Search Results (13)

In contemporary Korea, particularly within the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, temple revenue relies on two primary sources: donations and production activities. With declining religious participation, donations alone are no longer sufficient for temple sustainability. In response, many temples have diversified into non-religious economic ventures—an approach that, while controversial, has historical precedent. Pre-modern Korean temples actively contributed to local economies and public welfare through various productive roles. A notable recent development is the rise of Buddhist social enterprises, which aim to reconcile financial sustainability with core Buddhist values. This paper examines two interrelated dimensions: first, the historical role of Korean Buddhist temples as economic actors and social welfare providers; second, the emergence of Buddhist social enterprises as a modern model for sustainable temple economies. The paper highlights their potential to balance spiritual integrity with economic viability while acknowledging the challenges they face in achieving broader institutional and public support. Full article

For the half-century following the armistice halting the Korean War (1950–1953), the immense loss of Korea’s Buddhist cultural heritage during the conflict has remained largely unexamined by scholars and historians, not only because of the topic’s immense scope and sensitivity but also the dearth of accurate and objective information. Thus, the research and resulting publications launched by Jogye Order’s Ministry of Culture in 2003 provide an invaluable and comprehensive survey of the hundreds of Buddhist temples and thousands of related cultural assets lost or damaged during the war. These efforts, however, have faced numerous difficulties. The ROK government made almost no official attempts to survey and catalog the damage sustained by the nation’s Buddhist temples during the war or its aftermath. Instead, by necessity, the Jogye Order’s surveys rely heavily on firsthand accounts of survivors, many of whom have since passed away, that were recorded often many decades after the war itself. The temple property records compiled by the Japanese Colonial Government likewise provide an important source for Jogye Order researchers in determining which temple assets were destroyed or lost during the conflict. However, in many instances, these records are incomplete or only note the names and numbers of assets that are now lost. Nor are such records insightful regarding what became of such assets but only indicate their current absence. Fortunately, over recent decades, the Jogye Order archivists have invested significant time and effort into digitizing surviving historical records and miscellanea recovered from individual temples. Full article

The Jogye Order has been facing a deepening crisis since the turn of the millennium. The rapid decline in membership had been compounded by a growing loss of confidence in the order’s monastic leadership following a succession of scandals in the 1990s and 2010s involving sectarian infighting and high-level corruption. While the practice of “Dharma propagation” (pogyo) has been critical to Korean Buddhism’s revival over the twentieth century, the Jogye Order’s steadily worsening membership crisis has revitalized institutional interest in Dharma propagation. With the independent establishment of its “Dharma Propagation Bureau” (Pogyowon) in 1994, the order has steadily increased its financial and practical support of a diversity of propagation efforts as, over recent decades, the order knows that its long-term survival might very well depend on these efforts’ success. Given the crucial nature of the Jogye Order’s current propagation efforts, this article will conduct a critical examination of the recent history of the JO’s Dharma Propagation Bureau, with a particular focus on the Bureau’s activities under its seventh director, Ven. Jihong (in office 2016 through 2021). Full article

Over the last three decades of evolution, the Jogye Order’s postulant education system has made considerable progress in standardizing, centralizing, and modernizing Buddhist education for aspiring monastics. As celebrated by the order’s 2022 publication The 30-year History of Buddhist Monastic Postulant Education, the order’s program has successfully seen over 9800 ordained novices graduate since its launch in 1991. However, there is a broad consensus within Korea’s Buddhist community that the religion is in crisis and, within the order in particular, that its future is in peril. Unless it is reversed, the trend portends the very real possibility of the order’s demise by the end of the century, if not sooner. The order recently vowed to reverse the downward trend in monastic recruitment and raise the annual number of ordained novices to 150 by 2025 through a multifaceted plan involving greater youth outreach efforts, an increased social media presence, and online Buddhist educational materials, along with an expansion of the order’s international missionary efforts. Given that postulant recruitment is critical to the order’s survival, this paper examines the past, present, and future of the Jogye Order’s postulant education system in light of the current membership crisis, as well as the order’s recent publication of The 30-year History of Buddhist Monastic Postulant Education. Full article

