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Korean culture is making waves in North America through K-pop music and K-dramas such as Squid Game and Beef. Many grocery stores now carry kimchi, frozen beef bulgogi, and roasted seaweed snacks. There’s also a rich body of contemporary worship songs by Korean composers, but few English speakers know them, and many Korean American churches don’t yet welcome them in their main Sunday liturgy.

Chan Gyu Jang, a resource development specialist for web-based liturgical resources at the 91���� (CICW) in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is co-managing an emerging initiative to translate these Korean worship songs into English.

“When I was 12,” Jang says, “my parents were called to serve a nondenominational church of Korean immigrants in China. There I learned to speak English and Chinese. Since the 1970s and especially since the 1990s, Korean composers began writing contemporary worship songs. I grew up listening to and singing these songs that we keep in our hearts as precious treasures.

“I learned the songs mostly through audio recordings and CDs and led them in my high school youth group in China, so these songs were very close to me. Since we now have our own Korean heart songs, why not share them with English speakers?” he wonders.

Jang’s project builds on other musicians’ efforts in partnership with CICW, , and contemporary Christian songwriters in the U.S.

One of the curated songs is written by Sun-kyung Jeong and Jin-young Soh and translated by , director of music at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey. The song’s universal appeal is evident in its first verse:

God of my help, look and see—
hold my broken heart, count my tears.
God of my hope, stay with me
through my lonely hours, through my fears.

Bilingual songs in this emerging collection offer options to sing in Korean only, English only, or simultaneously. But including them in the main liturgy on Sunday will require churches in Korean-speaking and English-speaking settings to think through four issues: respect for Western hymnody; voicing what’s uniquely Korean; deciding which emotions are appropriate for worship; and addressing welcome and resistance to indigenous music.

Great respect for Western music

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, English-speaking missionaries came to Korea and spread the gospel. Western missionaries introduced their music culture of organ, piano, choirs, hymnals, and four-part harmony. They built hospitals, schools, and universities. Missionaries learned the Korean language and translated the Bible using , the alphabetic system for writing the Korean language. Despite huge differences between Korean and English alphabets, grammar, poetic structure, and musical systems, the missionaries worked hard to translate their own hymns into Korean. Learning not only hymns but Western classical music opened doors for Korean Christians to study abroad.

Meanwhile, Korea struggled with deep imbalances between wealthy elites and minjung (impoverished masses). The country endured Japanese occupation (1910–45.) It was by global superpowers, during which Christian leaders in Pyongyang—once known as the “Jerusalem of the East”—were imprisoned, martyred, or fled south. Christian refugees from the north established large churches in the south that value conservatism and anti-communism.

The permanently divided families between communist North Korea and the more democratic South Korea, though South Korea has had periods of dictatorship too. “Following the Korean War, South Koreans came to view the Americans as saviors, and the Americans’ religion, Christianity, as a source of strength and wealth,” writes in an article in The Diplomat.

“When I was a young boy in South Korean public schools,” Jang recalls, “I was taught that the U.S. is good—the best country in the world. So if something like church music comes from the West, it is better.”

Jang says most Protestant congregations in Korea use a unified hymnal compiled for Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist churches. Many Korean American churches use a bilingual Korean-English hymnal that’s branded separately for and but contains the same songs. of those are originally Korean titles.

“Songs with melody and chords appeared in the late twentieth century as part of the contemporary worship music (CWM) movement. Besides traditional worship services, many congregations also offer a contemporary service with and some contemporary songs by Korean writers. Korean Anglicans and Korean Catholics have their own hymnals,” Jang says.

In interviews with South Korean diasporic choirs, music historian learned that they “understand hymns and related Euro-American genres as healing practices that helped them overcome a difficult past.”

Jang notes, “Older or more traditional Korean worshipers don’t see these contemporary songs as having as much weight as translated English songs. They tend not to sing them within Sunday worship services.”

Voicing what’s uniquely Korean

Though Korean CWM often voices universal themes, it has a unique sound and emotional coloring.

This new music often strikes those from other cultures as gentle, reverent, and melodic. “Beauty in Korean history is often described as ‘frugal yet not shabby, splendid yet not extravagant,’” Jang says. “I wonder if our sense of beauty, deeply ingrained in our identity and history, is reflected in our songs even today. It would not be accurate to assume that all Korean songs are gentle or reverent, but I believe that modesty is a key characteristic.”

Koreans speak of an emotional concept called han. In Christianity Today, defines han as felt in the collective and wrought by enduring oppression . . . (and) unspeakable grief of Korean historical memory—a grief that unites in the way it pounds in the hearts of a common people, yearning to feel whole.”

Others have described han as anger, regret, resignation, aggression, anxiety, loneliness, longing, emptiness, and generational trauma from being oppressed. A brief defines han as “deep-seated sorrow, hurt, and pain of Korean culture, because we are rooted in wars and being a poor nation and just a lot of hardship.”

by Ho-Ghi Min, Huyn-Im Lee, and Yoseb Kim, expresses sorrow, longing, and weariness. Martin Tel translated it to English. The Trinitarian text redirects aspirations for power and prosperity, proclaiming that “human power and pride” and “treasures of this world will never satisfy.”

Instead, the chorus asks, “May my life reflect your way.”

Emotions appropriate for worship

Christian cultures and denominations differ in how they understand the meaning and goal of worship.

