The Capital of Salvation, the Politics of Hatred: A Political Economy of South Korean Far-Right Protestantism, 1945-2025

This study examines the far-right Protestant phenomenon in South Korea, which surfaced as a central issue following the martial law crisis on December 3, 2024, from a political economy perspective. While existing research has primarily located the origins of far-right Protestantism in culture and theology, this study identifies it as a structural product formed through the historical development of Korean capitalism since liberation. Employing the analytical concept of “salvation-capital”, this research traces the historical trajectory of South Korean far-right Protestantism through three stages. First, from liberation to the 1980s, under the Cold War anti-communist regime and developmental dictatorship, Protestantism achieved the primitive accumulation of salvation-capital through selective affinity with state power. Second, after the 1997 financial crisis and the neoliberal transformation, salvation-capital was internalized into entrepreneurial spirituality, producing entrepreneurial subjects. Third, as the neoliberal polarization that had accumulated since the 1997 financial crisis converged with structural low growth from the 2010s onward, far-right Protestantism confronted the limits of its growth and channeled the resulting anxiety into hatred toward the Other, thereby completing its transformation into a fascist political force. This analysis reveals that the politics of hatred driven by far-right Protestantism is not religious fanaticism but a crisis management mechanism of nationalist capitalism.