Jin Y Park

Why and how do women engage with Buddhism and philosophy? The present volume aims to answer these questions by examining the life and philosophy of a Korean Zen Buddhist nun, Kim Iryŏp (1896–1971). The daughter of a pastor, Iryŏp began questioning Christian doctrine as a teenager. In a few years, she became increasingly involved in women’s movements in Korea, speaking against society’s control of female sexuality and demanding sexual freedom and free divorce for women. While in her late twenties, an existential turn in her thinking led Iryŏp to Buddhism; she eventually joined a monastery and went on to become a leading figure in the female monastic community until her death.

After taking the tonsure, Iryŏp followed the advice of her teacher and stopped publishing for more than two decades. She returned to the world of letters in her sixties, using her strong, distinctive voice to address fundamental questions on the scope of identity, the meaning of being human, and the value of existence. In her writing, she frequently adopted an autobiographical style that combined her life experiences with Buddhist teachings. Through a close analysis of Iryŏp’s life story, Buddhist philosophy and practice in connection with East Asian new women’s movements, and continental philosophy, this volume offers a creative interpretation of Buddhism as both a philosophy and a religion actively engaged with lives as they are lived. It presents a fascinating narrative on how women connect with the world―whether through social issues such as gender inequality, a Buddhist worldview, or existential debates on human existence. By characterizing women’s philosophy as narrative philosophy―a philosophy of life based on lived experience―this book provides readers with a new way of philosophizing that is transformative and deeply connected with everyday existence.
Women and Buddhist Philosophy: Engaging Zen Master Kim Iryŏp will be of primary interest to scholars and students of Buddhism, Buddhist and comparative philosophy, and gender and Korean studies.

The life and work of Kim Iryŏp (1896–1971) bear witness to Korea’s encounter with modernity. A prolific writer, Iryŏp reflected on identity and existential loneliness in her poems, short stories, and autobiographical essays. As a pioneering feminist intellectual, she dedicated herself to gender issues and understanding the changing role of women in Korean society. As an influential Buddhist nun, she examined religious teachings and strove to interpret modern human existence through a religious world view. Originally published in Korea when Iryŏp was in her sixties, Reflections of a Zen Buddhist Nun (Ŏnŭ sudoin ŭi hoesang) makes available for the first time in English a rich, intimate, and unfailingly candid source of material with which to understand modern Korea, Korean women, and Korean Buddhism.

The first book in English devoted exclusively to modern Korean Buddhism, this work provides a comprehensive exploration for scholars, students, and serious readers. Makers of Modern Korean Buddhism focuses on three key areas: Buddhist reform, Zen revival, and the interrelationship of religion, history, and politics. In Korea, the modern period in Buddhism begins in earnest in the late nineteenth century, during the closing years of the Choson dynasty, which was characterized by a repressive brand of neo-Confucianism. Buddhist reformers arose to seek change in both Buddhism and Korean society at large. The work begins with a look at five of these reformers and their thought and work. The Zen revival that began at the end of the nineteenth century is covered from that period to contemporary times through an exploration of the life and thought of important Zen masters. The influence of Japanese Buddhist missionaries, the emergence of Korean engaged Buddhism, known as Minjung Buddhism, and the formation of modern Buddhist scholarship in Korea are discussed as well.

Buddhism and Postmodernity is a response to some of the questions that have emerged in the process of Buddhism's encounters with modernity and the West. Jin Y. Park broadly outlines these questions as follows: first, why are the interpretations and evaluations of Buddhism so different in Europe (in the nineteenth century), in the United States (in the twentieth century), and in traditional Asia; second, why does Zen Buddhism, which offers a radically egalitarian vision, maintain a strongly authoritarian leadership; and third, what ethical paradigm can be drawn from the Buddhist-postmodern form of philosophy? Park argues that, as unrelated as these questions may seem, the issues that have generated them are related to perennial philosophical themes of identity, institutional power, and ethics, respectively. Each of these themes constitutes one section of Buddhism and Postmodernity. Park discusses the three issues in the book through the exploration of the Buddhist concepts of self and others, language and thinking, and universality and particularities. Most of this discussion is drawn from the East Asian Buddhist traditions of Zen and Huayan Buddhism in connection with the Continental philosophies of postmodernism, hermeneutics, and deconstruction. Self-critical from both the Buddhist and Western philosophical perspectives, Buddhism and Postmodernity points the reader toward a new understanding of Buddhist philosophy and offers a Buddhist-postmodern ethical paradigm that challenges normative ethics of metaphysical traditions.

Merleau-Ponty and Buddhism explores a new mode of philosophizing through a comparative study of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology and philosophies of major Buddhist thinkers such as Nagarjuna, Chinul, Dogen, Shinran, and Nishida Kitaro. Challenging the dualistic paradigm of existing philosophical traditions, Merleau-Ponty proposes a philosophy in which the traditional opposites are encountered through mutual penetration. Likewise, a Buddhist worldview is articulated in the theory of dependent co-arising, or the middle path, which comprehends the world and beings in the third space, where the subject and the object, or eternalism and annihilation, exist independent of one another. The thirteen essays in this volume explore this third space in their discussions of Merleau-Ponty's concepts of the intentional arc, the flesh of the world, and the chiasm of visibility in connection with the Buddhist doctrine of no-self and the five aggregates, the Tiantai Buddhist concept of threefold truth, Zen Buddhist huatou meditation, the invocation of the Amida Buddha in True Pure Land Buddhism, and Nishida's concept of basho.

Comparative Political Theory and Cross-Cultural Philosophy: Essays in Honor of Hwa Yol Jung explores new forms of philosophizing in the age of globalization by challenging the conventional border between the East and the West, as well as the traditional boundaries among different academic disciplines. The essays in this volume examine diverse issues, encompassing globalization, cosmopolitanism, public philosophy, political ecology, ecocriticism, ethics of encounter, and aesthetics of caring. They examine the philosophical traditions of phenomenology of Hursserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Heidegger; the dialogism of Mikhail Bakhtin; the philosophy of mestizaje literature; and Asian philosophical traditions. This rich comparative and cross-cultural investigation of philosophy and political theory demonstrates the importance of cultural and cross-cultural understanding in our reading of philosophical texts, exploring how cross-cultural thinking transforms our understanding of the traditional philosophical paradigm and political theory. This volume honors the scholarship and philosophy of Hwa Yol Jung, who has been a pioneer in the field of comparative political theory, cross-cultural philosophy, and interdisciplinary scholarship. In one of his earliest publications, The Crisis of Political Understanding (1979) Jung described the urgency and necessity of breakthrough in political thinking as a crisis, and he followed up on this issue for his half century of scholarship by introducing Asian philosophy and political thought to Western scholarship, demonstrating the possibility of cross-cultural philosophical thinking. In his most recent publications, Jung refers to this possibility as 'transversality' or 'trans(uni)versality' a concept which should replace the outmoded Eurocentric universality of modernist philosophy.


Review
Hwa-Yol Jung, although he has spent his entire professional career in the United States, is well-known and esteemed by many in his native Korea. With this extraordinary volume in his honor, including essays by distinguished intellectuals from several disciplines, American readers will be able at once to become more aware of his own seminal contributions to so many cutting-edge areas of current concern―globalization, ecology, East/West comparative philosophy, contemporary literature, and much more―and to absorb many new and original insights in these same areas. This is one of the most appealing and successful books of tribute to an author that I have ever read. (William L. McBride, Purdue University)

An amazing set of major Asian and Western thinkers―moved by Hwa Yol Jung's long, broad, and original thinking in politics and beyond―impressively address many positive and negative aspects of the emerging inter-national, inter-cultural, gender-sensitive, and ecologically concerned world of globalization. (Lester Embree, Florida Altantic University)

Hwa Yol Jung's creative term 'glocalization,' which refuses to separate the global from the local and roots the global in the local, reflects a mode of philosophizing typical of the many intriguing essays in this book, which resist neat distinctions, seek to include the valid insights of conflicting perspectives, and strive to recover whatever might have been dismissed or facilely forgotten, including other persons, cultures, and philosophies. The contributors' diverse backgrounds reflect the rich dimensions of Jung's own intellectual life, encompassing comparative philosophy, literature, and religion; ecology, linguistics, cultural anthropology, and political theory; phenomenology in all its varieties; and the East-West dialogue―a richness that will inspire readers to cross boundaries of their own. (Michael Barber, St. Louis University)

Comparative Political Theory and Cross-Cultural Philosophy is an ambitious volume that should be given credit for the reminder of why a new mode of thinking and doing philosophy is necessary in this globalized world of multiculturalism. (Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy)

Getting Familiar with Death is a translation of 죽음의 길을 어떻게 잘 다녀올 것인가, written in Korean by a Won Buddhist nun Yichang Chon. The book discusses how one should prepare oneself for the afterlife, on the deathbed, and for the 49 days after death when one is being judged for the next life. This book is comparable to the Tibetan Book of the Dead in its discussion of the death, and the process of reincarnation.

What does the act of philosophy involve? Is philosophy fundamentally about
ideas or does it occur through action and praxis? This chapter explores the
meaning of action and praxis in philosophy through an examination of the
work of Pak Ch’iu, a modern Korean philosopher. In that context, we also
consider philosophy’s relation to power as well as the association of logic to
politics.

