Korea has a long and fascinating religious history, one that continues to inform local life. Buddhism is the religion most closely identified with Korea, though Christianity now has a greater number of followers. The rise of the latter is particularly interesting when laid over Korea’s largely Confucian mindset, which is often diametrically opposed to Christian ideals and beliefs – priests and pastors preach equality at Sunday service, but outside church relative age still governs many forms of social interaction, and women remain socially inferior to men.
Buddhism is a religion deriving from the teachings of the Buddha, also known as the Siddhartha Gautama or Sakyamuni, who lived in India sometime between the fourth and sixth centuries BC. Although there are two main schools of thought and several smaller ones, Buddhist philosophy revolves around the precept that karma, rebirth and suffering are intrinsic elements of existence, but that the cycle of birth and death can be escaped on what is known as the “Noble Eightfold Path” to nirvana.
An import from China (which had in turn imported it from the Indian subcontinent), Buddhism arrived in Korea at the beginning of the Three Kingdoms period. Goguryeo and Baekje both adopted it at around the same time, in the last decades of the fourth century – Goguryeo king Sosurim accepted Buddhism almost as soon as the first Chinese monks arrived in 372, while Baekje king Chimnyu adopted it after taking the throne in 384. The Silla kings were less impressed by the creed, but a major change in regal thought occurred in 527 after an interesting episode involving an official who had decided to switch to Buddhism. He was to be beheaded for his beliefs, and with his final few gasps swore to the king that his blood would not be red, but a milky white; his prediction was true, and the king soon chose Buddhism as his state religion.
Even in China, Buddhism was at this point in something of an embryonic phase, and Korean monks took the opportunity to develop the Mahayana style by ironing out what they saw to be inconsistencies in the doctrine. Disagreements followed, leading to the creation of several sects, of which the Jogye order is by far the largest, including about ninety percent of Korea’s Buddhists; other notable sects include Seon, largely known in the West as Zen, the Japanese translation, and Cheontae, which is likewise better known under its Chinese name of Tiantai.
Ornate temples sprang up all over the peninsula during the Unified Silla period, but although Buddhism remained the state religion throughout the Goryeo era, the rise of Confucianism squeezed it during Joseon times. Monks were treated with scant respect and temples were largely removed from the main cities (one reason why there are relatively few in Seoul, the Joseon capital), but though the religion was repressed, it never came close to extinction. Further troubles came during the Japanese occupation period, during the latter years of which many Koreans were forced to worship at Shinto shrines. Mercifully, although many of the temples that weren’t closed by the Japanese were burnt down in the Korean War that followed the Japanese occupation, reconstruction programmes have been so comprehensive that in most Korean cities you will seldom be more than a walk away from the nearest temple, each one still an active place of worship. Seoul has fared less well in this regard, but there are some temples in the city centre, and more on the slopes of the city’s surrounding mountains.
Korea’s many temples are some of the most visually appealing places in the country, though there are precious few good examples in Seoul. Most run along a similar design scheme: on entry to the temple complex you’ll pass through the iljumun (일주문), or “first gate”, then the cheonwangmun (천왕문). The latter almost always contains four large guardians, two menacing figures towering on each side of the dividing walkway; these control the four heavens and provide guidance to those with a righteous heart. The central building of a Korean temple is the main hall, or daeungjeon (대웅전). Initially, it was only Sakyamuni – the historical Buddha – who was enshrined here, but this was soon flanked on left and right by bodhisattvas (a term for those who have reached nirvana). Most of these halls have doors at the front, which are usually only for elder monks; novices, and visiting foreigners, use side-entrances. Among the many other halls that you may find on the complex are the daejeokgwangjeon (대적광전), the hall of the Vairocana Buddha; gwaneumjeon (관음전), a hall for the Bodhisattva of Compassion; geungnakjeon (극락전), the Nirvana Hall and home to the celestial Amitabha Buddha; mireukjeon (미륵전), the hall of the future Maitreya Buddha; and nahanjeon (나한전), the hall of disciples. Some also feature the palsangjeon (팔상전), a hall featuring eight paintings detailing the life of the Sakyamuni Buddha, though these are more often found on the outside of another hall.
Somewhere in the complex you’ll find the beomjonggak (범종각), a “bell pavilion” containing instruments to awaken the four sentient beings – a drum for land animals, a wooden fish for the water-borne, a bronze gong for creatures of the air, and a large bell for monks who have slept in. The bell itself can sometimes weigh upwards of twenty tonnes, and the best will have an information board telling you how far away they can be heard if you were to strike them lightly with your fist. Needless to say, you shouldn’t test these contentions.
Like Buddhism, Confucian thought made its way across the sea from China – the exact date remains a mystery, but it seems that it first spread to Korea at the beginning of the Three Kingdoms era. Although Confucianism can’t be classified as a religion – there’s no central figure of worship, or concept of an afterlife – it is used as a means of self-cultivation, and a guide to “proper” conduct, particularly the showing of respect for those higher up the social hierarchy. For centuries it co-existed with the state religion, informing not only political thought but also national ethics, and in many ways it still governs the Korean way of life today. Central to the concept are the Five Moral Disciplines of human-to-human conduct, namely ruler to subject, father to son, husband to wife, elder to younger and friend to friend.
