[Buddha-l] Perhaps the Buddhists in Korea have finally had it?

[Curt Steinmetz]

In my opinion this is potentially the best thing that could happen in 
Korea. Aggressive Christian intolerance requires an aggressive and 
unapologetic response in the form of a mass movement to protect Korea's 
traditional religious diversity and tolerance. Buddhists should make 
every effort to welcome Christians and everyone else in a broad movement 
to protect religious freedom.

The article implies that such an aggressive response to a Christian 
president abusing his power is bad because it means that "religious 
peace is threatened" - BUT if the Christian president abuses his power 
AND NO ONE SEEMS TO MIND then that would be better because it would 
maintain "religious harmony"!

Another thing that the article gets wrong is that there are Christians 
on both sides. Many Catholics have allied themselves with the Buddhists 
in the current conflict. Evangelicals like Lee see Catholics as just as 
"demonic" as Buddhists.

The article claims that "Christians were active in the fight for 
democracy the decades of military rule" - but then also mentions, 
several paragraphs later, that "Syngman Rhee, the nation's dictatorial 
founding president [was] also a Protestant"! And the article fails to 
mention that prior to that time, during the decades of foreign military 
occupation, Buddhists "were active in" the national liberation struggle 
against the Japanese - not to mention the fact that Buddhists strongly 
opposed the totalitarian Communists during the Korean War.

The article also fails to mention the long history of arson attacks by 
Christians against Buddhist Temples in Korea.

It's an interesting read - and the many defects are nothing worse than 
what one should expect from the IHT.

Curt Steinmetz

jkirk wrote:
> http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/14/asia/buddhist.php
>  
> Excerpt:
> ........This protest, the first of its kind here, signaled an
> awakening of political activism among South Korea's Buddhist
> clerics. It also raised the prospect of sectarian strife,
> something the country has not seen in its modern history.
>
> "What we see is unusual, because this country - although
> frequently torn by wars, ideology-driven violence and factional
> politics - has always maintained religious harmony," said Song
> Jae Ryong, a professor of the sociology of religion at Kyung Hee
> University.
>
> In the spotlight of the dispute is Lee, who once outraged
> Buddhists by vowing, when he was mayor of Seoul, to "consecrate"
> the capital to the Christian God.
>
> The South Korean Constitution bans designating any faith as a
> state religion. Nearly half the country's 47 million people
> disavow any religious affiliation. The religious - Buddhists
> (10.7 million), Protestants (8.6 million), Roman Catholics (5.1
> million) and Confucianists and other minorities - have long
> coexisted peacefully, even within the same family.
>
> Lee was not the first Christian that South Korea has elected
> president. Two of his three predecessors were practicing
> Christians.
>
> But discord flared after Lee's inauguration in February.
>
> Buddhists complain that of the 16 members of Lee's cabinet, 13
> are Christians while only one is a Buddhist. (The other two have
> no religious affiliation.)...........
>
>
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