Contemporary Buddhist Movements and Alternatives in Korea Legacy of Tongbulgyo

Part One: Politico-Historical Landscape of Buddhism in Modern East Asia 1. Transformation of Buddhism in Meiji Imperial Japan 2. Transcolonial Buddhism in the Chinese and Mongolian Territories 3. Japanese Buddhism in Joseon Korea Part Two: Native Buddhist Movements in Post-1960s’ Korea 4. Bomunjong: Bhikkhuni Buddhist Order 5. Jingakjong: Esoteric Buddhist Order 6. Cheontaejong: Pro-Chinese Buddhist Order 7. Taegojong: Pro-Marriage Buddhist Order 8. Jogyejong: Ganhwa Seon Buddhist Order Part Three: Alternative NRM Groups in Contemporary Korea 9. International Moral Association: A Chinese Buddhistic Yiguandao 10. Daesoonjinrio: A Korean Native Syncretic Group

Biography

David W. Kim (PhD, University of Sydney) is Professor of Modern History at Kookmin University, Seoul. He is an Affiliated Researcher, INFORM, Kings College London (KCL), a former Honorary Lecturer in the School of History at the Australian National University (2014–2025), and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Divinity School (2023–2024). Kim is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (UK), a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society (UK), and an editor for Brill’s Handbook Series on Contemporary Religions (Netherlands) as well as the Editor for the Series East Asian Religions and Culture (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK). Kim is a Committee Member for World Heritage, Korean Government. He has authored twelve books and 92 peer-reviewed articles, including Religion in Modern Education: Conflict, Economics, and Politics (2026), Silk Road Footprints: Transnational Transmission of Sacred Thoughts and Historical Legacy (2025), Socio-Anthropological Approaches to Religion: Environmental Hope (2024), Sacred Sites and Sacred Stories Across Cultures (2021), Daesoon Jinrihoe in Modern Korea (2020), Colonial Transformation and Asian Religions in Modern History (2018), Religious Encounters in Transcultural Society (2017), and Religious Transformation in Modern Asia: A Transnational Movement (2015).

David W. Kim has provided us with a contextualised and comparative account of seven new religious movements that have developed their individual interpretations of East Asian Buddhism within the past century. It is an informative and fascinating read.

Eileen Barker OBE FBA, London School of Economics (LSE)

 

This volume is a well-researched and cogent response to the need for a scholarly inquiry into the diversity of contemporary Korean Buddhism. Kim convincingly shows how the principle of «universalist» and integrative Buddhism (Tongbulgyo) has not only been the historical orientation of Korean Buddhism but also how it provides a central hermeneutic key for understanding the multiple adaptive facets of contemporary Korean Buddhism, on the intellectual, cultural and societal levels.

Patrick Laude, Georgetown University