Make Korea Great Again: Mina Kim, Charlie Kirk, and Far Right Evangelical Activism Across the Pacific

Summary

Days before his assassination, Charlie Kirk took the stage in South Korea—and found an audience ready to carry his movement across the Pacific. In the series premiere, host Dr. Helen Jin Kim follows the rise of Mina Kim, the evangelical influencer behind Build Up Korea. Through viral videos, stadium-sized gatherings, and a potent mix of Christianity, nationalism, and digital media, Mina is helping connect America’s MAGA movement with South Korea’s emerging Christian right. What does her ascent reveal about the global future of evangelical power—and the young activists determined to build it?

Guests:

Dr. Chanhee Heo is a postdoctoral research associate at the John C. Danforth Center at Washington University in St. Louis. Her first monograph in progress, Thy Kin-dom Come: Imagining the First Christian Nation in the East, examines Korean migrants’ evolving ideas of race and religion as they traversed the Pacific from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. Instagram: @heochanhee Bluesky: @chanheeheo.bsky.social 

Dr. Myung-Sahm Suh, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Sogang University, Seoul, South Korea. He earned a Ph.D. in Anthropology and Sociology of Religion from the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. His current research explores the geopolitical theology of new religious movements, Cold War religion in East Asia, and the trans-Pacific networks of the Christian right, building on earlier work comparing religion and state-building in Taiwan and South Korea and examining the prosperity gospel and neo-evangelicalism in Korea. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/myungsahm.suh 

Host:

Dr. Helen Jin Kim is Associate Professor of American Religious History at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. Kim completed her MDiv and PhD at Harvard as a William R. Hutchison Presidential Fellow. She began her research at Stanford where she completed her BA in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity and English. Kim is the author of Race for Revival: How Cold War South Korea Shaped the American Evangelical Empire (Oxford University Press, 2022), which won the 2024 Outstanding Achievement in History award from the Association of Asian American Studies. Her next book is tentatively titled ‘Woman Spirit’: Religion and Hidden Labor from the Korean War to the Age of K-Pop.

Brought to you by Axis Mundi Media, K-Spirits is a limited series from the Institute for Religion, Media, and Civic Engagement (IRMCE) in partnership with the Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative (APARRI). It is part of the Under Gods project, funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. 

Host: Dr. Helen Jin Kim

Executive Producer: Dr. Leah Payne

Producer: Andrew Gill

Story Editor: Dr. Bradley Onishi

Original Score: David Bazan

Production Assistance: Kari Onishi

Cover Art: Eric Zwierzynski