[Buddha-l] on the South Korean hostages

[L.S. Cousins]

Dan,

Here's another source:
International Religious Freedom Report 2006
Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

The country has an area of 38,023 square miles, and its population is 
approximately forty-eight million. According to a 2005 government 
survey, when the population stood at 47,041,000, the number of 
adherents of the predominant religions were: Buddhism, 10,726,000; 
Protestantism, 8,616,000; Roman Catholicism, 5,146,000; Confucianism, 
105 thousand; Won Buddhism, 130 thousand; and other religions, 247 
thousand. A total of 22,071,000 citizens did not practice any 
religion. The percentage of adherents of each faith has remained 
approximately the same in recent years.
from:
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2006/71345.htm

The problem with all these figures is that the question as to whether 
people are religious is asked first and those 22 million who say they 
are not religious are then excluded. This is bound to exclude large 
numbers of nominal adherents of traditional religions.

Also, we need to bear in mind that most Korean Christians fled from 
North Korea.

Lance

>Thanks, Weng Fai. The most sobering statistic is:
>
>The nation of 44 million people has 8.7 million registered Protestants and
>2.9 million Roman Catholics, along with 10 million Buddhists, practicing and
>nominal.
>
>Do the math.
>
>Dan

-- 
Best Wishes,

Lance

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