Download or read book Korean Popular Beliefs written by Kyŏng-yŏp Yi and published by 지문당. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book s four authors (all respected academics) have different disciplinary backgrounds: Religious Studies (Yong Bhum Yi and Jong Seong Choi), Folklore (Kyung Yup Lee), and Anthropology (Boudewijn Walraven). As such, they are well qualified to produce this informative book in that they have each conducted research on Korean folk religion for more than 20 years and published extensively. In addition to providing a great deal of information on Korean popular beliefs of the past and the present, this book also discusses changing aspects of Korean popular beliefs.
Download or read book Su un and His World of Symbols written by Paul Beirne and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Su-un and His World of Symbols explores the image which Choe Che-u (Su-un), the founder of Donghak (Eastern Learning) Korea's first indigenous religion, had of himself as a religious leader and human being. Su-un gave his life so that he could share his symbols, his scriptures and the foundational principals of his religion with all people, regardless of their status, gender, age or education. His egalitarian creed challenged the major religious traditions in Korea, and Korean society as a whole, to reflect on the innate dignity of each individual, and to reform their social, ethical and religious practices to accord with the reality of the Divine presence in the 'sacred refuge' that lies within. Exploring the two symbols which Su-un created and used to disseminate his religion, and the two books of Scripture which he composed, this book breaks new ground by presenting the only major work in English which attempts to ascertain the image Su-un had of himself as the prototype of a new kind of religious leader in Korea, and by extension, East Asia.
Download or read book 50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True written by Guy P. Harrison and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2012-01-03 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “What would it take to create a world in which fantasy is not confused for fact and public policy is based on objective reality?" asks Neil deGrasse Tyson, science popularizer and author of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. "I don't know for sure. But a good place to start would be for everyone on earth to read this book." Maybe you know someone who swears by the reliability of psychics or who is in regular contact with angels. Or perhaps you're trying to find a nice way of dissuading someone from wasting money on a homeopathy cure. Or you met someone at a party who insisted the Holocaust never happened or that no one ever walked on the moon. How do you find a gently persuasive way of steering people away from unfounded beliefs, bogus cures, conspiracy theories, and the like? This down-to-earth, entertaining exploration of commonly held extraordinary claims will help you set the record straight. The author, a veteran journalist, has not only surveyed a vast body of literature, but has also interviewed leading scientists, explored "the most haunted house in America," frolicked in the inviting waters of the Bermuda Triangle, and even talked to a "contrite Roswell alien." He is not out simply to debunk unfounded beliefs. Wherever possible, he presents alternative scientific explanations, which in most cases are even more fascinating than the wildest speculation. For example, stories about UFOs and alien abductions lack good evidence, but science gives us plenty of reasons to keep exploring outer space for evidence that life exists elsewhere in the vast universe. The proof for Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster may be nonexistent, but scientists are regularly discovering new species, some of which are truly stranger than fiction. Stressing the excitement of scientific discovery and the legitimate mysteries and wonder inherent in reality, this book invites readers to share the joys of rational thinking and the skeptical approach to evaluating our extraordinary world.
Download or read book Korean Spirituality written by Don Baker and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2008-04-01 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Korea has one of the most dynamic and diverse religious cultures of any nation on earth. Koreans are highly religious, yet no single religious community enjoys dominance. Buddhists share the Korean religious landscape with both Protestant and Catholic Christians as well as with shamans, Confucians, and practitioners of numerous new religions. As a result, Korea is a fruitful site for the exploration of the various manifestations of spirituality in the modern world. At the same time, however, the complexity of the country’s religious topography can overwhelm the novice explorer. Emphasizing the attitudes and aspirations of the Korean people rather than ideology, Don Baker has written an accessible aid to navigating the highways and byways of Korean spirituality. He adopts a broad approach that distinguishes the different roles that folk religion, Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, and indigenous new religions have played in Korea in the past and continue to play in the present while identifying commonalities behind that diversity to illuminate the distinctive nature of spirituality on the Korean peninsula.
