He was the founder of Donghak,[1] a religious movement which was empathetic to the hardships of the minjung (the marginalized people of Korea), opposed Catholicism and its association with western imperialism,[2] and offered an alternative to orthodox Neo-Confucianism.

[4] He did not have a concrete nationalistic or anti-feudal agenda,[5] rather: "His vision was religious, and his mission was to remind his countrymen that strength lay in reviving traditional values.

Su-un was the result of this final union, but he was considered illegitimate in the Neo-Confucian system: the children of a widow who had remarried occupied a low position in the social hierarchy and could not, for example, take the civil examinations necessary to become a bureaucrat.

Although educated in Confucianism, he partook of Buddhist practices, rituals, and beliefs, including interacting with monks, visiting temples, and abstaining from meat.

[17] Su-un felt he was called to address the root cause of the "dark age" which he considered to be inner spiritual depletion and social corruption.

[17] According to his own account, he was greatly concerned by the public disorder in Korea, the encroachments of Christianity, and the domination of East Asia by Western powers, which seemed to indicate that divine favor had passed into the hands of foreigners: On 25 May 1860 (the 5th day of the 4th month, lunar calendar) he experienced his first revelation, the kaepyeok, at his father's Yongdam Pavilion on Mount Gumi, several kilometres northwest of Gyeongju: a direct encounter with Sangje ("Lord of Heaven").

According to Beirne the meditative drawing and consumption of the Yeongbu was "a visible sign and celebration of the intimate union between the Lord of Heaven and the practitioner, the effect of which invigorates both body and spirit.

[25] However, according to So Jeong Park, Donghak is not merely a "syncretism of Asian philosophical traditions seasoned with Korean aspirations for modernization", rather it was a "novel or original school of thought".

[3] On the other hand, an earlier evaluation by Susan Shin emphasized the continuity of Donghak with a spiritual branch of Neo-Confucianism exemplified by the teaching of Wang Yangming.

[26] Su-un's concept of the singular God (Cheonju/Sangje) or God/Heaven, seemed to reflect that of Catholicism, although it differed with respect to ideas of transience and immanence.

[7] According to Susan Shin, He learned that he was suspected of Catholicism and from June 1861 to March 1862 he had to take refuge in Jeolla province to avoid arrest, spending the winter in a Buddhist temple in Namwon.

[5] [33] The peasant revolts in Gyeongsang in 1862 were contemporaneous with Su-un's ministry, however detailed analysis of the circumstances revealed that these were in response to corruption by local officials.

A government statement warned: "This thing called Donghak inherited all the methods of Western Learning, whereas it only changed its name to confuse and incite ignorant ears.

"[7] The Taiping Rebellion in China was also in progress as Donghak was founded and by coincidence its leader Hong Xiuquan died on June 1, 1864, shortly after Su-un.

The works of Su-un were collected in two volumes, The Bible of the Donghak Doctrine (in Korean-Chinese, 1880) and The Hymns of Dragon Lake (in Korean, 1881).

[36] In 1894, the brutally suppressed Donghak Peasant Revolution, led by Jeon Bongjun (1854–1895), set the stage for the First Sino-Japanese War, which placed Korea under Japanese control.

In the wake of this disaster, the movement was drastically reorganized by Son Byong-Hi (Uiam, 1861–1922), who modernized Donghak according to western standards, which he learned during a five-year exile in Japan (under an assumed name).

[41] Although the March First Movement failed members of Cheondogyo remained active in many social, political, and cultural organizations during the remainder of the colonial period.

[43] Su-un life was the subject of Stanley Park's 2011 film The Passion of a Man named Choe Che-u (동학, 수운 최제우).

His works were proscribed and burnt after his execution, but two canonical books, one of prose and one of poetry, were compiled and published later by Choe Sihyeong: