Among religious groups in Korea, a sense of exceptionalism, or superiority, often appears. Korean Buddhists, Confucians, Christians, the leaders of New Religions and self-cultivation groups have often stated that their religious doctrine, practice, and identity possess exceptional qualities.This can involve a sense of national pride, philosophical developments, or unique practices. Then, what constitutes Korean exceptionalism? What goals do the advocates of Korean exceptionalism have? What needs do their statements answer? What are the roles of politics, ethno-nationalist ideology, race, and gender therein? The panelists highlight Korean exceptionalism in four different strands of Korean religious traditions. The first is the Modern South Korean Buddhist military chaplaincy. The second is Korean ki suryŏn, a contemporary reinvention of old Asian self-cultivation traditions. The third is the philosophical reinterpretation of Donghak. Finally, the last is the idea of "the New Chosen People" among Korean Diaspora Christians in North America.
How can Buddhists, whose five foundational precepts begin with “refrain from killing,” participate in the military where death and killing are ubiquitous? In my research on the early South Korean Buddhist military chaplaincy, I have found no voice in the Buddhist community opposing the idea of Buddhist chaplains or Buddhist soldiers in 1960’s and 1970’s South Korea. The culture of militarism during the Park Chung Hee era is certainly an important factor; but, I argue in this presentation that monastic leaders, chaplains, and scholars of Buddhism also emphasized something specifically “Korean” about the ability of Buddhists to expertly negotiate ethical restrictions on killing and violence. They created a narrative of Korean Buddhist history that centralized the “monk-soldier” (sǔnggun 僧軍), and championed Korean Buddhists’ unique interpretation of the Mahayana Buddhist tenets of no-self (mua 無我) and compassion (chabi 慈悲), building off of admonitions for “compassionate violence” seen throughout the Buddhist world.
Korean ki suryŏn (氣修練) mind-body practices have been reinvented in modernity based on ancient Asian traditions, similarly to Chinese qigong and Indian yoga. GiCheon (氣天) group is one example of ki suryŏn. I examine how GiCheon legends situate Korea within continuums connecting reality and myth, present and past. I look at the creative impetus for the legends, the questions they attempt to answer, and the manner by which they are experienced and lived again by the adepts. The first legend recounts the youth of Taeyang Chinin, the first GiCheon teacher, in the mountains, under the tutelage of an immortal. The other two legends depict the interaction of ancient GiCheon heroes with famous Chinese mythological protagonists, Huang Di (Yellow Emperor) and Bodhidharma. The legends insist on a certain superiority of Korea over China, in an attempt to affirm the value and identify of GiCheon, ki suryŏn, and Korea in general.
Donghak (東學, Eastern Learning)is a religious and a political movement in modern Korea beginning 1860s. Beyond reductive unity-seeking, otherworldly idealism, and faceless universalism, this study constructs a new universalism via rehearsing Donghak’s vision of a new world order as diversity-seeking, all-encompassing, and practice-centered. First, it is not a uniform order of the uni-verse but the many becoming one. As a religious-cultural ‘hybridity’ Donghak doesn’t belong to any conventional religions but collectively adapted life-centered concepts from Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, and Christianity with Korean’s cultural experience and spirituality. Secondly, the world that Donghak seeks is an all-encompassing plurisingular living organism that is called hanul (the divine). Finally, the universe is not an other-worldly utopia but a new earth, which has never been accomplished and exists only in our ideal hope and ethical imagination through practicing for realization. Donghak’s new world is a transformed earth community that should be realized every day.
In this paper, I seek to investigate the idea of “chosenness” among Korea Christians in North America using anti-colonial theories and historiography. Christian social ethics on holiness and justice will be my methods of investigation. Through such interdisciplinary perspectives, I address the white settler-colonial Christian appropriation of the divine election of people, i.e. a “chosen people,” in early Americas, and its subsequent deployment in the context of ethnic immigration churches in North America. Despite its contribution to the cohesion and survival of Korean North American Christian communities, such deployment was followed by consequences: by uncritically adopting the colonial views of “chosenness,” distorted expressions of “chosenness” have emerged within the Korean North American Christians. By critically examining how these expressions have worked as an apparatus of exclusion within and outside of Korean North American communities, I aim to offer deconstruction and reimagination of “chosenness” toward social responsibility, collective healing, and justice.