There were 51,307 Catholic baptisms in South Korea in 2023, an increase of almost a quarter on the previous year.
This continued a pattern of gradual recovery in numbers since the Covid pandemic saw a collapse in Korean religious observance, with baptisms falling from more than 81,000 in 2019 to just over 30,000 in 2020.
The 2023 edition of the Statistics of the Catholic Church in Korea, published in April by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea, recorded 5,976,675 Catholics in the country – more than 1.5 million of them in Archdiocese of Seoul and almost one million in the Diocese of Suwon.
This was an increase of 20,813 from the previous year and means Catholics continue to make up around 11 per cent of the Korean population, a proportion that has remained steady since 2018 after 30 years of rapid expansion of the Church. Just over half of Koreans have no religious affiliation.
Around 13,000 of the 2023 baptisms were of infants, reflecting the Korean Church’s continued weighting to an older, convert membership which has led to concerns about its sustainability and prompted renewed efforts at “domestic evangelisation”. Seoul will host the next edition of World Youth Day in 2027.
The bishops’ figures record weekly Mass attendance of 13.5 per cent, still well below the pre-pandemic level following a 35 per cent drop in Sunday observance between 2019 and 2022. Some have attributed this to the popularity of “televised” Masses which parishes have continued to broadcast – often to a high standard – since the pandemic.
In March, the Archdiocese of Seoul published a report titled “Church Every Day” on initiatives to encourage Mass attendance, especially among the young.
South Korea’s parliamentary elections on 10 April returned a new National Assembly to take office on 30 May with 80 Catholics among its 300 deputies. There were 53 Catholics among the centrist Democratic Party’s 175 seats.
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