Executive Summary

Why it matters

Romans is the theological backbone of the New Testament, and Korean carries a doctrinal-translation risk profile distinct from every other language in this pipeline: Korea has the largest Christian population proportionally in East Asia and its own robust, century-old Bible translation tradition, so the risk here is not large-scale syncretism but a narrower, sharper overlap between Korean shamanistic folk religion (무속신앙) and the very “spirit”/“power” vocabulary central to Romans, plus a historically significant collision between Confucian filial-piety ancestor rites and exclusive loyalty to God as Father.

Key findings

The registry tracks 40 doctrines across Romans 1-16; 25 require mandatory human theologian review before any translated segment ships (5 Critical, 20 High) — the lowest Critical/High combined count in this batch of four languages, reflecting Korea’s more settled Christian vocabulary tradition.
Grace, Power of God for Salvation, and Holy Spirit-related sanctification are Critical-risk specifically because Korean charismatic Christianity’s own internal self-critique has long flagged a shamanistic transactional pattern (기복신앙, “fortune-seeking faith”) as a live pastoral concern, not a hypothetical one.
“Father” carries the heaviest historical weight of any term in this package: 18th-19th century Korean Catholic converts were persecuted and martyred specifically over refusing Confucian ancestor-memorial rites (제사), a real doctrinal-cultural collision this curriculum must teach with historical awareness.
Kingdom of God and Kingdom Mission are unusually Low/Medium-risk here, since Korea has no live competing “divine kingdom” state ideology — a genuine point of contrast with Mandarin’s Mandate-of-Heaven risk and Japan’s State Shinto risk.

Risks

Shamanistic overlap risk: grace, holy spirit, and power of God each risk being processed through Korea’s still-active shamanism (무속신앙), where a mudang’s ritual power and spirit-channeling supply a superficially similar but doctrinally opposite framework.
Ancestor-rite collision risk: “Father” and “adoption” language intersects with Korea’s historically significant, sometimes lethal conflict between Confucian jesa ancestor rites and exclusive Christian loyalty to God.
Achievement-culture risk: obedience, election, and mission all risk being read through Korea’s intensely competitive, hierarchical, achievement-oriented social culture rather than as gifts of grace.

Opportunities

Korean already maintains a clean structural distinction between covenant (언약) and secular contract (계약) that some other languages in this pipeline lack, removing a whole category of dilution risk for free.
Korean 아빠 (appa, informal “dad”) closely parallels the Aramaic Abba’s intimate register, an unusually good natural fit.

Recommended actions

Route every Critical and High risk segment (25 of 40 doctrines) through human theologian review before publication; do not allow automated-only review to touch these terms.
Brief native-speaker reviewers specifically on the internal Korean-church critique of 기복신앙 so a fluent-but-transactional rendering of grace or power language is caught before it ships.
Reuse this Language Package’s translation_memory.json for every Romans lesson in Korean rather than re-deriving terms per document, per the two-phase pipeline design.