Korean Sŏn Master Hyeam Sŏnggwan (慧菴性觀, 1920–2001) is a relatively
unknown figure within English-language scholarship.1 However, among
Korean Buddhists, his rigorous Zen practice has been well recognized.
One-meal-per-day (K. ilchongsik 一種食), no-meal-in-the-afternoon (K.
ohu pulsik 午後不食), and staying-sitting-in-meditation-without-lying-down
(K. changjwa purwa 長坐不臥) are all well-known practices that frequently
appear when describing Hyeam as a Zen master. What is less frequently
asked is what these rigorous Zen practices might mean to us commoners
who live in a secular world or to monastics whose practice might not be
as rigorous as Hyeam’s. Should Zen masters such as Hyeam who appear
to exhibit superhuman capacity for religious practice be only an object
of awe and admiration in our secular modern times? Even if so, what do
the awe and admiration indicate? In this chapter, I try to bridge the gap
between the rigorous practice typically seen in Korean Zen masters’ lives
and its meaning for people living in modern times. What questions does
a Zen master like Hyeam raise for us, and how should scholars address
these issues? These are the inquiries with which I hope to engage.

This essay discusses the importance of nonviolence for the future of our society. In comparing nonviolence with violence, the essay identifies the following characteristics of each: Violence emerges from despair, whereas nonviolence fosters a sense of hope. Violence arises from an attachment to the past, whereas nonviolence becomes possible when one has a vision of the future. Violence comes from a desire to dominate others, whereas nonviolence stems from a yearning to live together. Violence dehumanizes people, whereas nonviolence encompasses an effort to rehumanize the world. Violence destroys, but nonviolence enhances the sustainability of the world and life. Nonviolence is not just a principle but should be an ongoing struggle that people practice in everyday life.

These essays engage Jin Y. Park's recent translation of the work of Kim Iryŏp (1896-1971), a Buddhist nun and public intellectual in early twentieth-century Korea. Park's translation of Iryŏp's Reflections of a Zen Buddhist Nun (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2014) was the subject of two book panels at recent conferences: the first a plenary session at the annual meeting of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy (Monterey, California, 2015) and the second at the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association on a group program session sponsored by the International Society for Buddhist Philosophy (Washington, D.C., 2016). This exchange also includes a response from Park.

Park specializes in East Asian Buddhism, Buddhist and comparative ethics, intercultural philosophy, and modern East Asian philosophy. Her research focuses on gender, violence, politics of discrimination, and narrative philosophy. Marginality has been a consistent theme in her scholarship which deals with the marginalization of non-West and non-Western philosophy, of women's philosophy, and of some forms of philosophizing, revealing the power structure in philosophy and aiming for the voices of the margin to be heard.

This essay examines a Huayanist understanding of the Lotus
Sūtra, focusing on Chinese Huayan thinker Li Tongxuan’s 李通玄
(635–730) Exposition on the Eighty-Fascicle Version of the Flower
Ornament Scripture (Xin Huayan jing lun 新華嚴經論). The fi rst
section of the essay discusses Li’s doctrinal classifi cation and the
position of the Lotus Sūtra (Miaofa lianhua jing 妙法蓮華經) in
that structure. The second section explores Li’s interpretation of the
dragon girl’s story in the Lotus Sūtra in comparison with the story
of the youth Sudhana (Shancai tongzi 善財童子) in the Huayan jing
華嚴經. In the third section, I will try to demonstrate why Li was
so occupied with the dragon girl’s story and how it reveals the core
themes of his Huayan Buddhism and the inner contradiction of the
Lotus Sūtra from Li’s point of view.

This article discusses Buddhist ethics from Zen and Hauayn Buddhist perspective. I propose that Zen Buddhist ethics underlines the importance of the ethical agent’s awareness of the fundamental gap between the reality of the world and the agent’s capacity to fully understand the total reality, and this gap inevitably creates a tension in the ethical agent’s mind. This tension is a positive guideline that demands the ethical agent a constant and consistent self-reflection when making ethical decisions. Moral norms can offer a contour of our ethical life, but, from the Zen and Huayan perspective, crucial to ethical reasoning is one’s capacity to be aware of multi-faceted causes and conditions that generate an event and the venerability of the ethical agent’s hermeneutic capacity to fully grape the total realty. Ethics emerges in the space of this tension when the tension is positively channelled through the moral agent’s self-cultivation.

Key words:
Zen Buddhism, Huayan Buddhism, ethics, tension, self-cultivation

Buddhism and postmodernism have been subject to the criticism that they fail to provide appropriate ethical paradigm. This article challenges such a criticism against Buddhism and postmodernism and proposes an ethical paradigm that can be drawn from a comparative philosophical perspective.

