Telling the story of Korea’s religions and politics in 5 books
Professor Kang In-chul isolated himself for fifteen years to write a comprehensive history of religion in Korea
Posted on : Jun.8,2013 06:17 KST
Modified on : Jun.8,2013 06:28 KST
By Ahn Seon-hee, staff reporter
How was Christmas designated as a national holiday in 1949 when Christians only accounted for 1% of South Korea’s population? Why do politicians turn weak in the face of ‘Yeongnam Buddhists’ and ‘Gangnam Christians’?
Like most areas of society, religion is not free from political ties. In a recently published series of books, research on the relations between religion and politics after Korean independence in 1945 until 2012 is presented like a large mural. Korea’s Religion and Politics, written by Kang In-chul, 54, professor of religion at Hanshin University, is a 5 part series with its first book released on December 2012.
In an April 15 interview with the Hankyoreh, Kang said, “It has been a 15 year goal for me to write a history of Korean religion from a consistent perspective. If I was asked to do it again, I couldn’t”. It took him a total of five years to finish the series. The first volume was published in 2008 and the fifth volume was finished being written in Nov. 2012. During this period, Kang said he isolated himself. He refused to answer phone calls (he doesn’t own a cell phone), only used e-mail when needing to contact someone, and packed his own lunch to eat in the research lab. He even occasionally turned off one of the lights in his lab to make it look empty.
The 5 volume series is over 3,000 pages long. In order to overcome the shortcomings of previous research on the relationship between religion and politics, which mainly centered on Christianity during the time of military rule, the time period of research was broadened to modern history and the range of religion was expanded to Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Cheondoism etc.
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/590980.html
Gangnam Christians? I hope there's no video.
This looks like a fascinating series of books.
