Conquering Korea for Jesus: Protestant Missionaries, Local Churches, and Literacy in Colonial Korea

We study the effect of Protestantism on human capital acquisition using novel data on 234 counties and 2,478 towns in the Korean peninsula in 1930. We show that towns with a higher share of native Protestants have higher literacy rates. To establish causality, we employ the location of foreign Protestant missionaries as an instrumental variable for the presence of native Protestant churches. To study the differential effects of different missionary societies, we use a spatial regression discontinuity design, exploiting the Comity Agreement of 1909 which geographically divided Korea between missionary societies. Our results suggest that Protestantism played a crucial role in the accumulation of human capital, and that the activity of native Protestants was a key factor in the accumulation of human capital.