Christian identity.