Download or read book Religious and Philosophical Traditions of Korea written by Kevin Cawley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-02-22 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religious and Philosophical Traditions of Korea addresses a wide range of traditions, serving as a guide to those interested in Buddhism, Confucianism, Shamanism, Christianity and many others. It brings readers along a journey from the past to the present, moving beyond the confines of the Korean peninsula. In this book Kevin N. Cawley examines the different ideas which have shaped a vibrant and exciting intellectual history and engages with some of the key texts and figures from Korea’s intellectual traditions. This comprehensive and riveting text emphasises how some of these ideas have real relevance in the world today and how they have practical value for our lives in the twenty-first century. Students, researchers and academics in the growing area of Korean Studies will find this book indispensable. It will also be of interest to undergraduates and graduate students interested in the comparative study of Asian religions, philosophies and cultures.
Download or read book Shamans Nostalgias and the IMF written by Laurel Kendall and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2009-09-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirty years ago, anthropologist Laurel Kendall did intensive fieldwork among South Korea’s (mostly female) shamans and their clients as a reflection of village women’s lives. In the intervening decades, South Korea experienced an unprecedented economic, social, political, and material transformation and Korean villages all but disappeared. And the shamans? Kendall attests that they not only persist but are very much a part of South Korean modernity. This enlightening and entertaining study of contemporary Korean shamanism makes the case for the dynamism of popular religious practice, the creativity of those we call shamans, and the necessity of writing about them in the present tense. Shamans thrive in South Korea’s high-rise cities, working with clients who are largely middle class and technologically sophisticated. Emphasizing the shaman’s work as open and mutable, Kendall describes how gods and ancestors articulate the changing concerns of clients and how the ritual fame of these transactions has itself been transformed by urban sprawl, private cars, and zealous Christian proselytizing. For most of the last century Korean shamans were reviled as practitioners of antimodern superstition; today they are nostalgically celebrated icons of a vanished rural world. Such superstition and tradition occupy flip sides of modernity’s coin—the one by confuting, the other by obscuring, the beating heart of shamanic practice. Kendall offers a lively account of shamans, who once ministered to the domestic crises of farmers, as they address the anxieties of entrepreneurs whose dreams of wealth are matched by their omnipresent fears of ruin. Money and access to foreign goods provoke moral dilemmas about getting and spending; shamanic rituals express these through the longings of the dead and the playful antics of greedy gods, some of whom have acquired a taste for imported whiskey. No other book-length study captures the tension between contemporary South Korean life and the contemporary South Korean shamans’ work. Kendall’s familiarity with the country and long association with her subjects permit nuanced comparisons between a 1970s "then" and recent encounters—some with the same shamans and clients—as South Korea moved through the 1990s, endured the Asian Financial Crisis, and entered the new millennium. She approaches her subject through multiple anthropological lenses such that readers interested in religion, ritual performance, healing, gender, landscape, material culture, modernity, and consumption will find much of interest here.
Download or read book The Korean Lifestyle Book written by Author TBC and published by Michael O'Mara. This book was released on 2020-09-17 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Korean culture is taking over our beauty routines, our homes, our playlists and our TVs. Here, for the first time, this beautiful book brings together everything you ever wanted to know about the Korean way of life.
Download or read book Buddhist and Protestant Korean Immigrants written by Okyun Kwon and published by LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC. This book was released on 2003 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kwon explores how Korea's two major religious groups, Buddhists and Protestants, have emigrated and how their religious beliefs affect their adjustments after immigration. Kwon bases his study on a survey of 114 Korean congregations, participatory observation of a Buddhist temple and a Protestant church, and in-depth interviews with 109 devout immigrants. He finds that non-religious variables-urban background, educational level, and social class-have a greater effect on adjustment to the host society than religion does. Religious congregations promote members' social capital for adjustment, but at the same religious participation serves as a barrier to assimilation.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Korean Seasonal Customs written by The National Folk Museum of Korea (South Korea) and published by 길잡이미디어. This book was released on 2014-10-30 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contents The First Lunar Month The Second Lunar Month The Third Lunar Month The Fourth Lunar Month The Fifth Lunar Month The Sixth Lunar Month The Seventh Lunar Month The Eighth Lunar Month The Ninth Lunar Month The Tenth Lunar Month The Eleventh Lunar Month The Twelfth Lunar Month The Leap month Lunar Month
Download or read book Religions of Korea in Practice written by Robert E. Buswell Jr. and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Korea has one of the most diverse religious cultures in the world today, with a range and breadth of religious practice virtually unrivaled by any other country. This volume in the Princeton Readings in Religions series is the first anthology in any language, including Korean, to bring together a comprehensive set of original sources covering the whole gamut of religious practice in both premodern and contemporary Korea. The book's thirty-two chapters help redress the dearth of source materials on Korean religions in Western languages. Coverage includes shamanic rituals for the dead and songs to quiet fussy newborns; Buddhist meditative practices and exorcisms; Confucian geomancy and ancestor rites; contemporary Catholic liturgy; Protestant devotional practices; internal alchemy training in new Korean religions; and North Korean Juche ("self-reliance") ideology, an amalgam of Marxism and Neo-Confucian filial piety focused on worship of the "father," Kim Il Sung. Religions of Korea in Practice provides substantial coverage of contemporary Korean religious practice, especially the various Christian denominations and new indigenous religions. Each chapter includes an extensive translation of original sources on Korean religious practice, accompanied by an introduction that frames the significance of the selections and offers suggestions for further reading. This book will help any reader gain a better appreciation of the rich complexity of Korea's religious culture.