This paper critically scrutinizes the history and activities of South Korea’s two largest Buddhist international aid organizations, namely, the Join Together Society, founded in 1991 by Venerable Pomnyun, leader of Korea’s independent Jungto Society order of lay Buddhists, and the Global Community Association (Jiguchon Gongsaenghoe, Good Hands), founded by former Jogye Order president, Venerable Wolju (1935–2021). It examines the origins, organizations, and activities of both organizations, followed by a comparison of their similarities and differences, along with a discussion of their respective relationships to Korean Buddhist mainstream life and the advantages and disadvantages of each. They are significant, not only for the many benefits they have brought to their target communities abroad but also for what they represent to the Korean Buddhist community at home. As the Korean Buddhist establishment continues to grapple with a prolonged crisis of falling membership and loss of relevance within Korea’s increasingly agnostic society, the long-term sustainability of Korean Buddhist international efforts remains an open question. Nevertheless, the two organizations represent new visions for the modes of meaningful Buddhist praxis and engagement with the modern world that have a strong appeal to Korea’s younger, urbanized Buddhist laity. The further support and expansion of such activities by the Buddhist establishment might aid in reversing the current downward trends of belief. Full article

In the decades following the Korean War (1950–1953), support from Korea’s Jogye Order, the largest of Korea’s Buddhist sects, was instrumental for establishing Korean Buddhism overseas. However, in recent decades, Korean Buddhism has been facing a growing domestic crisis and the number of the Jogye Order’s annual monastic recruits has been declining steadily. This domestic membership crisis has affected Korean Buddhism abroad, as the order has lost over half its foreign temples over the last decade. Nevertheless, despite these downward trends, the nine international branches of the Hanmaum Seon Center, founded by the Jogye Order’s Seon Master Daehaeng, have remained strong. Given the successful example of the Hanmaum Seon Center’s international branches, the Jogye Order’s future efforts abroad might find success by focusing on lay-oriented modes of practice, while balancing their involvement both with local Korean émigré communities and with outreach to local non-Koreans. Full article

Over recent decades, Venerable Daehaeng has increasingly become a subject of academic research, much of which has been sponsored by her own followers in an effort to reinforce the legitimacy of her teachings and her authenticity as a Korean seon master. Nevertheless, since her passing several controversies have arisen with critics charging that Daehaeng’s teaching fall outside of Korean Buddhist orthodoxy. Given the ongoing and often contentious debate over Daehaeng’s identity as Buddhist master, this article scrutinizes these recent controversies along with the current trends in academic research surrounding both Daehaeng and the Hanmaum Seonwon. It then identifies critical questions within this growing field of Daehaeng studies and suggests directions worthy of research exploration. Full article

While the Covid-19 pandemic has altered many aspects of life in South Korea over 2020, its impact on South Korea’s religious landscape has been enormous as the country’s three major religions (Catholicism, Buddhism, and Protestant Christianity) have suffered considerable loses in both their income and membership. Despite these challenges, however, Buddhism’s public image has actually improved since the start of the epidemic due to the rapid and proactive responses of the nation’s largest Buddhist organization, the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism (K. Daehan bulgyo jogyejong). This article critically examines the Jogye Order’s response to the epidemic and its impact on the order thus far, along with discussions regarding the order’s future. In particular it will examine the results of three conferences held by the order in response to the epidemic and the resulting recommendations on how Korean Buddhism should adapt to effectively address the many challenges brought by the pandemic. These recommendations include establishing an online Buddhist education system, further engaging the order’s lay supporters through various social media platforms, upgrading the current lay education program with virtual learning options that directly address problems faced by the general public during the pandemic, and distributing virtual meditation classes world-wide for those who remain in quarantine or social isolation. By adopting these changes, the Jogye Order will be able to play a crucial role in promoting mental stability and the cultivation of positive emotions among the many suffering from anxiety, social isolation and financial difficulties during the pandemic. Full article

The three largest Korean religious organizations have worked to provide material, educational, medical, and social support to the various growing migrant communities. Among them, the Catholic community has been the most organized, sustained, and effective in its support of migrants by systematically providing for the legal, material, educational, and medical needs of various immigrant communities while advocating for their rights. Although lacking the centralized authority and organization of the Catholics, since the 1990s, Korea’s Protestants have also been active in supporting their country’s growing immigrant communities, which Evangelical churches also view as fertile grounds for proselytizing. The Korean Buddhist community, in comparison, has been slower to engage with Korea’s immigrants and has provided considerably fewer support services. In 2008, the Jogye Order organized the Maha Association for Supporting Immigrants to coordinate individual and localized Buddhist migrant support services at a national level. This article examines the Buddhist reactions to the increase in South Korean immigration over recent decades, with a focus on immigrant-support efforts supported by the Jogye Order for migrant Buddhist communities. Full article

