Issue of Korean s Identity and Religious Education : Sotaesan s Perspective

ABSTRACT

Wonbuddhism which originated in the modern Korean situation absorbed a variety of teachings with respect to the issue of Korean identity. The founder of Wonbuddhism (Jungbin Baak, with a pseudonym of Sotaesan: 1891-1943) viewed Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism as the main trunk of Korean thoughts, even if he based a central point of his teachings on Buddhism. In addition, he maintained that we could find one way to the main theme of the world religions tenets, if we synthesized characteristics of the respective teachings. His teaching presupposed the coexistence of multi-religion.Among Sotaesan s teachings, the dharmas such as “the essential dharmas regarding how the strong and the weak may evolve” and “dharma of Keumgang Mountain” are the ones which revealed Korean s identity. In those teachings, he viewed that Korea was situated in “a changing period from a fish to a dragon” and predicted that Korea would become “a leader state of world mind” and “a parental state of mankind s ethics.” He thought that it was possible, if Korean as owner of Keumgang Mountain got “a vessel of Dharmas.” The programs for educating this identity are methods of practices which purport to raise the truly civilized humans with both capacities of religion and science by belief of truthful religion and moral training based on facts.