David Linton, a 42-year-old lawyer, joined a small handful of foreigners who have won Korean citizenship — in this case, in gratitude for the contributions of his late great-grandfather William A. Linton. David Linton’s Korean-born uncle John Linton is a medical doctor who became a Korean citizen two years ago.

Call it Christian history week in Korea.

On Friday, South Korea marks the day that its first president, Syngman Rhee, a Methodist, proclaimed the establishment of the state in 1948. A day earlier, Pope Francis will arrive for a five-day visit to a country whose Catholic history dates back to the late 18th century. The Pope will beatify 124 early believers martyred between 1791 and 1888.

And as a prelude to those festivities, South Korea on Monday conferred special naturalized citizenship on the great-grandson of an American missionary now lionized for his role in the country’s independence movement.

In a Monday ceremony in southern Seoul, David Linton, a 42-year-old lawyer, joined a small handful of foreigners who have won Korean citizenship — in this case, in gratitude for the contributions of his late great-grandfather William A. Linton.

David Linton’s Korean-born uncle John Linton is a medical doctor who became a Korean citizen two years ago.

The citizenship ceremony turns a spotlight on the longtime role Christians — both Protestants and Catholics — have played in the modernizing of Korea. The Linton family traces its roots in Korea to Eugene Bell, an American who arrived in Korea as a Southern Presbyterian missionary in 1895.

Mr. Bell’s son-in-law William Linton, another U.S. Southern Presbyterian missionary who arrived in Korea in 1912, helped resist the Japanese occupation. After William Linton was expelled, he gave lectures in the U.S. and penned newspaper articles calling for recognition of an independent Korean state. After independence, in 1956, William Linton served as the first president of Daejeon Christian Academy, now Hannam University.

In 2010, President Lee Myung-bak posthumously designated William Linton as an “independence hero.”

David Linton, who was born in Jackson, Mississippi, was raised with stories of his ancestors’ experiences in Korea as missionaries, but didn’t take particular interest in Korea until his undergraduate years in the early 1990s, when he began learning the language.

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