What makes our life meaningful? Philosophers have long pursued this question. Different philosophical approaches propose different ways to gauge issues, including: why something is meaningful in our life; how that meaning is produced; and why it is valuable to follow the meaning generated through a certain pipeline. In this article, I examine some major tenets of Flanagan’s naturalism and consider how they share some insights with Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction in his deconstruction of metaphysics regarding how meaning is produced in our existence. In so doing, I also propose that Zen Buddhist ethics share ideas with Flanagan’s naturalist ethics and Derrida’s deconstructive approach to ethics. In conclusion, I claim that transcendence or metaphysics is not a necessary condition for finding the meaning of existence, and the three traditions—Flanagan’s naturalism, Derrida’s deconstruction, and Zen Buddhism—tell us how we produce meaning of existence without relying on a transcendental power and without being pessimistic.

What do we see in our daily existence and how accurately do the "visible" aspects of our existence reveal what we want to know about our existence and how we want to live our life? Entrapped by the visible appearance we encounter in daily life, we might have become blind to what the glitzy appearance of our society has failed to reveal. Among the concerns I discuss in this paper in this context are: the nature of humanism, poverty, justice, and possibility of responsibility. The paper discusses these issues in the context of East Asian Buddhism--especially Son/Chan and Huayan Buddhism-- Jean-François Lyotard's postmodernism, and Jacques Derrida's deconstruction.

What is an inter-cultural philosophy? How should we do it? What kind of philosophical issues inter-cultural philosophy brings to us? What is the position of Asian philosophy in that context? These are some of the questions that I discussed in this book-review essay.

Philosophy claims its goal is to search for truth. The history of philosophy, however, demonstrates that, in most cases, this search for truth is not free from the power structures of the time. The formation of modern philosophy in East Asia is no exception. This essay will demonstrate how the East-West power imbalance at the beginning of the modern period is implicitly and explicitly imbedded in the formation of modern Buddhist philosophy in East Asia. By examining the life and thoughts of two East Asian Buddhist thinkers, Paek Sŏnguk (白性郁1897-1981) and Inoue Enryō (井上円了1858-1919), this essay will demonstrate two seemingly unrelated aspects of the East-West encounter in the philosophizing of the East. On the one hand, Paek’s and Enryō’s Buddhist philosophy tells us that the beginning of philosophy in modern East Asia is inevitably related to the power imbalance between the East and the West. On the other hand, however, the forced encounter of Eastern “thought” tradition with the Western genre called philosophy generated a new mode of philosophizing, which is also shared by some contemporary Western philosophers in their criticism of institutionalized philosophy.

In this contribution, I examine the notion of “philosophy” and the role of East-West encounters in the formation of modern Korean philosophy by examining the case of Paek Seonguk (白性郁1897-1981), a Korean Buddhist philosopher. The words, philosophy and religion, were introduced to the East Asian intellectual world during the mid-nineteenth century.  What are the implications of this historical “beginning” of modern philosophy in the context of Korean philosophy in particular and Asian philosophy in general? How does this context of modernity influence the way philosophy has shaped itself in modern Korea? And what does the shaping of modern Korean philosophy—in the case of Baek Seonguk—tell us about the relationship between philosophizing, historical context, and the power dynamic of the time? These are some of the questions that I would like to address in this article. By doing so, this article claims that socio-political ecology is the context of our philosophizing, and no philosophy takes place in a vacuum state to reveal a universal truth.

Kyŏnghŏ Sǒngu (鏡虛惺牛1849-1912) has been recognized as the founder of modern Korean Zen/Sǒn Buddhism. With this recognition, Korean Buddhism has claimed that Hwadu (話頭) meditation or Kanhwa Sǒn (看話禪), which Kyŏnghŏ revived, is the core of the Korean Buddhist tradition. Kyŏnghŏ’s life story has also been employed as evidence that the identity of Korean Buddhism is Sǒn tradition, as opposed to doctrinal schools. In this contribution, I reexamine Kyŏnghŏ’s life and his Buddhism and propose to understand them as suggesting more fundamental dimensions of human existence. Kyŏnghŏ’s Buddhism points not only to cultural changes that occurred in modern times, but also to the existential dimensions of Buddhist practice.

What does a religious practice entail? How is it related to our understanding of the absolute being, the religious agent, and the role of religion in life? I hope to address these questions by examining the religious thoughts of two modern East Asian thinkers—Kim Iryŏp (金一葉 1896–1971) and Tanabe Hajime (田辺 元 1885–1962)—and also engage their philosophy with Jacques Derrida’s discussion on religion. In that context, I will pay attention to the role of nothingness as religious practice.
Nothingness is a major concept in the religious and philosophical discourse of East Asia. Twentieth-century East Asian religious thinkers fully utilized the tradition of nothingness in their discussion of religious practice, asking questions related to what it means to think about nothing and even practice it. Furthermore, nothingness is one of the most contentious philosophical topics in both the East and the West. Why are there such differences in approaching the idea of nothingness between the East and the West? By exploring Iryŏp’s and Tanabe’s use of nothingness and further engaging with Jacques Derrida’s discussion of religion in that context, I will consider the different faces of nothingness that appear in the act of religion.

A rationalist approach to religion marked the beginning of the field of the philosophy of religion. Rene Descartes (1596–1650) claimed that it is the work of philosophers rather than theologians to prove the existence of God. Hegel (1770–1831) began lecturing on the philosophy of religion in 1821 and did so again in 1824, 1827, and 1831. He offered a grand scheme of the evolution of religions, assigning Asian religions to a primitive stage and Christianity to the culminating stage of that evolution. Regarding religious phenomena as " homogeneous, " he did not consider the possibility that different notions of the ultimate being or of humanity's relationship to it are an expression, not of a religion's relative primitiveness or maturity, but of different perspectives of the world and existence. This history of the philosophy of religion tells us what the study of the philosophy of religion can offer to the modern university. Diversity and inclusion are a mantra of contemporary American universities. Frequently, though, this mantra fails to bring real change to college campuses, instead remaining as just rhetoric. By definition, the philosophy of religion investigates the act of religion. As I discussed in my earlier blog post " What is philosophy of religion?, " however, the widely accepted definitions of both " philosophy " and " religion " can be contested. In the East Asian traditions, these two terms might be understood in a very different way from how they are understood within the familiar Judeo-Christian religions. Hegel's marginalization and depreciation of Asian religions clearly shows the limitations of the West-centered worldview. Likewise, studying the history of the philosophy of religion itself can help the modern university to challenge closed perspectives regarding diversity and inclusion by introducing different ways of viewing religions.

The philosophy of religion is a branch of philosophy born out of a specific intellectual context of the West. The Western origin of the field dictates some of the presuppositions about philosophy and religion. This article engages with East Asian intellectual traditions to identify how they approach some of the core issues in the Western philosophy of religion. For this purpose, I will examine three modern East Asian thinkers—Inoue Enryō (井上円了1858–1919), Kim Iryŏp (金一葉1897–1971), and Tanabe Hajime (田辺元 1885–1962)—on three topics: (1) the definition of philosophy and religion; (2) the nature of the transcendental being and the religious agent; and (3) the act of religion and the meaning of religious practice.

Kwang-Sae Lee (1934-2012) was a Korean-American philosopher who taught at Kent State University from 1963-2012. He specialized in the philosophy of science, Kant, Heidegger. Later in his life, he devoted much of his time to the  East-West comparative philosophy and became a pioneering figure in that field.

Buddhist encounters with modernity in Korean can be described with three characteristics: (1) Buddhist reform movements; (2) revival of Zen Buddhism; (3) Buddhist encounter with intellectualism. An introduction to the edited volume, Makers of Modern Korean Buddhism, this article offers a contours of Korean Buddhism when it encounters the West and modernity from the late nineteenth to the mid twentieth centuries.

In this article, I discuss Korean Buddhist philosophy with a focus on three issues: (1) Ŭisang’s (義湘, 625- 702) Huayan (華嚴) Buddhism with his discussion of the particular and universal; (2) Chinul’s ( 知訥: 1158-1210) Sǒn/Zen Buddhism with a focus on his philosophy of language; an (3) Mahāyāna Buddhist ethics drawing from Wǒnhyo’s (元曉, 617- 686) discussion of bodhisattva precepts and Minjung Buddhism (民衆佛敎), a twentieth century Korean engaged Buddhism.

In this article, I (1) reviewed the status of Asian philosophy in the American academia; (2) examined the current status of Korean philosophy in the English-speaking world; and (3) proposed what needs to be done and what should be the vision of Korean philosophy for the future.

폭력이란 무엇인가? 폭력의 시작은 어디인가? 폭력의 범위를 우리는 어떻게 규정하는가? 그리고 폭력은 여성차별과 어떻게 연결되는가? 이 논문에서 생각해 보고자 하는 주제들을 나열해 보았다. 이 문제를 우리는 불교와 데리다 철학의 비교철학적 관점에서 생각해 보고자 한다.

