The 2005 Household and Population Census asked respondents to identify their religious adherence, revealing that nearly a quarter (24.7 percent) of the population aged 15 years or above claimed adherence to Buddhism, 17.8 percent to one of the branches of Protestant Christianity, 11.1 percent to Roman Catholic Christianity, and that 44.9 percent claimed no adherence to any form of "religion." All other traditions accounted for about 1.5 percent of religious adherence.

Two features of the results of this census stand out. First, just under half of the population 15 years of age and over claims no religious affiliation, and second the other half is accounted for principally by two traditions, Buddhism and Christianity, both of which spread into Korea from elsewhere. One of these religious traditions, Christianity, was not present in Korea a little over two centuries ago but now accounts for just under 30 percent of claimed religious adherence. This represents massive religious change in recent historic times. What does the lack of a claim to religious adherence of any kind mean? Is this figure the total number of atheists and agnostics? No, most of the people who placed themselves in this category would be participants in the traditional (folk) religious practices of the country, who would not consider themselves to be adherents of a religion, because a "religion" is a visible organization with institutionalized practices such as an order of Buddhism or a Christian denomination. That the customary religious practices of the nation are not considered to be "religion" may reflect the traditional Confucian view that both Buddhist and shamanistic practices are pernicious.

A comparison with religious statistics from Japan reveals significant differences in the concept of religious adherence between the two countries. In 2004, the Japan Statistical Yearbook showed that 167 percent of the total population belonged to legally registered religious organizations, compared with 53.1 percent of the total Korean population in the census of 2005. Before 1985, when the Korean government just collected statistics from religious bodies, membership of religious organizations nonetheless represented only a portion of the total population. In Korea, personal religious adherence is exclusive to one group or another, whereas in Japan individuals may have multiple adherences. This is not to say that Koreans who are Christians or Buddhists have not been influenced by Confucian ideas, or that they don't participate in some "folk" practices, but it is to say that individual religious identity in Korea is exclusive.

A comparison of the Korean censuses from 1985, 1995, and 2005 shows some interesting trends. First, although there was an overall percentage increase from 1985 to 1995 in the numbers of Buddhists and Protestants, by 2005 both groups had experienced a decline in their percentage representation in the population, although these percentages were above the 1985 level. In the same period, there was a consistent percentage increase in the number of Roman Catholic adherents, more than doubling the percentage representation in two decades. Thus even with Protestant decline, there was an overall increase in the percentage of Christians from 21.1 percent in 1985 to 28.9 percent in 2005.

Likewise, there is a consistent decline in the numbers of people who place themselves in the "no religion" category from over half (52.9 percent) of the population above the age of 15 in 1985 to well under half of that population (44.9 percent) in 2005. These statistics would indicate that in recent decades the growth of both Buddhism and Protestantism has declined while Catholic growth has continued to be strong. They would also indicate that most of this growth was taken from the "no religion" area, that is, in over two decades there have been increasing numbers of people who have come to identify themselves with institutional religion.

Do statistics tell the whole story?

Clearly, statistics cannot, and do not, tell us the whole story about the religious culture of Korea. There are four strands of religion and philosophy in Korea -- the primal religion of Korea (popularly and mistakenly called "shamanism"), Buddhism, Confucianism and Christianity.

Each of these religions and philosophies can be shown to have had a period of time when it predominated, when it formed the leading cultural influence in society. Thus, the period before the fifth century is the pre-Buddhist era, a period when the primal religion existed on its own. This was followed by a second era from the 5th to the 14th centuries when Buddhist art, philosophy, and religious practices shaped the culture of the society. The Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) represents the pinnacle of Confucian influence, an era in which attempts were made both to create a model Confucian society and to eradicate Buddhism and other "superstitious" practices. The last century is the post-Confucian era, a time when Christianity, particularly Protestant Christianity, has had a tremendous impact on the culture of the day -- even contributing to the redevelopment of Buddhism.

The fact that one of these traditions tended to predominate during a certain historical era does not mean the other traditions disappeared. Instead, the different traditions have become layered on top of one another.

However, in terms of cultural impact, it is Confucianism that has had the greatest continuing influence on society, on social behavior, ethical concepts and ritual practice. Because for more than 500 years the elite of the Joseon Dynasty worked to create a model Confucian society, there is no modern nation in East Asia more Confucian in its outlook than Korea. This is so in spite of the fact that the censuses consistently indicate that few people identify themselves as "Confucian." Religious adherence and cultural influence are not identical. For example, someone who identifies him or herself as a Christian may be very "Confucian" in their outlook.

The four strands

The first strand of Korean religious tradition is the "folk" religion, popularly called "shamanism," which I prefer to call the primal religion, meaning the earliest and primary tradition. A characteristic feature of this tradition is the shaman or intercessor between us ordinary mortals and the realm of the spirits. In Korea shamans are principally women called mudang, although there are a small number of male shamans called paksu. Korean shamans hold rituals called kut for three general purposes -- to cure disease, to prognosticate the future and to escort the soul of the deceased to the other world.