Download or read book Dao Companion to Korean Confucian Philosophy written by Young-chan Ro and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the first comprehensive and in-depth discussion written in English of the Confucian tradition in the context of the intellectual history of Korea. It deals with the historical, social, political, philosophical and spiritual dimensions of Korean Confucianism, arguably the most influential intellectual tradition, ethical and religious practice, and political-ideological system in Korea. This volume analyzes the unique aspects of the Korean development of the Confucian tradition by examining the role of Confucianism as the ruling ideology of the Choson Dynasty (1302-1910). It investigates Confucianism’s social and cultural construction, and intellectual foundation in highlighting the Korean achievement of the Neo-Confucian discussion on "human nature and its principle" in light of the Chinese Neo-Confucian development. The volume also surveys the most influential Korean Confucian scholars discussing their philosophical significance in relation to one of the most fundamental Neo-Confucian discourses, namely the li (principle) and qi (material force) debates, to elucidate how metaphysical theories shaped the socio-political factions of the Choson Dynasty. Furthermore, issues concerning the relationship between Confucianism and Buddhism and other native traditional belief systems are also included in this volume. The volume explores the Confucian confrontation with modernity, encounter with the "Western Learning" including Western science and Catholicism, and the Confucian struggle with modernity in dealing with issues such as democracy, human rights, and gender in modern Korea. Individual contributors of this volume are either well established senior scholars or promising young scholars in the field.
Download or read book Korean Shamanism written by Chongho Kim and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-01-18 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Title first published in 2003. Shamanism has a contradictory position within the Korean cultural system, leading to the periodical suppression of shamanism yet also, paradoxically, ensuring its survival throughout Korean history. This book examines the place of shamans within contemporary society as a cultural practice in which people make use of shamanic ritual and disputing the prevalent view that shamanism is 'popular culture', a 'women's religion' or 'performing arts'. Directly confronting the prejudice against shamans and their paradoxical situation in a modern society such as Korea, this book reveals the cultural discrepancy between two worlds in Korean culture, the ordinary world and the shamanic world, showing that these two worlds cannot be reconciled. This unique study of shamanism offers a significant contribution to growing studies in indigenous anthropology and indigenous religions, and provides a captivating read for a wide range of readers through retelling the stories-never-to-be-told involving shamanic ritual.
Download or read book God Pictures in Korean Contexts written by Laurel Kendall and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2015-09-30 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shamans walking on knives, fairies riding on clouds, kings with dragon mounts: They are gods and they are paper images. Some are repulsed and unsettled by shaman paintings, some cannot stop collecting them, and some use them as sites of veneration. Laurel Kendall, Jongsung Yang, and Yul Soo Yoon explore what it is that makes a Korean shaman painting magical or sacred. How does a picture carry the trace of a god and can it ever be “just a painting” again? How have shaman paintings been revalued as art? Do artfulness and magic ever intersect? Does it matter, as a matter of market value, that the painting was once a sacred thing? Navigating the journey shaman paintings make from painters’ studios to shaman shrines to private collections and museums, the three authors deftly traverse the borderland between scholarly interests in the material dimension of religious practice and the circulation of art. Illustrated with sixty images in color and black and white, the book offers a new vantage point on “the social life of things.” This is not a story of a collecting West and a disposing rest; the primary collectors and commentators on Korean shaman paintings are South Koreans re-imagining their own past in light of their own modernist sensibility. It is a tale told with an awareness of both recent South Korean history and the problematic question of how the paintings are understood by different South Korean actors, most particularly the shamans and collectors who share a common language and sometimes meet face-to-face.