Since its modern origins in the Buddhist Purification Movement of the 1950s, South Korea’s Jogye Order has established monastic celibacy as central to its identity and claim to legitimacy as a Buddhist sect. However, in the order’s urgency to introduce Buddhist chaplains to the South Korean military in the 1960s, after almost two decades of Protestant monopoly over the chaplaincy program, the Jogye Order permitted its chaplains to marry; a practice which soon became the norm. This contradiction grew increasingly problematic for the order over subsequent decades and, in 2009, it attempted to resolve the issue by reversing the marriage exception for chaplains, reinforcing their identity as monastics within the order. While controversial, the resolution has proved effective in practice. However, this reversal has also provoked unprecedented lawsuits against South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense in 2017 and a ruling by Korea’s Human Rights Commission in 2018, challenging the Jogye Order’s exclusive control of the military’s Buddhist chaplaincies. Given the challenges these issues currently present to the Jogye Order’s chaplaincy program, this article interrogates the origins, history, significance, and impact of the issues surrounding the order’s marriage exemption for its military chaplains. Full article

Despite its 17-century-long history, Korean Buddhism is currently undergoing a crisis. In addition to the declining number of lay practitioners, Korea’s largest Buddhist order, the Jogye Order (K. Daehan Bulgyo Jogyejong, hereafter “JO” or “the order”), is facing a significant drop in monastic recruitment. Compounding this crisis, a series of scandals within the order’s monastic leadership have caused widespread loss of confidence among the order’s laity. In addition to calls for greater financial transparency and moral accountability for JO monastics, many reformers are demanding greater lay participation within the order’s political hierarchy, challenging the centuries-old roles assigned to monastics and laity. However, these challenges have failed to produce any practical changes within the order while its monastic establishment continues espousing rhetoric reinforcing monastic authority and its supremacy over the laity. In light of these crises, this paper will conduct a perfunctory examination of the attitudes the JO’s monastic establishment exhibits towards its lay supporters and the roles it expects for them. Utilizing, in part, previously unpublished internal JO documents, this paper will begin by investigating monastic attitudes expressed towards the laity in the order’s 2015 General Meeting of the Four-fold Assembly as well as the ensuing debate over these roles in Korea’s Buddhist media. This paper will then explore how the laity are viewed within the JO’s lay education program, additionally examining how the needs and concerns of the laity are addressed in introductory textbooks used within this program. While not exhaustive, by examining this variety of sources, this paper seeks to clarify the roles the JO’s monastic establishment expects for its lay supporters and interrogate whether such attitudes are sustainable as the order attempts to respond effectively to the crises it currently faces. Full article

According to the Jogye Order’s 2018 periodic report, the average age of monks is increasing and the number of monks is decreasing. In order to offer solutions to these problems, the report presents and analyzes by dividing those themes into six sub-topics, namely: decrease of births; decrease of postulants; aging of postulants; rapidly changing educational environment; teaching aptitude of educators; education budget. The report lists a variety of information derived from the raw data and offers suggestions regarding these six topics. However, the report has several failings, as the research misunderstands the data at times, and their report does not present proper interpretations and concrete solutions. The final suggestions that the report proposes to increase the number of monks seem to be misguided and ineffective. This article critically scrutinizes the Jogye Order’s latest report to identify and correct some data misinterpretations and offer new insights that the authors believe would help our leaders come up with better solutions. Full article

The Jogyesa Buddhist Temple (JBT), located in Seoul, Korea, is the chief temple of the Jogye Order, which represents Korean Buddhism. The Seoul government plans to transform the JBT into a cultural tourism resource and a historical site. This study attempts to analyze the willingness to pay (WTP) for implementing the transformation, which includes building a new shopping arcade for Buddhist culture and tourism, constructing a museum for the teaching of history and an experience center for Korean traditional culture in the precincts of JBT, and making an open space for domestic and/or foreign visitors. To this end, the study looks into the WTP for the implementation, reporting on a contingent valuation (CV) survey that was conducted with 500 Seoul households. The single-bounded dichotomous choice CV model and a spike model were applied to derive the WTP responses and analyze the WTP data with zero observations, respectively. The mean yearly WTP was computed to be KRW 7129 (USD 6.30) per household for the next five years, with the estimate being statistically significant at the 1% level. Expanding the value to the Seoul population gives us KRW 25.4 billion (USD 22.5 million) per year. The present value of the total WTP amounts to KRW 114.6 billion (USD 101.3 million) using a social discount rate of 5.5%. We can conclude that Seoul households are ready to shoulder some of the financial burden of implementing the transformation. Full article