How do we define violence? Where and how does it begin? What is the scope of violence? And how is violence related to gender discrimination. This article delves into these issues in the context of a comparative philosophy of Derrida and Buddhism.

This article explores the different concepts of nothingness in the East and the West. For the purpose, (1) this article examines  Heidegger's discussion of nothing in his "What is metaphysics?" (2) and claims that Heidegger fell short accomplishing his goal to overcome the negative image of nothingness in the West and identified nothingness as a source of anxiety. (3) By bringing in the Buddhist concept of nothingness and emptiness (sunyata), through a discussion of the Heart Sutra, this article demonstrates how nothingness in the Eastern philosophical tradition is understood as an openness of being, instead of lack of being.

The different understanding of nothingness and emptiness in the East and the West was also one of the reasons the first generation European Buddhologists and nineteenth-century European thinkers evaluated Buddhism as a pessimistic and negative religion and thought system.

The article concludes that a different understanding of nothing in the Eastern intellectual tradition offers us a different ethical paradigm that challenges a  hierarchical value systems.

In this contribution to a special issue on "불교경전의 번역과 유통" (Translation and circulation of Buddhist scriptures), I discussed why we need to translate Korean Buddhist texts into English. (1) In the introduction, I discussed Paek Seonguk, a Korean Buddhist philosopher's encounter with European Buddhist scholarship at the beginning of the twentieth century and his painful realization that Koreans needed to change their way to approach Buddhism and Buddhist scholarship if they were to keep up with the changing world.
(2)  The second section titled "미국에서의 한국불교" (Korean Buddhism in the United States), I discussed the Western perception of Korean Buddhism. Korean Buddhism arrived in the US at the beginning of the 1960s. I especially emphasized here that translation of Korean Buddhist texts into English is not just a simple translation from one language to another. It is far different from translating sagwa (사과) to apple. From the translation of the Korean word, sagwa to its English equivalent "apple" we have a clear reference to the linguistic sign. However, in the translation of Buddhist scriptures and texts, we in most cases need to also create the reference of the linguistic expressions.
(3) The third section, 미국불교 교재를 통해 본 한국불교 (Korean Buddhism as represented in American Buddhist text books) is a survey of the way some of Buddhist text books in English presents Korean Buddhism.
(4) "영역된 한국불교 문헌 현황" ( Ths status of Korean Buddhist texts in English) offers information on the Korean Buddhist texts availabe in English and currently on-going translation projects.
(5) "무엇을 왜, 어떻게 번역할 것 인가?" (What, why, and how should we translate Korean texts?) discusses the meaning of translating Korean Buddhist texts and also points out problems of the translation projects. I emphasized in this section that translation should be reader-friendly, should be keenly aware of the cultural differences between Korean intellectual history out of which Korean Buddhist texts emerged, and also should be published by the publishers well known to the English readers.

The year 2003 marked the 100th anniversary of Korean's migration to the United States. The first Korean immigrants arrived in Hawaii in 1903. Looking back the 100 year history of Korean-Americans, this article considers the meaning of Korean-American identity as it appears in Korean American writers' works including East Goes to West (1937) by Younghill Kang,  Changrae Lee's Native Speaker (1995), Heinz Insu Fenkl's Memories of My Ghost Brother (1996) and Nora Okja Keller's Comfort Woman (1997), and many others. How do we define one's identity?; what is the role of nationalism, cosmopolitanism, history, and social reality in one's understanding and construction of identity?; How do we define the identity of "Korean" "American" literature? How would the diasporic nature of Korean-American identity help us to open up the closed nationalism and meet the open reality in the globalizing world? These are some of the  issues that I discuss through a close reading of some of major Korean-American literature from the mid 20th to early 21st centuries.

This paper examines the influence of Christianity in the formation of new Buddhism and the reformation agenda of traditional Buddhism during the first half of the twentieth century in
Korea. By new Buddhism, I am specifically referring to Wŏn Buddhism (圓佛敎), established by Sot’aesan Pak Chungbin 少太山朴重彬(1891–1943) in 1916. Since its foundation, Wŏn Buddhism has grown into one of the four major religious groups in South Korea, along with traditional Buddhism, Catholicism, and Protestantism. The paper begins by reviewing some of major issues in the Buddhist reform movements and Wŏn Buddhism. It then goes on to detail the formalistic similarities between Wŏn Buddhism and Christianity. The next section examines the visible influences of traditional East Asian religions in Wŏn Buddhism. In its
final part, the paper considers Sot’aesan’s approaches to different religious traditions and the eclectic nature of Wŏn Buddhism as a possible model for an interreligious dialogue, to include Buddhist-Christian dialogue.
Keywords: Wŏn Buddhism, Christianity, new Buddhism, Buddhist reform movements, ecumenism

This paper discusses ethical implications of the Sudden-Gradual debate of Korean Buddhism. Zen Master T'oeong Sŏngch’ŏl was one of the most well known figures in the 20th century Korean Buddhism.  This paper discusses the doctrinal ground of his theory of sudden enlightenment and considers its implication in the context of Zen Buddhist ethics.

