Religions of Korea in Practice: A Summa on Korea's New (and Old) Religions
by Massimo Introvigne
Religions of Korea in Practice (Princeton University Press, Princeton 2007), edited by Robert E. Buswell, Jr. for the well-known Donald Lopez’s series Princeton Readings in Religion is the first notable book of 2007 for those interested in new religious movements. It is, of course, much more. This monumental work offers an encyclopaedic look at religion in both South and North Korea. While North Korea has (at least officially) only 10,000 Buddhists, 10,000 Protestants and a few hundred Catholics, the largest religion with 15,000 members, is the oldest Korean new religious movement, Ch’ondogyo (called Tonghak before 1905), originating in 1860 from the revelations of God to Cheu Ch’oe (1824-1864) near Kyongju, and regarded by many as a nationalistic response to the success of Catholic missionaries. It is currently losing momentum in the South due to the competition of some two hundred more recent NRMs.
Of these, the most successful in South Korea is not the Unification Church, nor Taejonggyo (another “old” NRM, born in response to Christian missions in 1909 through the preaching of Ch’ol Na, 1863-1918, and worshiping a trinity of mythical progenitors of the Korean people, including the legendary first Korean king, Tan’gun), but Chungsan’kyo, which believes that its founder Chungsan Kang (Kang Jungsan, 1871-1909) was actually God the Almighty incarnated in human form. Although Chungsan’kyo splintered into various branches after Kang’s death, two of them (Daesun Jinrihoe, promoted by Park Wudang (Hangyong Pak, 1917-1996), as a division of the branch T’aegukto[1] , which had been founded by Jo Jeongsan [Ch’olche Cho, 1895-1958], after he had a vision of Kang in 1917[2] ; and Jeungsando, which claims a lineage reaching back to Kang’s family) claim each a membership in excess of six millions. The Dahn World School, or Danhak, a school of internal alchemy with a sizeable following in the United States, is in fact an offshoot of Taejonggyo, although it denies it and downplays the connections to Taejonggyo, particularly ouside Korea (but a large statue of Tan’gun has been erected outside its U.S. headquarters in Sedona, and passages from Taejonggyo’s scriptures are still memorized by members).
Buswell’s book is less rich in details about the movements more well-known in the West. However, a short chapter by Don Baker explains while Reverend Moon’s claims to be the Messiah and his crowning as king in 2003 are less controversial in Korea than in the West (they are quite common in dozens of Korean new religions), and how rituals recently introduced are heavily influenced by Korean popular traditions and the common lore of local NRMs. Quite surprisingly, the Pentecostal Yoido Full Gospel Church of minister Paul Yonggi Cho in Seoul, regarded as having the world’s largest congregational membership with more than 700,000 members, does not deserve a chapter. There is, however, a biography of Chasil Ch’oe (1915-1989, Cho’s mother-in-law, from which we learn that she was the true founder of the church, although “in deference to Korea’s patriarchal subculture, she did not contest her son-in-law’s paramountcy”.
Coming back to North Korea, a surprisingly sympathetic chapter by Eun Hee Shin (who teaches at Simpson College, in Iowa) traces the evolution of Juche, the thought of Kim Il Sung (1912-1994), through three stages from a Koreanized version of Marxism to a Korean philosophy increasingly downplaying the Marxist affiliation to a religion. North Koreans are now taught that Kim Il Sung is immortal (and he is still today the head of the North Korean state), and that through faith in him we too can have eternal life “since – as Don Baker summarizes – even after our physical body dies, we remain enmeshed in the relational web of the sociopolitical community fostered by Juche; therefore, as long as that community survives, so do we”. This may seem a little complicate, but to the average North Korean peasant Kim Il Sung is just another saviour in a long line of Messiahs introduced by Korean NRMs.
In the meantime, South Korea remains a very religious country. Christianity as a whole (21.6 percent of Koreans are Protestants, 8.2 Catholics) has now more adherents than Buddhism (26.8), although there is a growth of Won Buddhism, founded in 1916 by Chungbin Pak (1891-1943) and not included in the Buddhist statistics, since both Korean Buddhists and the editors of the book regard it as a NRM. Confucians are reduced to 0.3 percent, but Shamanism, although difficult to count and more often than not non-organized, appears to be flourishing. Summing up, as Baker concludes in his introduction to the book, “as Korea has modernized, it also became more religious”, confirming once again that “secularization is not the wave of the future” and that religious competition does indeed create a climate where religion in general can flourish and grow.
[1] After Park left, Tageukdo was led until 1980 by Jo Yeongnae(1934-2004), who was the son of Jo Jeongsan. Some Taegeukdo members. however, insisted on Park's return to the fold and tried to promote a reconciliation. They were members of an association called “Taegeukdo-jeongsin-hoe" (Taegeukdo Spirit Association).” This group was organized in August 1968 and changed its name to “Taegeuk Jinrihoe” in March, 1971. Around 1972, the members of “Taegeuk Jinrihoe” dissolved the association and voluntarily joined Daesoon Jinrihoe. Taegeuk Jinrihoe should not be confused with Daesoon Jinrihoe, which was the association founded by Park in 1969.
[2] 2013 update: After Park Wudang's death (but the process had multiple causes and started while he was still alive), Daesoon Jinrihoe split into different factions. Lee Yu-jong (1936-2010) was the chairperson of the Yeoju Headquarters Temple Complex, where he tried to enshrine Park Wudang as a divinity alongside Kang Jeungsan and Jo Jeongsan. This was opposed by a a large majority of Park’s followers, who were opposed to his deification and also accused Lee of various administrative wrongdoings. On July 16, 1999, 150 leaders of Daesoon Jinrihoe gathered at the Yeoju Temple and demanded that Lee resigned. A fight followed and Lee called the police. Finally, Lee was evicted from the Yeoju temple and the majority faction opposed to the deification of Park Wudang kept control of the headquarters in Yeoju. Daesoon Jinrihoe insists that media reports about violent fights between the two factions and the intervention of the riot police, both in July 1999 and again in January 2000, when Lee's supporters tried to gain again control of the Yeoju Temple, were greatly exaggerated. Lee acquired control of the Junggok Temple in Seoul and proclaimed himself the successor of Park, while the majority branch insisted that Park had appointed no successor and asked for the religion to be led by a collegial direction. Eventually, the group in favor of considering Park either a god or the Buddha Maitreya split into different factions, the main of which were headquartered respectively at the Junggok Temple in Seoul, in Pocheon, Pohang, and Koesan. The latter branch also used the name Daejin Sungjuhoe. In 2013, a council was held in Yeoju to solve the controversies. It was attended by the Yeoju, Seoul, and Pocheon branches (but not by the other two, a circumstance Daejin Sungjuhoe later contested). They did not reach an agreement about the problem of the divinization of Park. However, they agreed to manage through boards of directors in which the various groups were represented both Daejin University and Jesaeng Hospital, two key components of Daesoon Jinrihoe’s educational and health system. It is also to be noted that the main branch after Park's death abandoned proselytization in the streets, which had generated many controversies, and confirmed that speculations about the date of the entrance into an Earthly Paradise were forbidden.
