Editor’s Introduction
Boudewijn Walraven, 5

The past century has seen a huge imbalance in the study of Korean Buddhism. Most attention has been devoted to the early period and particularly to Buddhism in Silla, where Wŏnhyo (617–686) emerged as a towering figure whose influence reached far beyond the Korean peninsula. Koryŏ, too, received considerable attention, particularly thanks to the printing of the Tripitaka, which became the basis for the Taishō Canon that is used as a standard edition by modern buddhologists. … With the advent of the Chosŏn court in 1392, however, the gradual adoption of Neo-Confucianism as the new state’s ideology implied a drastic deterioration of the position of Buddhism, which no longer could claim to be the dominant system of belief and was severely weakened institutionally. Twentieth-century scholars of Korean Buddhism (among whom quite a few Japanese) accordingly adopted a negative perspective on Chosŏn Buddhism. … Yet, Late Chosŏn Buddhism merits more attention, at the least because of the important role it continued to play in society, perhaps not at the official, public level, but in the private lives of people of all classes.
Continue reading “Journal of Korean Religions, vol. 3, no. 1 (2012): Late Chosŏn Buddhism”

Editors’ Preface
Don Baker & Seong-nae Kim, 5

In this second issue in volume two of the Journal of Korean Religions, we continue our exploration of Korea’s complex religious culture while continuing to interrogate the meaning of “religion” in a Korean cultural context.
…
The five articles in this issue, dealing as they do with Confucians, Christians, Buddhists, and mudang, reflect the diversity of religious life on the peninsula. Moreover, they challenge attempts to impose a simplified definition of religion on Korea’s religious complexity, to dig unbridgeable trenches separating Korea’s various religious communities from one another, or even to distinguish between real religions and pseudo-religions in Korea. We hope this issue will stimulate further scholarly discussion of how the term “religion” has been used in a Korean context as well as of how best to represent and analyze the complex phenomena that form Korea’s religious culture.
Continue reading “Journal of Korean Religions, vol. 2, no. 2 (2011): Korean Religions in Inter-Cultural Contexts”

RESEARCH ARTICLES

In Search of “Korean-ness” in Korean Religions through Border-crossing: A Comparative Approach
Nam-lin Hur, 5

What elements make Korean religions distinctive? This is an issue that has attracted a lot of attention from many scholars in the field. What would be an effective avenue to approach the ways in which external religions are adapted or transformed to Korean society and culture? In this article, Hur suggests that the task of tackling this question can benefit from a border-crossing approach, particularly through comparison with Japanese religions that offer a range of contrasting features. In order to illustrate this, Hur offers two examples that sharply distinguished Korean religions from Japanese religions in early modern times. One is the value of filial piety which dominated Korean Confucianism but was almost invisible in Japanese Confucianism. The other is Buddhism’s role in funerary rituals and ancestor worship: Buddhism in Chosŏn Korea was kept at bay from the dominant ritual arena of ancestor-related rituals; in contrast, Buddhism in Tokugawa Japan was the central agent of funerary rites and ancestor worship rituals. Hur suggests that border-crossing, comparative approaches that involve Japanese cases can contribute to de-localizing Korean religions and, at the same time, to localizing Korean-ness found in Korean religions in the context of society and culture.
Keywords: filial piety, ancestor worship, funerary rituals, Confucianism, Buddhism
Continue reading “Journal of Korean Religions, vol. 2, no. 1 (2011)”

Editors’ Preface
Seong-nae Kim & Don Baker, 5

Korea offers both challenges and opportunities for scholars of religion. The opportunity it presents comes from its religious diversity. The Republic of Korea is the only country in the world in which both Buddhists and Christians each claim between 20% and 30% of the population. It also has what may be the most visible community of practicing shamans in the industrialized world. There are more Confucian shrines per capita in Korean today than in any other nation on earth. And Korea is home to a large assortment of new religious movements, ranging from the Unification Church to Daesoon Jinrihoe. In addition, close to half of the South Korean people say they have no particular religious affiliation. There is, therefore, much for a scholar of religion to study in Korea.
Continue reading “Journal of Korean Religions, vol. 1, nos. 1&2 (2010): Problematizing ‘‘Korean Religions’’”