This article discusses the reception and evaluation of Buddhism in Europe when Buddhism was first introduced to the European philosophical and intellectual world. The first generation European Buddhist scholars evaluated Buddhism as a "horrible" religion, since it "annihilates" the self. Buddhism was a religion of non-existence and nothing. A comparison of the Buddhist concept of self (which is non-self) with that in the European modernist vision of self offers us an instance of where and how a distorted interpretation of Buddhism happened. The European Buddhist scholars' negative evaluations of Buddhism demonstrates that a philosophical system is in fact evaluated not by the nature of that philosophy but by the power of the group to which the philosophical system belongs. Buddhism's arrival in Europe in the 19th century, in this context, took place in the existing power imbalance between the East and the West, and in order for Buddhism to be understood as it is, Buddhism had to wait for a desire for a new form of philosophy to open a space within the European mind.

Won Buddhism is a new Buddhism created in Korea by Pak Chungbin (1891-1943) in 1916. In this piece, I offer a short introduction to the Won Buddhist renovation of the traditional Buddhism and a translation of sections of "Treatise on the Renovation of Korean Buddhism" (韓國佛敎革新論) which emphasized the importance of Buddhism's engagement with the general public. One effort Won Buddhism made for that purpose was to replace the traditional Buddha statue with a symbol of a circle so that people would not idolize the Buddha. 
Won Buddhism is still active both in and outside of Korea.

This article offers a comparative study of the 20th century French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) and 13th century Korean Zen Buddhist monk/thinker Chinul (1158-1210) on their non-dualist vision on noumenon and phenomenon. Both in Merleau-Pontean phenomenology and Chinul's Zen Buddhism, questioning plays a significant role in understanding the world and the self. Thinking is not a solipsistic activity in which the self is constructing the external world; thinking is mutual appropriation between the self and others, through which the self realizes its tie with others. Merleau-Ponty explains this relationship through his philosophy of interrogation and chiasm and Chinul though a meditative technique known as the hwadu meditation.

Kyŏnghŏ Sŏngu (1849-1912) is considered the founder or revivalist of Zen Buddhism in modern Korea. Kyongho was a nationally known Buddhist sutra lecturer when he was at the young age of 23. An event forced Kyongho to face the reality of "death" and made him change the direction of his practice of Buddhism. Completely renouncing the validity of the doctrinal approach to Buddhism, Kyongho practiced hwadu meditation and attained awakening. This article provides an introduction to Kyongho's life and his Zen Buddhism and a translation from Korean of an account of Kyongho's life written by his disciple Pang Hanam. Kyongho's life fits in what is known as the East Asian "hippie monk" tradition, in which Buddhist practitioner's search for freedom overrules rigid religious conventions and precepts. Kyongho's life and Buddhist practice poses us the question of what it means to practice Buddhism in modern time.

This essay examines the role of gender in Korean Buddhism's encounter with modernity. I argue that different roles society has imposed on different genders resulted in different experiences of modernization. In the case of Kim Iryŏp, a representative female intellectual who lived during the first half of the twentieth century in Korea, it was Buddhist philosophy--especially the Buddhist view of the self--that provided her a philosophical foundation in her search for identity and liberation from the traditional view of women. An investigation of Kim Iryŏp‘s Buddhism demands a reconsideration of the so far accepted postulation of the binary of modernity and tradition--Buddhism, in this case. Kim Iryŏp's Buddhism also brings to our attention the patriarchal nature of our understanding of modern Korean Buddhism, in which the Buddhist encounter with modernity has been portrayed as focusing exclusively on male Buddhist leaders and gender-neutral issues. Finally, Kim Iryŏp's Buddhism offers us an example of how Buddhist philosophy can contribute to the contemporary discourse on feminism, providing the possibility for creating a new Buddhist, feminist theory.
NOTES: A revised version of this essay can be found in Makers of Modern Korean Buddhism, edited by Jin Y. Park (SUNY Press, 2010).
Note that this essay uses the Korean Ministry romanization system of the Korean language and therefore Kim Iryŏp is romanized as Kim Iryeop.

Won Buddhism is a new Buddhism that was founded in Korea by Sot'aesan Pak Chungbin. This paper discusses Won Buddhist basic doctrines in comparison with those of traditional Buddhism. By so doing, the paper gauges the scope of transformation of traditional Buddhism in its encounter with modernity.

