Korean Americans are nearly twice as likely to identify as Christians compared to adults in South Korea (59% versus 32%), according to latest Pew Research Center data released at the end of August.
The survey also showed that Korean American adults are far less likely to be religiously unaffiliated compared to adults in South Korea (34% versus 52%) or Buddhist (3% versus 14%).
Report authors Kelsey Jo Starr and Kirsten Lesage said the religious differences may be down to the faith background of immigrants moving to the U.S. from South Korea in the past few decades.
“Migrants often go to countries where their religious identity is already prevalent and the U.S. is the world’s top destination for Christian migrants globally.”
The survey involved the views of Asian Americans in 2022 and 2023, alongside a survey of East Asian adults in 2023.
Findings from the survey revealed the origins of Korean Americans with 66 percent immigrating from [South] Korea and 26 percent born in the U.S. The two groups differed “widely in their religious makeup,” according to the report’s authors.
Korean Americans born in [South] Korea were twice as likely to be Christian than not affiliated to a religion (63% versus 31%). But those born in the U.S. were fairly split between Christian faith and the unaffiliated (47% versus 45%).
The survey also showed that most Korean American Christians (87%) stated the importance of religion generally in their lives, with a similar figure (82%) for South Korean Christians.
Even so, Korean American Christians are far more likely than South Korean Christians to concur that religion is “very important” (58% versus 39%). The question was also asked of Korean American Christians as to whether they felt close to other religions. Korean American Christians did not, compared to South Korean Christians. As an example, 22 percent of Korean American Christians felt “close” to Confucianism, cited the report, with a similar figure (23%) feeling close to Buddhism.
“By contrast, many Christians in South Korea feel a personal connection to at least one other religion’s or philosophy’s way of life,” stated the report. “A majority of South Korean Christians (58%) say this about Confucianism, and 34% say the same about Buddhism.”
Meanwhile only two percent of Korean American Christians “feel close to Daoism/Taoism for reasons aside from religion” and 24 percent of Christians noted a “personal connection to the Daoist way of life.”
Some of the respondents chose to not answer questions about affiliations to other religions. 15 percent of Korean American Christians “chose not to answer each of the questions about a connection to other traditions.” This compares to 10 percent of South Korean Christians avoiding questions about connections to Daoism, said the report.
