From the publisher’s website: Until the last quarter of the eighteenth century, there were no Christians in Korea. Today Korea is one of the most Christian countries in Asia, with over 30% of South Koreans claiming Christianity as their religious affiliation. The articles in these volumes trace the history of Christianity in Korea from its […]
Booklist: Religion and ideas
Korean Women: View from the Inner Room
From the preface: This collection of articles presents an amazing variety of female roles and certainly belies the stereotype of the powerless and dependent Korean woman. Korean women, whether ideologically confined to the inner rooms or cast out to the periphery of society, created for themselves positions of influence radiating across the narrow ideological and […]
A Protestant Theology of Passion: Korean Minjung Theology Revisited
From the publisher’s website: Minjung Theology is introduced here through theological biographical sketches of its main representatives. They formulated a protestant liberation theology under the South Korean military dictatorship of the 1970s and 80s. Their strong emphasis on the suffering (han) of the people (minjung) led them to the formulation of a genuine theology of […]
New God, New Nation: Protestants and Self-Reconstruction Nationalism in Korea 1896-1937
From the publisher’s website: The history of modern Korea reveals a search for cultural identity through nationalism. At the close of the 19th century, the kingdom of Korea became a battleground between China, Japan and Russia. While Korean traditionalists and modernist factions vied for power, the country increasingly fell prey to Japanese colonial designs, culminating […]
East and West: Fusion of Horizons
From the publisher’s website: In East and West: Fusion of Horizons, Kwang-Sae Lee seeks to find and develop themes of mutual resonance in Eastern and Western thoughts, trying to interpret across boundaries of culture and age. The book discusses some general “methodological problems” pertaining to the “Meeting of East and West,” Confucianism and Kantian moral […]
Shinra Myōjin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian “Mediterranean”
From the publisher’s website: This ambitious work offers a transnational account of the deity Shinra Myōjin, the “god of Silla” worshipped in medieval Japanese Buddhism from the eleventh to sixteenth centuries. Sujung Kim challenges the long-held understanding of Shinra Myōjin as a protective deity of the Tendai Jimon school, showing how its worship emerged and […]
Critical Readings on the Colonial Period of Korea 1910-1945 (4 vols)
From the publisher’s website: There has been a rapid accumulation of new scholarship on colonial Korea in particular and comparative colonialism in general within the last ten years. This volume gathers these articles from a variety of venues to allow researchers, students, and readers to access the most important scholarship on colonial Korea published in […]
Contemporary Korean Shamanism: From Ritual to Digital
From the publisher’s website: Once viewed as an embarrassing superstition, the theatrical religious performances of Korean shamans—who communicate with the dead, divine the future, and become possessed—are going mainstream. Attitudes toward Korean shamanism are changing as shamanic traditions appear in staged rituals, museums, films, and television programs, as well as on the internet. Contemporary Korean […]
The God Susanoo and Korea in Japan’s Cultural Memory: Ancient Myths and Modern Empire
From the publisher’s website: This book discusses how ancient Japanese mythology was utilized during the colonial period to justify the annexation of Korea to Japan, with special focus on the god Susanoo. Described as an ambivalent figure and wanderer between the worlds, Susanoo served as a foil to set off the sun goddess, who played […]
The Korean Tradition of Religion, Society, and Ethics: A Comparative and Historical Self-understanding and Looking Beyond
From the publisher’s website: By making Korea a central part of comparative history of East Asian religion and society, this book traces the evolution of Korean religion from the oldest representation to that of the current day by utilizing wide-ranging interdisciplinary and comparative resources. This book presents a holistic view of the enduring religious tradition […]
An Illustrated Guide to Korean Mythology
From the publisher’s website: This highly engaging volume by one of Korea’s leading scholars of comparative mythology – the the first study of its kind in English – provides a valuable introduction to centuries-old beliefs, myths and folk tales relating to Cosmology and Flood, Birth and Agriculture, Messengers of the Underworld, Shamans, Disease, Good Fortune, […]
Confucianism and the Family
From the publisher’s website: An interdisciplinary exploration of the Confucian family in East Asia which includes historical, psychocultural, and gender studies perspectives. The family is central to societies that have been profoundly influenced by the Confucian, and later Neo-Confucian, mandate. This book examines the nature of family continuities and the internal family social and psychological […]
Balancing Communities: Nation, State, and Protestant Christianity in Korea, 1884–1942
From the publisher’s website: Starting in 1884 with the arrival of the first resident Protestant missionary in Korea and ending with the expulsion of missionaries from the peninsula by the Japanese colonial government in 1942, Balancing Communities examines how the competing demands of communal identities and memberships shaped the early history of Protestantism in Korea. In so […]
Trial and Error in Modernist Reforms: Korean Buddhism under Colonial Rule
From the publisher’s website: This book examines the Korean Buddhist reform movement and how the modern construct of Buddhism developed under colonial rule. Park argues that Korean Buddhists reconstructed Buddhism as socially active and nationally viable by responding to, negotiating with, and resisting the influence of Western modernity and the Japanese colonial government. The need […]
Philosophy of the Nest
From the publisher’s website: In Philosophy of the Nest, eminent Korean philosopher and poet Park Ynhui encapsulates decades of scholarship as he traces the world history of philosophy from his original perspective. The author, previously published in the West as Park Yee-mun, a nom de plume, follows an overarching vein in the history of philosophy and introduces […]
The Moral and Religious Thought of Yi Hwang (Toegye): A Study of Korean Neo-Confucian Ethics and Spirituality
From the publisher’s website: This book presents Yi Hwang (1501–1570)—better known by his pen name, Toegye—Korea’s most eminent Confucian philosopher. It is a pioneering study of Toegye’s moral and religious thought that discusses his holistic ideas and experiences as a scholar, thinker, and spiritual practitioner, thereby deepening or enriching our modern understanding of Confucianism as […]