The margins of religion and other conceptual categories are where meanings and definitions are contested, where belonging is debated and where the boundaries are drawn between in-groups and out-groups, where otherization occurs, and where narratives are (re)constructed. Contributing to the study of Korean Religions and of discourse and constructivism, the papers in this panel address the marginalization of Muslim immigrants in modern South Korea (Mert Sabri Karaman), the marginalization of Korean shamanic traditions of the inter-Korean border area (Seonghee Oh), the marginalization of contemporary self-cultivation movements in the study of Korean religion (Victoria Ten), and the marginalization of South Korea’s LGBTQ community by evangelical Protestants (Timothy Lee). The panel thus speaks also to the fields and disciplines of LGBTQ and sexuality studies, legal studies, race and migration studies, heritage studies, inter-Korean politics, and reflection on the epistemologies of our own scholarly approaches to the fields of religion and culture.
The aim of this study is to present current data by examining Muslim immigrants in Korea and their activities, and by investigating how they lead their lives, their interactions within society, and their positions in society. How the Muslim identity was established after the Korean War, including the process of Korea becoming one of the centers of attraction for Muslim immigrants following the success of economic development. Muslim immigrants existing in modern Korea will be researched and their nationality, population, status in Korea, the environment in which Muslim minorities live. While researching Muslim immigrants in Korea, the focus will be on the conditions of the Muslim labor class. The ongoing problems of Muslim minorities in Korea, their impressions in society, Koreans' perception of Muslims, and also the perception of South Korea from the perspective of Muslims will be examined.
The two representative kuts of Korean Shamanism, which are inscribed as National Cultural Heritage, are from Hwanghae-do (a province in North Korea) and Seoul (capital of South Korea). Meanwhile, the shamanic rituals located in-between these two regions are marginalized. They are not researched as well and not listed as cultural heritage. Rather, they are depreciated because their forms are a kind of hybrid of the two recognized heritages. Nonetheless, there are shamans who perform and inherit the ‘Gaeseong kut’ in Seoul. Gaeseong is a city now located in North Korea and is one of the border areas between the two Koreas. In this project, I have three main research questions: first, what is Shamanism in the Gaeseong area? Second, is this locality continued in South Korea? Third, what is the practice of ‘Gaeseong’ kut in Seoul and what makes it have the locality beyond the DMZ?
Korean *ki suryŏn* (氣修練 training related to ki – “life energy”), also referred to as *sŏndo suryŏn* (仙道修練 learning the way of immortality) is a contemporary urban practice, which, similarly to Chinese *qigong* and Indian yoga, is reinvented in modernity on the basis of ancient Asian traditions. Despite been widely spread and popular across the population in South Korea, *ki suryŏn* is severely marginalized in Western academia. Extensive scholarship exists on such practices in China and Japan, however, similar phenomena in Korea have hardly been studied in European languages. Many of *ki suryŏn* practices are based on a Daoist view of the body, but the practitioners come from various religions persuasion, including Christians and Buddhists; the *ki suryŏn* leaders do not advertise *ki suryŏn* as a “religion”, and *ki suryŏn* is usually not included under the rubric of “Korean religions”.
The paper seeks to make the argument that evangelical Christian community’s pushback against LGBT human rights is a key reason that LGBT people are relegated to the margin of South Korean society. It seeks to do so by focusing on evangelicals’ opposition to the introduction of the Anti-Discrimination Bill at the National Assembly in late 2007, a bill introduced by Roh Moo-hyun’s justice department, inspired by the LGBTQ rights advocacy of the National Human Rights Commission of Korea. The paper analyzes the theological and other rationale evangelicals espoused as well as the social and political pressure they brought to bear on their pushback.