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

[Dan Lusthaus]

Curt, Joanna, et al.

The upcoming AAR in Chicago (Nov.1-3) includes a panel devoted to the
question of violence and religion in Korea. Details below. The current
problems are not on the agenda but I suspect they will become part of the
discussion.

Dan

Korean Religions Group

Theme: Violence and the State in Korean Religions

Monday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
CHT-Conference Room 4D

Miriam Levering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Presiding

Theme: Violence and the State in Korean Religions

The session explores the theme of religion and violence in Korean Shamanism,
Buddhism, Christianity, and North Korean Juche thought.


Jonathan Best, Wesleyan University
The Raising of the Temple of Maitreya: A Buddhist Faith-based Initiative for
Conquest in Early Korea

The reign of King Mu, Paekche's "Martial Monarch" (r. 600-41), is especially
notable for the dramatic improvement in the kingdom's military fortunes in
its conflict with neighboring Silla, and for the burgeoning of royal
patronage of Buddhism. Mu's intention to identify royal authority with the
cosmic power of Buddhism was impressively articulated through his
construction of the Mirük-sa, or "Temple of Maitreya." The Samguk yusa
reports-and archaeology has verified-that the Mirük-sa encompassed three
separate 'Halls of Maitreya's Grand Assemblies,' each with its own pagoda
and courtyard. Yet the monumental scale of this temple is less telling than
its symbolic implications. According to the sutras, Maitreya's three Dharma
assemblies would occur outside the capital of a cakravartin, a devout
all-conquering ruler. In the pious hope of causing Paekche to be the land
where Maitreya would preach and a cakravartin would reign, King Mu had the
Mirük-sa built.


Marcie Middlebrooks, Cornell University
Torturous Enlightenment: Public Secrets and Spiritual Progress in a Korean
Buddhist Narrative

Talal Asad has argued that with the rise of modern "secular" values and the
international universalizing discourse of human rights, torture becomes a
surreptitious activity. This secrecy attempts to ward off accusations of
"uncivilized" practices and creates a dynamic of "exposure" when state
activities "come to light." With military dictatorships, torture often
becomes, through widespread repression, a "public secret" whose force is
targeted at the populace. This paper considers the more "public" dynamics of
torture during Korea's period of military dictatorships to provide insight
into how the "experience of detainment/torture" has been narrated by a South
Korean Buddhist nun arrested on suspicion of being a communist. I will
consider how this "religious" incident has been reinterpreted and examine
how it has been remembered as a story of spiritual-cultivation. In closing,
I will explore the ways in which the concept of Buddhist enlightenment
functions as a "public secret" in contemporary Korea.


Michael Pettid, State University of New York, Binghamton
Shamanic Supermen and Superwomen: Creating Alternative Spaces for the
Oppressed
[no abstract]


David Kim, Columbia University
Korean Shamanism, the Accident, and Material History: A Ritual of Unraveling
and Redemption for Military "Comfort Women"

On July 13, 1990, the restless ghosts of Japanese military "comfort women"
paid a visit to a group of Korean shamans. Their demands for justice lead to
a promise, which would take the form of an innovative shamanic ritual,
referred to as the 'Jinhon-gut.' The dead speak through the mediums of the
living, and it is only the living who can appease the dead--the structure of
which is a debt/gift and cannot be settled cheaply. Likewise, the
performance body is intersected by forces--political, historical, and
technological, to name a few. This paper will examine shamanic ritual as
potential site for Walter Benjamin's concept of 'historical materialism,'
which reveals itself in flashes; often occurring during gaps, uncanny
disjunctures, or unexpected moments of danger. Through this materialization
of history, the scars of colonial violence are given representation and
brought to the surface, creating spaces for discourse, memory, and healing.


Chang Han Kim, University of Calgary
Christian Sects, Cults, and Anti-Cults Movements in Contemporary Korea

While new religious groups tend to defend themselves against outside attacks
to reinforce internal solidarity, Christian anti-cult movements are a way of
countering new religious groups that have different belief systems and
worldviews. Due to the high degree of tension that exists among Christian
groups, each seeks to deconstruct the other. Through this process a group's
plausibility structures are maintained and even renovated. Tension helps to
reinvigorate group identity and solidarity, and nowhere is this more
apparent than in Korea. Although the religious landscape in Korea is
sizeable, and includes the broad spectrum of church, sect, and cult, it is
Protestantism that has shown the highest degree of tension with its social
environment. Given the fact that discriminating other groups from one's own
remains an important way of maintaining belief, it can be anticipated that
Korean Protestantism will continue to create far more conflicts and tensions
than other religious traditions.


Kyuhoon Cho, University of Ottawa
Religious Dimension of a Socialist Society: Juche Civil Religion and
Religions in North Korea's Socialist Modernization in Global Society

This essay delves into the religious dimension of the process to build a
modern socialist state in North Korea. By applying Robert N. Bellah's
conceptual framework of American civil religion, I discuss how North Korean
civil religion is constructed in contemporary global society, referring it
as 'Juche civil religion' based on 'Juche idea', the state ideology of
Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). Juche civil religion, in which
nationalist and neo-Confucian elements are deeply embedded, has situated
both North Koreans and their religions in a religiously fermented political
system whose set of symbols, faiths, and rituals organically works toward
imagining DPRK as a great familial community, called 'socio-political
organism' (sahoejeongchijeok saengmyeongche) aiming at an 'eternal life'.
Once criticized as past remains to be cleansed before, religions have since
the 1980s been increasingly viewed as considerable institutions for ultimate
completion of Juche socialist revolution in the insecure post-modern global
context.

Responding:

    Don Baker, University of British Columbia