During a kut a shaman will enter into a trance in which the shaman's familiar spirit possesses the shaman's body and speaks through her or his mouth. Often during a kut, a shaman will wear the clothing of the opposite sex. Even though shamanistic practices are diagnostic features of Korean folk religion, they do not constitute the entirety of it. There are numerous practices in villages addressed to village founders, ancestral spirits, tutelary deities and local spirits in which a member of the village is selected to represent the community by acting on their behalf as a ritual leader. Shamans claim to have been chosen by their familiar spirits and thus constitute a quasi-professional class, whereas local ritual leaders are only temporary. Buddhism and Confucianism both spread into Korea from the fourth century when the ancient kingdoms were being transformed by the absorption of Chinese civilization. Until the late 14th century, these two traditions existed in a state of complementary harmony. During the Silla period (first century to 935), we find the same diversity of philosophical schools as in China, the same flourishing of the arts, the construction of great temples, and an eagerness for monks to make the arduous journey to the heartland of Buddhism in India.

In the Goryeo period (918-1392), Buddhism reached the summit of its cultural, artistic and religious influence symbolized by the carving of the entire Buddhist canon on 80,000 double-sided wooden printing blocks and the patronage of the royal house.

Well before the end of this era, Seon (meditative) Buddhism (called Zen in Japan) had become the predominant form of monastic Buddhism while the principal form of popular practice was the Pure Land School, which remains the case today. In Pure Land belief, the Buddha Amida is the ruler of the Pure Land or Western Paradise who offers salvation in his paradise if truly pious prayer is offered to him.

From the beginning of the Joseon Dynasty (1392), the new Confucian state changed the harmonious relationship that had existed with Buddhism by severely limiting the numbers of monks, nuns and temples, and then in the 16th century by attempting to totally eradicate it. Buddhism did not recover from this attack until well into the 20th century.

Confucianism is a philosophy of government and society based on the concepts of the Five Principal Human Relationships (o-ryun) of which the chief is filial piety (hyo), the reverent attitude towards your parents while alive and to your deceased ancestors. Because ritual was seen to have a role in the moral cultivation of the self, the performance of ancestral rites (jesa) was seen to be a visible sign of inner morality.

As a philosophy of government, Confucianism taught that the ruler should govern in the benevolent interest of the people and that he should appoint ministers on the basis of merit. The Confucian idea of meritocracy undermined the traditional feudal nature of Korean society so that by the seventh century Korea had developed the same class of scholar bureaucrats as in China.

Because Confucianism was concerned with practical affairs of state and social and individual moral behavior, until the end of the 14th century it existed in a state of harmony with Buddhism -- which was seen to deal with issues of metaphysics (the ultimate nature of things) and religion. At that time, the newly established Joseon Dynasty adopted a reformed version of Confucianism popularly called Neo-Confucianism (Seungni-hak) that combined classical Confucian philosophy with a metaphysical system derived in part from elements of Daoist and Buddhist philosophy.

The development of a Confucian metaphysics brought Confucian thought into direct conflict with Buddhism. The radical scholars who helped to establish the new dynasty tried both to impose Confucian social morality on all levels of society, while at the same time suppressing Buddhism and traditional religious practices because they were seen as having a pernicious, undermining effect on social morality. Consequently, Confucianism came to dominate Korean culture and society in a way that it never did in either China or Japan.

As Neo-Confucianism is a rationalistic and essentially materialistic teaching, many scholars eventually came to speculate whether behind the material force there was a personal, spiritual force. In the latter part of the 18th century, a group of young Confucian scholars read some tracts produced by Jesuit missionaries in China in the 16th century and sent one of their members to China to enquire about Christianity. This young man was baptized and upon his return to Korea began to evangelize among his friends and family, an action that formed the Church before the arrival of missionaries in the 1830s.

From 1800 for three-quarters of a century, Catholics experienced severe persecution, resulting in hundreds of martyrs, because of their refusal to participate in jesa rites, seen by the Confucian establishment as a symbol of filial attitudes, and to Catholics as idolatrous, the worship of spirits other than God.

In the 19th century the Catholic Church became an underground church of the disposed classes of Korean society, offering them hope in the midst of suffering.

Protestant Christianity began before foreign missionaries arrived in 1884 when Koreans who had read the first Korean translation of the New Testament formed communities of believers. Protestant missions were predominantly American Methodist and Presbyterian with an initial focus on institutional work such as schools, clinics and hospitals.

The rapid growth of Protestantism during its first half-century was due partly to the fact that imperialism in Korea was Japanese not Western, and that Christianity was identified in many minds with social progress. Substantial Protestant Christian communities existing in urban areas by the 1960s meant that when industrialization began in earnest, rural migrants into the cities discovered new face-to-face communities in the churches leading to spectacular growth from the 1970s.

Catholic growth from the 1960s is in part due to the views taken by the Second Vatican Council towards other churches, and to following the evangelistic example of the well-established Protestant churches.

Buddhism also found in the example of rapid Protestant growth both a stimulus to emulate Christian evangelistic methods, and a model for doing so, particularly in the development of lay groups, music used by the laity, and forms of outreach such as religious publications. Thus, the importance of the growth of Protestantism during the last half of the 20th century is not simply the rapid increase in the numbers of converts, but also the impact Protestantism had as a stimulus and model for both the Roman Catholic Church and the Buddhist order.

By James H. Grayson

2007.08.28