The dominant discourses on modern Korean Buddhism tend to rely on a dualistic paradigm that places nationalists on one side and collaborators on the other. In this understanding, Korean Buddhism is identified as pure Buddhism, which requires monastics to maintain celibacy and a vegetarian diet, whereas Japanese Buddhism is contaminated, since Japanese monastics may marry and eat meat. Problems of such a paradigm have been pointed out by scholars, especially in the Englishspeaking world. Hwansoo Ilmee Kim, the author of Korean Buddhist Empire: A Transnational History (1910-1945), is one of the major voices whose scholarship challenges the dualistic evaluation and gives attention to the complex reality of Korean Buddhism in modern times. Kim's first book, Empire of the Dharma, covers the development of Korean Buddhism from 1877, when the first Japanese Buddhist temple opened in Korea, until 1912, the year after the Temple Ordinance was promulgated by the Japanese colonial government to control Korean Buddhism.1 In that book, Kim offers a nuanced discussion of the interactions between Korean and Japanese Buddhism and problematizes the claim that Korean Buddhism was a mere victim of Japanese Buddhism's missionary invasion during this period. Kim's second monograph further reveals the intricate relationship among East Asian Buddhisms during the time from 1910, when Japan annexed Korea, until 1945, the year of Korea's liberation from colonial rule. The author's tool for understanding Korean Buddhism in this book is transnationality. Applying the concept to Buddhism, Kim states that "transnational Buddhism. .. points to a larger Buddhist geography and consciousness in which East Asian Buddhists came together as representatives of their national Buddhisms to work toward common goals" (p. 6). Transnational Buddhism for the author "captures the kind of shared community that Buddhist leaders from different countries envisioned" and

According to a survey on the religious landscape in Korea, about half of the total population of Korea (53.4%) declared practicing religion. This number has shown a steady increase since the Gallup Korea conducted a survey in this field in 1984. 1 In understanding religion, religious phenomena, and religious practices in Korea, we should consider that the concept and expression of religion is relatively new in Korean culture. In this context, at least two preliminary remarks need to be made before we begin our discussion on the religions in Korea. The first is about the term religion. The expression religion did not exist in the vocabulary of East Asian languages until the late 19 th century. One origin of the modern term religion (Kor, chonggyo; Jan. shūkyō) can be traced to a trade document between Japan and Germany signed in 1869, in which the European term religion was translated into Japanese language, which was adopted by Koreans. 2 This does not mean that what is denoted by the term religion in English language did not exist in East Asia before the adoption of the expression. Instead of religion, traditional Korean religions such as Confucianism and Buddhism (which we will discuss in this chapter) were called teachings (Kor. kyo) or school (Kor. ga). This also indicates that the commonly known distinction between philosophy and religion in Western tradition does not strictly apply to Korean religious and philosophical traditions. The second issue to consider is the scope of religious phenomena. Religion is frequently and sometimes uncritically identified with religion as an institution. Institutionalized (or organized) religion features religious texts (sacred books), religious structure (church or temples), religious group (priesthood and believers), and moral and ethical codes (precepts). Religion is also often considered to be about God. Most of the major religions in the world share these components of religion, but religious phenomena are not limited to them, nor is what we denote by each of the above categories as clear as we might think. Several suggestions have been made for a comprehensive understanding of religious phenomena. One such example is to expand our concept of religion, from a singular-form religion to its plural form, religions. The pluralization of religious tradition enables us to further expand the scope of religions so that we can consider what constitutes the religious. 3 This paradigm can be applied to other concepts that are associated with religion. For example, we can expand our investigation from the concept of God to plural gods and then to the concept of the sacred (or the holy); from churches/temples to the place of worship and to the concept of the sacred space; and from examining precepts of a particular religion to the relationship between the finite and the infinite, and then to the issue of construction of value systems in human life. This is a process of creating a generic form (e.g., the sacred) from the collection of particular phenomenon (e.g., God). This process is necessary in order to have a comprehensive understanding of different religious traditions without privileging one religious tradition. This is especially relevant to our attempt to understand and evaluate Korean religious traditions. More often than not, students in the West ask how either Buddhism or Confucianism can be called a religion when these traditions do not have concepts that match what they find in Western religious traditions. Before we attempt to answer these questions, we should understand that such questions arise because we set a specific religious tradition as a standard for other religious traditions. In our discussion of Korean religions, we will divide them into three groups for the sake of convenience: the first is indigenous religions (Shamanism); the second is foreign-origin religions that became Koreanized (Buddhism and Confucianism); and the third is new religions that emerged during the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries (Tonghak and Won Buddhism).