In his conference presentations, Jang sometimes includes a chart comparing a typical liturgy at Woodlawn Christian Reformed Church (CRC) in Grand Rapids, Michigan, (where he is music director) to a typical Sunday liturgy at Korean Church of Orange County, California (also CRC).

“The placement of songs in liturgy has theological implications,” Jang says. “It reveals our understanding of who God is and what he does in worship (and when) and on our understanding of who we are and what we do in worship and when. The Korean verb for worship means ‘to offer’ or ‘to give.’ The Korean noun for worship means ‘reverent bow’.”

“At Woodlawn,” he continues, “worship is a dialogue between God and his people. God speaks and engages with his people through the liturgy. We make right with God through worship. Different emotions are experienced throughout the liturgy. By contrast, at Korean Church of Orange County, worship is an offering to God in response to which God speaks to his people. God receives his people’s worship. We make right with God before worship. Awe and reverence are at the forefront. Other feelings are not fit to be expressed in the liturgy proper.” That’s why CWM with han emotions or exuberant joy may be frowned on for Sunday worship.

Many Korean American churches advise coming to church early to prepare for worship. This pre-service time may include (emotional praying and crying out loud all together), contemporary praise songs, and maybe even a Matthew 5:23–24 altar call to repent to God about one’s part in a conflict.

“But when the liturgy proper begins,” Jang says, “the mood is reverent and reserved. In the Korean context, worship is a holy, unblemished offering, so you’d better make it right with God before worship. It is good to see worship as something we give to God. But we can also think of it as a covenant renewal that includes joyful praise, confession, and assurance of pardon.

“Woodlawn and many English-speaking Reformed and Presbyterian churches see worship as a covenant-renewing dialogue between God and gathered people,” Jang explains “That’s why liturgies often include confession and assurance of pardon. Confession and assurance of pardon don’t often happen in Korean Presbyterian or Reformed congregations. If it’s even there, it is placed after the sermon, after the preacher calls worshipers to repent and recommit themselves to God in light of the sermon.”

Welcome and resistance

Indigenous Korean music freely expresses han, often through a stylized, raspy, vibrato voicing such as the . Jang explains that traditional Korean folk and court music, as in many Asian cultures, is based on a pentatonic scale: “Our note system’s scale for C major, for example, was ‘do-re-mi-so-la,’ with no sharps or flats and no ‘fa’ or ‘ti.’ Western scales are usually based on seven notes, or

twelve notes if you include the black piano keys. I’ve read accounts of how frustrated missionaries sometimes got while trying to teach hymns that included notes that didn’t exist in Korean music.”

In his dissertation, scholar Hyun Min Lee writes, “[M]issionaries considered traditional Korean music to be profane and, as a result, very few Korean church musicians have maintained interest and skills in traditional instruments and styles.”

Jang says, “There was a movement to use indigenous music in church, but that was strongly opposed by Koreans who thought of it as corrupting for its association with shamanism, immorality, and non-Christian beliefs. That resistance remains, although we have seen improvements in our most recent hymnal publications. I think something has been lost. In South Korea, Anglicans and some Presbyterians have been intentional in bringing back Korean musical forms. If Christ can redeem all things, our indigenous music can be redirected for sacred use.”

A good example is by , a Korean Anglican also known as Kōn-yong Yi. He wrote the song as a plea for God to The text, paraphrased into English by United Church of Canada missionary, addresses God as “Prince of Peace,” “God of love,” “God our Savior,” and “Hope of unity.”

Lee’s O-SO-SO tune unites a typical Korean pentatonic scale and three-beat measures with Western harmonics. “Near the end of the hymn, the tenor part crossing beyond the alto part might imply that one has to go further and break rules in order to find paths to reconciliation,” writes noted ethnomusicologist I-to-Loh in

“Ososo / Come Now, O Prince of Peace” is often sung at international ecumenical gatherings and appears in at least . In South Korea, however, the song isn’t widely known outside Anglican circles. Jang says he’s met many evangelical Koreans who first heard “Ososo” when they came to North America for seminary.

“Our eventual songbook of fifty bilingual contemporary songs will include five or six indigenous songs like ‘Ososo.’ Not everyone will like this. In North America, we hear ‘make us one body’ as a plea to be one in Christ. But words like ‘unity’ and ‘unification’ can be seen as ‘too political’ given that Korean Christians disagree on Also, between North and South Korea,” he says.

Hwadap vision

In 2025 or 2026, GIA Publications will begin publishing single songs as part of its series. Project managers hope to eventually release a bilingual songbook of at least fifty songs. The audience would include Korean American and Korean immigrant churches in the U.S.; universities and seminaries in the U.S., which host 40,000 Korean international students annually; Korean missionaries in more than 160 countries, especially those sharing the gospel with English speakers; and churches in mainland South Korea, especially as the country welcomes immigrants from around the world.

“I’d like to offer many songs that I think Korean churches will love,” Jang says. “Churches can decide for themselves what will work for them or not. The vision I have is that our contemporary songs by Korean composers will carry as much weight as translated Western hymns and will be used in the liturgy proper.”

“The vision I have is that our contemporary songs by Korean composers will carry as much weight as translated Western hymns and will be used in the liturgy proper.”

“Singing in Korean, then English, then in the language of your choice embodies the Korean concept of hwadap,” Jang explains. “It’s the Korean word used in Ephesians 5:19, which calls us to speak or admonish one another with ‘psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord.’ It also means to answer in harmony or do a certain act, such as a song in response. And if many denominations sing these songs, it may spark an ecumenical movement in South Korea.”