Religion in South Korea

[7] Korea entered the 20th century with an already established Christian presence and a vast majority of the population practicing native religion, Korean shamanism.

Korean Buddhism, despite an erstwhile rich tradition, at the dawn of the 20th century was virtually extinct as a religious institution, after 500 years of suppression under the Joseon kingdom.

With the fall of the Joseon in the last decades of the 19th century, Koreans largely embraced Christianity, since the monarchy itself and the intellectuals looked to Western models to modernise the country and endorsed the work of Catholic and Protestant missionaries.

[26] Buddhism became much more popular in Silla and even in Baekje (both areas now part of modern South Korea), while in Goguryeo the Korean indigenous religion remained dominant.

[9] Buddhist monasteries were destroyed, and their number dropped from several hundreds to a mere thirty-six; Buddhism was eradicated from the life of towns as monks and nuns were prohibited from entering them and were marginalised to the mountains.

[31] Christian communities had already existed in Joseon since the 17th century; however, it was only by the 1880s that the government allowed a large number of Western missionaries to enter the country.

The so-called "movement to defeat the worship of gods" promoted by governments of South Korea in the 1970s and 1980s prohibited indigenous cults and wiped out nearly all traditional shrines (sadang 사당) of the Confucian kinship religion.

A small percentage of South Koreans (0.8% in total) are members of other religions, including Won Buddhism, Confucianism, Cheondoism, Daesun Jinrihoe, Islam, Daejongism, Jeungsanism and Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

Essentially, the studies findings show that 50% of South Koreans are now non-religious, 32% follow some section of Christianity, 16% are Buddhist, and 2% believe in some other form of religion.

[28][29] Buddhism in the contemporary state of South Korea is stronger in the east of the country, namely the Yeongnam and Gangwon regions, as well as in Jeju.

[49] The overwhelming majority of Buddhist temples in contemporary South Korea belong to the dominant Jogye Order, traditionally related to the Seon school.

Thus, when counting secular believers or those influenced by the faith while not following other religions, the number of Buddhists in South Korea is considered to be much larger.

[54][55] Foreign Catholic missionaries did not arrive in Korea until 1794, a decade after the return of Yi Sung-hun, a diplomat who was the first baptised Korean in Beijing.

However, the writings of the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci, who was resident at the imperial court in Beijing, had been already brought to Korea from China in the 17th century.

Protestant missionaries entered Korea during the 1880s and, along with Catholic priests, converted a remarkable number of Koreans, this time with the support of the royal government which winked at Westernising forces in a period of deep internal crisis (due to the waning of centuries-long patronage from a then-weakened China).

Alexi Kim, at the start of the Korean War in 1950, and after the St. Nicholas Church building was destroyed by the 1951 bombing of Seoul, the small flock of Orthodox faithful was at risk of annihilation.

[58] Fundamentalist Christians continue to oppose the syncretic aspects of the culture including Confucian traditions and ancestral rites practiced even by secular people and followers of other faiths.

[47] After the ban on traditional civil rites was lifted by Pope Pius XII in 1939,[75] many Korean Catholics openly observe jesa (ancestral rites); the Korean tradition is very different from the institutional religious ancestral worship that is found in China and Japan and can be easily integrated as ancillary to Catholicism.

[88] However, other myths link the heritage of the traditional faith to Dangun, male son of the Heavenly King and initiator of the Korean nation.

[89] Besides Japanese Shinto, Korean religion has also similarities with Chinese Wuism,[90] and is akin to the Siberian, Mongolian, and Manchurian religious traditions.

According to various sociological studies, Korea's type of Christianity owes much of its success to native shamanism, which provided a congenial mindset and models for the religion to take root.

[93] In the 1890s, the last decades of the Joseon kingdom, Protestant missionaries gained significant influence, and led a demonisation of native religion through the press, and even carried out campaigns of physical suppression of local cults.

It is the religious dimension of the Donghak ("Eastern Learning") movement that was founded by Choe Je-u (1824–1864), a member of an impoverished yangban (aristocratic) family,[99] in 1860 as a counter-force to the rise of "foreign religions",[100] which in his view included Buddhism and Christianity (part of Seohak, the wave of Western influence that penetrated Korean life at the end of the 19th century).

[100] Choe Je-u founded Cheondoism after having been allegedly healed from illness by an experience of Sangje or Haneullim, the god of the universal Heaven in traditional shamanism.

They include Daejongism (대종교 Daejonggyo),[102] which has as its central creed the worship of Dangun, legendary founder of Gojoseon, thought of as the first proto-Korean kingdom; and a splinter sect of Cheondoism: Suwunism.

There are more than a hundred "Jeungsan religions," including the now defunct Bocheonism: the largest in Korea is currently Daesun Jinrihoe (대순진리회), an offshoot of the still existing Taegeukdo (태극도), while Jeungsando (증산도) is the most active overseas.

[104] There are also a number of small religious sects, which have sprung up around Gyeryongsan ("Rooster-Dragon Mountain", always one of Korea's most-sacred areas) in South Chungcheong Province, the supposed future site of the founding of a new dynasty originally prophesied in the 18th century (or before).

[112] There are around a hundred thousand foreign workers from Muslim countries, particularly Uzbeks, Indonesians, Malaysians, Bruneians, Pakistanis, Kazakhs and Bangladeshis.

[113] During Japan's colonisation of Korea (1910–1945), given the suggested common origins of the two peoples, Koreans were considered to be outright part of the Japanese population, to be wholly assimilated.

[citation needed] There is a tiny presence of Sect Shinto groups, Zenrinkyo and Daehan Cheolligyo, in South Korea today.