Perceptions of the ‘Society & Economy’ and Public Concern of the Modern Korean Religion

Abstract

History could be said as the process of accepting and transforming civilization. Korean traditional society also has gone through the course of resistance, acceptance and transformation in contact with modern civilization. Moreover religious thought in modern Korea was in the process of such challenge and response. In this regard, it could be meaningful recently as cohort study of re-building ‘public concern of modern Korean religion’ has been conducted for the medium and long term. As is well known, the religions in modern Korea was lying amid the era of political and social plight as oppressive monarchy and aggressive foreign rule in late Joseon. Along the way it would be basically the first step of this study to review how the religion in modern Korea accepted and established the notion of ‘society’ while realizing the people as historic subject. And in this context, ‘society’ shall be accepted as including market economy (economic society) as well as state(political society) and civil society. Furthermore. we need to focus on individual efforts and practices of each religion for ‘social and economic public concern’ based on so-called ‘public good’ including the value of the era, personal responsibility, and social justice in the middle of social economy situation of Japanese rule. Accordingly we could start with a critical mind of bridging the gap in study about how ‘society and economy’ notion in Korean society of turning point of modern age was created and distributed as a part of premise process. I reviewed even more about how the religion of modern Korea realized ‘social and economic role in religion’ amid appearance of new public area based on the history of acceptance in terms of the notion. I wish to discover a new clue of searching ‘social and economic public concern’ of Korea’s religion in the turning point of modern ages through this.