Fans, Sashes, and Jesus: Evangelical Activism and Worship Dance in South Korea

“Fans, Sashes, and Jesus: Evangelical Activism and Worship Dance in South Korea" recognizes the important of dance that functions as a fulcrum of evangelical activist expressions, especially in the face of growing public visibility of LGBTQ presence in South Korea. What is characteristic about the performances, as I explore in this article, is that they have emphases on “folk” and “traditional” elements that supposedly restore what the church group members deem proper Koreanness, but the composition of the performances is also transnational – buchaechum (fan dance) in particular is a modern amalgam of folk and Shamanistic Korean dance, ethnic Chinese dance, and modern dance choreography developed by Seung-hee Choi and Baek-bong Kim whose fan dance repertoire has been shaped through its touring in the US and other countries during the height of Cold War diplomacy. In that sense, fan dance, ballet, and drumming performed by the church groups are at once Korean and not-Korean. This seems, at first glance, to undermine the groups’ belief in the performance’s capacity to “exorcize” the “Western” and “unpatriotic” acts of queerness. In the long term, however, the simultaneous Korean/non-Korean nature of the performances is really about putting these right-wing church groups on the map, announcing their presence and increasing their visibility nationally and internationally.