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Re-Thinking Religious Traditions and Practices of Korea
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Re-Thinking Religious Traditions and Practices of Korea

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 September 2025) | Viewed by 8723

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Kevin N. Cawley

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Guest Editor
Department of Asian Studies, School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, University College Cork, Cork T12 K8AF, Ireland
Interests: Korea’s intellectual history, both philosophical and religious traditions, including Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism, and in particular, between Christianity and Neo-Confucianism in the late 18th /early 19th century
Dr. David J. Kim

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Associate Professor, Purchase College, State University of New York, Purchase, NY 10577, USA
Interests: magic and divination in contemporary South Korea, in particular shamanism and horoscopic fortune-telling. The study of religion as a connection to otherness, or alterity, is an area of particular interest, especially as it intersects with conceptualizations of the virtual and affective

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

While there has undoubtedly been substantial research into Korea’s religious intellectual history, it has sometimes been caught up in nationalist tropes, presenting scholars of the past as cultural heroes who are rarely criticised, while women, in particular, have been marginalised and ignored to a large degree. Other figures, of all genders and orientations, have also been marginalised in modern Korea due to the lingering legacy of colonialism and dominant genealogical methodologies narratives, both internal and external to Korean scholarship, across multiple disciplines.

This Special Issue calls for more comparative studies and interdisciplinary perspectives on Korea’s philosophical and religious thought. We are looking for innovative techniques, approaches, theories, and methods that lead to more fruitful encounters with religion as a historical, embodied, and socially dynamic phenomenon.

Our main goal for this Special Issue is to promote the growth of interdisciplinary and innovative research methodologies within the study of the religious intellectual history of Korea and its religious practices. Overall, our goal is to show how various multilayered and nonreductive techniques and approaches may improve our comprehension of Korea’s religious traditions and practices.

We have a particular interest in highlighting research that may include (1) collaborative research across cultural boundaries, (2) diverse contexts and approaches, (3) rejections of an exclusive reliance on singular perspectives or methodologies, (4) research drawing from a transnational perspective, and (5) unique perspectives on the effects of religion as experiential and entwined with everyday life (both sociological and historical). The call is open to any research in relevant subject areas across the humanities and social sciences.

This issue of Religions is posed to collect a series of mutually complementary scholarly contributions, reflecting the intertwining trajectory of philosophical and religious traditions in Korea’s past and present, shaping their futures.

To this end, we ask contributors to consider, some of the following overarching issues:

  • Have key figures been sufficiently critically examined? Which figures have been neglected? Which have been overstudied and why?
  • How can ideas from Korea’s religious traditions be helpful for us today in the 21st century?
  • Which critical theories might be helpful in broadening our understanding of important religions, institutions, practices, theories, and key figures?
  • How can a re-examination of material culture and artifacts reveal new insights into religious beliefs and practices in Korea, both past and present?
  • How does religion generate dynamic phenomenological experiences and intensities that shape both communities and subjectivities?

Dr. Kevin N. Cawley
Dr. David J. Kim
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Korean religion
  • Confucianism
  • Buddhism
  • Shamanism
  • new religious movements
  • transculturalism
  • comparative studies
  • everyday life
  • magic and divination

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 1067 KB  
Article
Confucian Echoes in Early Donghak Thought: A Text Mining-Based Comparative Study of the Four Books and the Donggyeong Daejeon
by Byeongdae Bae, Kyoung-Ho Moon and Moonkyoung Jung
Religions 2025, 16(11), 1405; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16111405 - 5 Nov 2025
Viewed by 85
Abstract
This study examines how the Donggyeong Daejeon (東經大全), the principal scripture of early Donghak, receives and theologically reconfigures the conceptual lexicon of Confucian classics through text mining-based analysis. Drawing on the classical Chinese texts of the Four Books and the Donggyeong Daejeon, [...] Read more.
This study examines how the Donggyeong Daejeon (東經大全), the principal scripture of early Donghak, receives and theologically reconfigures the conceptual lexicon of Confucian classics through text mining-based analysis. Drawing on the classical Chinese texts of the Four Books and the Donggyeong Daejeon, and employing computational techniques such as keyword frequency, keyword-in-context (KWIC), and co-occurrence mapping, the study identifies structural parallels and semantic shifts across the two corpora. These patterns are then interpreted hermeneutically to assess how early Donghak appropriates, repurposes, and theologically transforms inherited Confucian categories. Findings suggest that while the Donggyeong Daejeon retains key Confucian terms, it situates them within a distinct theological framework. The Confucian triad of human being, the Way, and Heaven (人–道–天), for example, is recast in Donghak as “Heaven’s heart is the human-heart” (天心卽人心), a theological affirmation of the human as the locus of Heaven’s immanence. Similarly, the Confucian virtue of sincerity (誠) is reinterpreted through the lens of faith (信), transforming it from a metaphysical ideal into a performative mode of spiritual judgment. Most notably, the Confucian dualism of li (理) and qi (氣) is overcome through the theology of “ultimate energy” (至氣), a divine substance that animates and unifies all beings. By combining quantitative text analysis with interpretive discussion, this study presents Donghak not as a rhetorical appropriation of Confucian discourse, but as a conceptual innovation rooted in the resemanticization of its inherited language. This methodology offers a new model for tracking doctrinal transformation in East Asian religious texts and contributes to broader discussions on intertextual borrowing, and the semantic evolution of classical traditions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Re-Thinking Religious Traditions and Practices of Korea)
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17 pages, 569 KB  
Article
Re-Examining Issues in the Study of Korean Buddhism: Questions Related to Degeneration of Chosŏn Buddhism, Colonialism, and Doctrine-Based Approaches
by Sung-Eun Thomas Kim and Won-il Bang
Religions 2025, 16(3), 299; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16030299 - 27 Feb 2025
Viewed by 1463
Abstract
When the historical past in the study of Chosŏn Buddhism is unearthed, one would discover that Buddhist studies was in fact closely tied to Korea’s recent history of colonization by Japan and to the postcolonial influences of the West. This paper is an [...] Read more.
When the historical past in the study of Chosŏn Buddhism is unearthed, one would discover that Buddhist studies was in fact closely tied to Korea’s recent history of colonization by Japan and to the postcolonial influences of the West. This paper is an effort to re-examine the modern study of Korean Buddhism to trace the effects of past colonial forces that Korean Buddhist studies have experienced. The process of Japanese colonization of Korea was similar to the pattern of subjugation initially adopted by the early European discoverers, where academic developments synchronized with the colonizing process—the labeling of the subject culture as primitive and inferior as a basis and justification for colonization. In the past, it was claimed Korean folk religions and Buddhism were rife with cultic and superstitious practices, signs of backwardness, which coincided with the view that Korean society and people were underdeveloped and uncivilized. This paper, after discussions of the colonization process and its connection to the study of Korean Buddhism, makes an argument for a shift in the methodological approach to the study of Chosŏn Buddhism from an etic to an emic approach by taking into account how Buddhism was practiced on the ground and situated within the historical context of the Chosŏn period. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Re-Thinking Religious Traditions and Practices of Korea)
12 pages, 353 KB  
Article
The Growth of Korea Soka Gakkai International (KSGI) and Its Civic Engagement in the Socio-Historical Context
by Kwang Suk Yoo
Religions 2025, 16(2), 133; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16020133 - 24 Jan 2025
Viewed by 3472
Abstract
This paper examines how and why Korea Soka Gakkai International (KSGI) has grown rapidly in the Korean religious market. Although Soka Gakkai was introduced to Korea as a Nichiren Shoshu lay community in the 1960s, KSGI has achieved remarkable growth without the structurally [...] Read more.
This paper examines how and why Korea Soka Gakkai International (KSGI) has grown rapidly in the Korean religious market. Although Soka Gakkai was introduced to Korea as a Nichiren Shoshu lay community in the 1960s, KSGI has achieved remarkable growth without the structurally covert and organizationally authoritative control typical of traditional elite Buddhism. This fact is significant in both theory and practice, as lay movements have historically not been very successful in Korean religions. Focusing on the paradoxical affinity between secular civic movements and religious lay movements, this paper explains why and how KSGI had to combine the two movements in a socio-historical context different from that of its Japanese partner, which established a public political party, the Komeito, and formed a coalition government with other parties. As a result, this paper reveals the following findings: first, KSGI’s nonpolitical civic engagement led to a more effective growth strategy tailored to the Korean socio-historical context. Second, the Korean government’s policy of opening up to Japanese culture since the 2000s played a significant role in the growth of KSGI. Third, the spread of civil movements in Korea contributed to enhancing KSGI’s social adaptability and credibility. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Re-Thinking Religious Traditions and Practices of Korea)
20 pages, 5791 KB  
Article
Representing Religion in North and South Korea: Seventy-Five Years of the Semiotics of Stamp Design
by James H. Grayson
Religions 2024, 15(8), 955; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15080955 - 7 Aug 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2074
Abstract
As government documents, postage stamps are a rich source of information about a government’s policies on a wide range of subjects. In this article, a comparative semiotic analysis of the first seventy-five years of North and South Korean stamps is used to illustrate [...] Read more.
As government documents, postage stamps are a rich source of information about a government’s policies on a wide range of subjects. In this article, a comparative semiotic analysis of the first seventy-five years of North and South Korean stamps is used to illustrate the similarities and differences in their attitudes towards ‘religion’ and religious practice. A corpus of stamps on a ‘religious’ theme was created for stamps issued by both governments from which a series of themes and motifs was noted. The semiotic analysis of the themes and motifs showed that while on South Korean stamps Buddhist motifs constituted the majority of stamps commemorating cultural history, there were few references to the commemoration of Buddhism itself. The reverse was found to be true for Christianity. Although Christianity was not shown to be a major expression of Korean culture, Christianity itself was commemorated extensively. On North Korean stamps, folklore and Christian motifs predominated as projections of cultural history, but the Christian motifs referred only to foreign cultures, not Korean culture. Motifs relating to the foundation myth of Tan’gun were common to both North and South Korea. However, in the South, motifs from the myth referred to the nation, while in the North they referred to the ruling family. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Re-Thinking Religious Traditions and Practices of Korea)
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