Download or read book Confucianism and Catholicism written by Michael R. Slater and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2020-05-31 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Confucianism and Catholicism, among the most influential religious traditions, share an intricate relationship. Beginning with the work of Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), the nature of this relationship has generated great debate. These ten essays synthesize in a single volume this historic conversation. Written by specialists in both traditions, the essays are organized into two groups. Those in the first group focus primarily on the historical and cultural contexts in which Confucianism and Catholicism encountered one another in the four major Confucian cultures of East Asia: China, Vietnam, Korea, and Japan. The essays in the second part offer comparative and constructive studies of specific figures, texts, and issues in the Confucian and Catholic traditions from both theological and philosophical perspectives. By bringing these historical and constructive perspectives together, Confucianism and Catholicism: Reinvigorating the Dialogue seeks not only to understand better the past dialogue between these traditions, but also to renew the conversation between them today. In light of the unprecedented expansion of Eastern Asian influence in recent decades, and considering the myriad of challenges and new opportunities faced by both the Confucian and Catholic traditions in a world that is rapidly becoming globalized, this volume could not be more timely. Confucianism and Catholicism will be of interest to professional theologians, historians, and scholars of religion, as well as those who work in interreligious dialogue. Contributors: Michael R. Slater, Erin M. Cline, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Vincent Shen, Anh Q. Tran, S.J., Donald L. Baker, Kevin M. Doak, Xueying Wang, Richard Kim, Victoria S. Harrison, and Lee H. Yearley.
Download or read book Korea A Religious History written by James H. Grayson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an historical survey of all the religious traditions of Korea in relation to the socio-cultural trends of seven different periods of Korean history. The book includes a discussion of the history of the study of religion in Korea, a chronological description of Korean folk religion including shamanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, Islam, and Korean New Religions, and some final observations about the unique characteristics of religious beliefs and practices in Korea.
Download or read book The Korean Tradition of Religion Society and Ethics written by Chai-sik Chung and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-11-10 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 of Korea and its cultural and social significance within the wider horizons of modern and globalizing changes. Reflecting nearly five decades of the author’s work on the subject, it presents an understanding of the main current in Korean religion and social thought throughout history. It then goes on to examine discourses on values and morality involving the relationship between religion and society, in particular the human meaning of economy and society, which is one of the most central and practical problems in the contemporary world with global relevance beyond Korea and Asia. Addressing the overview of the Korean religious tradition in the context of its impact on the making of modern society and economy, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Religious Studies, Korean Studies and Asian Studies.
Download or read book Korean American Evangelicals written by Elaine Howard Ecklund and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2008-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Ecklund widens the inquiry to look at how Korean Americans use religion to negotiate civic responsibility, as well as to create racial and ethnic identity. She compares the views and activities of second generation Korean Americans in two different congregational settings, one ethnically Korean and the other multi-ethnic. Surprisingly, she finds that the Korean churches de-emphasize ethnicity. They look like other evangelical congregations and are concerned about evangelizing in the context of providing social services. Multiethnic churches, in contrast, use evangelical Christianity to legitimate a political and social justice consciousness that values ethnic diversity and individualized understanding of faith in the context of a conservative Christianity. Korean Americans in both kinds of churches are deeply concerned about helping those in their local community, including non-Koreans and non-Christians. In multiethnic churches, however, Korean Americans also develop an awareness of local politics and a concern with social justice for other ethnic and racial minorities. Ecklund's work is based on ethnographic data from two congregations in one impoverished, primarily non-white city on the east coast, which provided the opportunity to compare how members of each practiced community service in the same urban context. She also conducted more than 100 in-depth interviews with Korean American members of these and seven other churches around the country, and draws extensively on the secondary literature on immigrant religion, American civic life, and Korean American religion.