During the Three Kingdoms period, the concepts of filial piety began to permeate Korean life, with adherence to the rules gradually taking the form of ceremonial rites. In the Silla kingdom there developed a “bone rank” system used to segregate social strata, one that was to increase in rigidity until the Joseon era. This was essentially a caste system, one that governed almost every sphere of local life – each “level” of society would have strict limits placed on what they could achieve, the size of their dwelling, whom they could marry and even what colours they were allowed to wear.
At the dawn of the Joseon dynasty in 1392, King Taejo had the Jongmyo shrines built in central Seoul, and for centuries afterwards, ruling kings would venerate their ancestors here in regular ceremonies. At this time, Confucianism truly took hold, with numerous academies (hyanggyo) built around the country at which students from the elite yangban classes would wade through wave after wave of punishing examinations on their way to senior governmental posts. Buddhism had been on the decline for some time, with Confucian scholars arguing that making appeals to gods unseen had a detrimental effect on the national psyche, and that building ornate temples absorbed funds too readily. Some, in fact, began to clamour for the burning of those temples, as well as the murder of monks. As with other beliefs, some followers violated the core principles for their own ends and, despite the birth of great neo-Confucian philosophers such as Yi-Yi and Toegye, enforced slavery and servitude meant that the lot of those at the lower caste levels changed little over the centuries.
It’s often said that Korea remains the most Confucian of all the world’s societies. In addition to several remaining academies and shrines – there’s one of the latter at Inwangsan, just west of Gyeongbokgung – colourful ancestral ceremonies take place each year at Jongmyo in Seoul. Its impact on everyday life is also evident: on getting to know a local, you’ll generally be asked a series of questions both direct and indirect (particularly with regard to age, marriage, education and employment), the answers to which will be used to file you into mental pigeonholes. Though foreigners are treated somewhat differently, this is the main reason why locals see nothing wrong in barging strangers out of the way on the street or showing no mercy on the road – no introduction has been made, and without knowledge of the “proper” behaviour in such a situation no moves are made towards showing respect. Among those who do know each other, it’s easy to find Confucian traits: women are still seen as inferior to men (their salaries continue to lag far behind, and they’re usually expected to quit their job on having a child, never to return to the workplace); the boss or highest earner will usually pay after a group meal; family values remain high, and paper qualifications from reputable universities carry more weight than actual intelligence. Also notable is bungsu, a concept that involves the moving of ancestral grave sites. Perhaps the most high-profile examples of corpse-shifting have been before general elections. After Kim Dae-jung lost the elections in 1987 and 1992, he decided to move the graves of his ancestors to more auspicious locations, and he duly won the next election in 1998. However, Confucian ideas are slowly being eroded as Westernization continues to encroach, particularly as the number of Christians continues to grow.
Making up well over a quarter of the country by population, Christianity is now Korea’s leading religion by number of worshippers, having surpassed Buddhism at the start of the twenty-first century. Surprisingly, the religion has been on the peninsula since the early seventeenth century, with royal envoy Yi Gwang-jeong importing the beliefs from China; while initially catering to a very small audience, Christian numbers increased during the nineteenth century, with missionaries coming across the waters from various European empires. At the time, the Confucian yangban in charge were fearful of change, hardly surprising considering how far apart the fundamental beliefs of the two creeds are. Christianity’s refusal to perform ancestral rites eventually led to its repression, and hundreds of Christians were martyred in the 1870s and 1880s. A number of French missionaries were also murdered in this period, before Korea was forcefully opened up for trade. The numbers have been growing ever since, the majority now belonging to the Presbyterian, Catholic or Methodist churches.
Shamanism
It may come as a surprise to learn that many Koreans follow Shamanistic beliefs, some of which far pre-date any of the country’s other religions. Neither is this an exclusively rural matter: in late 2016, president Park Geun-hye was impeached partly due to her close relationship with Choi Soon-sil, daughter of the leader of a partly Shamanistic cult.
Koreans consult shamans – known locally as madang (마당), and usually female – for a variety of reasons, ranging from success in business to fertility of the land, via soul purification, the calming of malign spirits, and guiding souls to heaven. Ceremonies, known as gut (굿), are typically noisy affairs featuring a lot of cymbal-clanging, the madang singing and dancing in an attempt to communicate with the spirit world, and then falling into a trance-like state as she speaks to the departed.
In Seoul, you’re most likely to see gut taking place on the slopes of Inwangsan, just west of the main palaces. Those catching a traditional pansori performance will also be hearing the religion, in a way – this “Korean opera” derived from shamanistic songs, sung by female vocalists to a minimalistic musical accompaniment.
Churches tend to be monstrous concrete edifices (many visitors note that most sport rather Satanic-looking red neon crosses), and some are huge, with room for thousands of worshippers. In fact, the island of Yeouido, near Seoul, officially has the largest church in the world, with 170 pastors and over 100,000 registered deacons.