Yu Gwan-sun’s Peace Movement from the Perspective of Christian Hospitality Ethics : Theological Implications and Social Significance

This article reinterprets Yu Gwan-sun's resistance-long treated as a patriotic martyrdom narrative within the legacy of the March 1st Independence Movement of 1919-not as a merely nationalist sacrifice but as an embodiment of a Christian ethic of hospitality and peace. First, the study examines the nonviolent and peace-oriented character of the March 1st Movement, as well as the distinctive emergence of young female leadership within it, and historically reconstructs the formation of the so-called “Yu Gwan-sun Spirit” through her faith, family formation, and educational experience at Ewha. Second, by juxtaposing Immanuel Kant's notion of conditional hospitality (a visitor's right that remains limited by law and order) and Jacques Derrida's notion of absolute hospitality (the demand to open one's home and authority unreservedly to the other), this study analyzes the normative limits and practical impossibilities of both models. Third, it contrasts these philosophical proposals with an eschatological Christian ethic of hospitality, arguing that hospitality and peace should not be reduced to an abstract aporia or a product of political compromise, but should rather be understood as an enacted ethic of responsibility under divine sovereignty and the command of the triune God. In this light, the “Yu Gwan-sun Spirit” is interpreted not merely as patriotic fervor, but as a form of faithful responsibility that refuses to abandon love for the other and the pursuit of communal peace even in the face of imperial oppression. Her leadership of nonviolent protest, her continued cries for liberation in prison under torture, and her unwavering testimony in the face of death are presented as a radical moral reversal in which the powerless extend hospitality to, and morally confront, the powerful. Finally, this study proposes that the “Yu Gwan-sun Spirit” constitutes a public theological resource for responding to today's ideological polarization, gender conflict, and intergenerational hostility in Korean society. It argues that this spirit is not an act of benevolence bestowed by the privileged, but a radical peace ethic in which those who ought to be protected offer themselves and demand a higher common good-thus providing a theological basis for an ethic of hospitality capable of healing social fracture.