From the Mountains to the Cities: A History of Buddhist Propagation in Modern Korea by Mark A. Nathan (review)

Industrial growth and the development of the new middle class in South Korea of the 1980s went together with increased consumption and the development of a leisure culture, causing growing concerns with health and personal self-cultivation. In contemporary times this middle-class trend to “better” living connects with the pursuit of “nature,” invented and constructed to counterpoise pollution and urbanization. Seventy percent of Korean territory is mountains, so “nature” is often conceptualized in the form of a mountain.

The older generations have lived through Korea’s dramatic transformation from a largely rural society to an industrial one. Their yearning for the past (in which the “past” is idealized and imagined anew) is directly linked to the ancient Korean tradition of mountain worship, a touchstone of cultural authenticity. Together with the image of rural “old Korea” in the minds of contemporary Koreans, this yearning becomes a source of inspiration in re-inventing tradition in the spirit of nationalism. This tendency is expressed in the new religious and spiritual movements that matured toward the 1980s. Coinciding in time with the rise of leisure culture and mountain hiking came spiritual-social phenomena such as sŏngin undong 成人運動 (sports for adults), ki suryŏn 氣修練 (training related to ki—“life energy”), and Buddhist temporary monasticism.

In From the Mountains to the Cities: A History of Buddhist Propagation in Modern Korea, Mark Nathan examines Buddhist propagation (p’ogyo 布敎) from the late Chosŏn to the present. The book describes how Buddhism, forced into the mountains by the fifteenth-century prohibition on Buddhist monks and nuns from entering the cities, reappeared in cities during the late Chosŏn when that ban was lifted (chapter 2). Nathan goes on to describe the development of Buddhism under Japanese colonial rule (chapter 3), in the post-liberation period (chapter 4), and during contemporary times (chapter 5), when Buddhist propagation (p’ogyo) took the form of Buddhist temporary monasticism: today, hundreds of thousands of Koreans travel annually to mountain temples for short meditation retreats in order to recharge and acquire the tools to continue their hectic urban lives.

The research of Nathan is carried out by way of analysis of relevant laws and regulations, mainly the Temple Ordinance (sach’allyŏng 寺刹令, effective 1911–1962), which initially put Korean Buddhist temples under the supervision of Japanese colonial authorities, simultaneously shaping and modernizing the way Buddhism was practiced. The author explains the significance of Buddhist propagation for the survival of Korean Buddhism in its constant rivalry with Christianity, unfolding against the background of the Western understanding of what a religion is or should be under modernization and a market economy. According to this understanding, religious propagation becomes a defining characteristic of religion itself. These dynamics are explained by the author throughout the book, but particularly in the introductory chapter 1 and concluding chapter 6.

During colonial rule, various methods of propagation, including training programs for propagators and establishing urban propagation spaces, became associated with enlightening the masses and social involvement. Nathan shows that from that time p’ogyo became an important element of the reorganization of Buddhist religion and practice, weaving into and growing together with the modernization of Korean society. Publications of journals, books, and newspapers beginning from the colonial period, and the development of other mass media, such as broadcasting, television, and Internet since the 1990s, were all involved in these processes.

Mark Nathan demonstrates how the schism between married and celibate clergy in the Buddhist community began in the colonial era but intensified post-liberation. The Japanese colonial government removed the restrictions on marriage and meat-eating for monks and nuns; married monks and nuns have since become associated with Japanese colonization and modernization. In 1954, an attempt was made by the South Korean government to nominate married clergy as propagation monks, while defining unmarried clergy as practice monks; this proposal...