아시아 10/02/10 KOREA - Bus firm drops ‘Anti-Christ’ ads after protests

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KOREA - Bus firm drops ‘Anti-Christ’ ads after protests

Published Date: February 10, 2010

An ‘Anti-Christ’ ad on a bus in Seoul

SEOUL (UCAN) — Protestants have forced bus companies to ban an advertising campaign against their missionary work by a group calling itself Anti-Christ.

Lee Chan-gyeong, president of Anti-Christ, says the ad was to warn against local Protestant Churches’ “offensive missionary work” and its exclusivism that “creates anxiety for Korean people.”

He told UCA News today [Feb. 10] that the ban on the ads was an “infringement of the freedom of expression‎ and an unfair pressure on our activities.”

The ads on eight buses quoted Albert Einstein: “I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures.”

But the bus companies this week [Feb. 8] dropped the ads after Protestants protested.

“We placed the advertisement to inform people that even without Christianity they can live their lives well,” Lee told UCA News today.

Many people are uneasy about Protestant Churches’ missionary works he said.

“They do not consider the religious diversity in Korean society either.”

Anti-Christ, which has some 15,000 members, spent 2.5 million won (US$2,150) on the advertisement.

“We planned to run the advertisement at least for a month but the Protestant Churches pressed the bus companies to remove it,” Lee said.

Kim Bong-soo, an officer of Seoul’s Metropolitan Bus Transportation Union, told UCA News, he had received many complaints about the ad.

“Protestant Churches made lots of protest calls,” he said.

However, Reverend Park Seung-chul, public relations manager of the Christian Council of Korea (CCK), denied there had been “any official action” on the advertisement.

“The advertisement is the expression‎ of blind hatred for Christianity and is different from the atheistic advertisement in Western countries which have a rational tradition.”

He said Anti-Christ’s advertisement “is just the extension of its slander and defamation of Protestantism, not based on rational criticism.”