In the 1960s, many publications appeared which engaged in apologetics for
each religion using more elaborate modern terms related to the concept of
‘religion’. During this time the history of each religion was also rewritten from
newly developed perspectives, which analyzed in more detail the structure of
the religion and its history, compared with the simple recitation of facts and
self-centered interpretations that were common earlier. At the same time
comparative studies between various religions began (Institute of Religious
Studies 1999). In those days, not only the Christian seminaries but also the
Buddhist College of Dongguk University and the Confucian College of
Sungkyunkwan University actively developed their academic work, abandoning
the naive exegesis that prevailed earlier.
However, the establishment of the study of religions as an academic
discipline still had to wait until Korean scholars of religions could constitute
an association. On March 2, 1970, the Korea Association for Studies of
Religion (Hanguk Jongkyo Hakhoe) was founded. But it was dissolved
a few years later, after publishing only one issue of Journal of the Studies of
Religion(Hangug Jongkyohak, 1972). Its recorded public activities ceased after
the 14th Monthly Scholarly Presentation on July 7, in 1973. The Scholarly
Presentations were reopened once a year in 1982 and 1983, and biannual
congresses have been held since 1984. The Association was revived as the
Korean Association for the History of Religions (Hanguk Jongkyo Hakhoe).
The Association has published its journal Studies in Religion (Jongkyo Yeongu)
annually, or biannually since 1986, and quarterly at present.
New paradigms. Throughout the 1970s, the works of Mircea Eliade were
a focal point of discussion. His first book to be translated was The Myth of
the Eternal Return, released in 1976 in a translation by Chung Chin-hong. In
general Eliade’s works were accepted as an indication that Koreans could
recover the ‘experiences’ which they had lost because of ‘religion’. Through
Eliade’s influence, it was hoped, the study of religions would get a new vision
that would establish it as sound scholarship different from a self-confined
description of each religion. At the same time, there was also considerable
criticism of Eliade. The largest objection was to his so-called a-historicism.
With the opening of the department of religious studies of Sogang University
(1981), Wilfred Cantwell Smith was widely discussed. Gil Heesung (1986), a
specialist on Indian philosophy and Buddhism, and Kim Sunghae, a specialist
on Confucianism, took the lead in these discussions. As a result, Korea enjoyed
a proliferation of theories and methods in the study of religions overall (Chung
1996).
In the meantime some scholars oriented to the study of religions attempted
a new approach to the Confucian tradition. For example, they emphasized
ritual rather than text and tried to bring to light its ‘religiosity’, which had
been overlooked by orthodox Confucian scholars. In studying the texts, they
assumed that confessional components were implicit in the speculative logical180
HE GUANGHU, CHUNG CHIN-HONG, AND LEE CHANG-YICK