Journal of Korean Studies

INTRODUCTION

At nine in the morning on July 1, 1936, a fistfight broke out between a young Buddhist monk and a group of Confucian scholars in central Seoul. Yi P’alman, a student monk from the Buddhist college, confronted Kim T’aejun (1905–1949), a teacher at the Confucian school for higher education who was passing in front of his own school. Seeing their teacher being harassed on the street, more than ten Confucian students surrounded Kim to protect him and exchanged punches with Yi. Yi’s fellow monks hurriedly reported the skirmish to the police office, which soon dispatched officers to subdue both parties. The clash did not end there, however; another Buddhist student monk, Chang Sangbong, later attacked Kim and his company as they were walking down Chongno Street in downtown Seoul. A large altercation ensued and the police arrested all parties involved, pending investigation.¹

The newspaper reported these events not as isolated incidents “between the Buddhist and Confucian schools” but, more seriously, as a “conflict between Buddhism and Confucianism.”² Overblown as the news report might sound, it bore some truth. The respective schools of the students—Chungang Pulchŏn, the central Buddhist college for higher education, and Myŏngnyun Hagwŏn, its Confucian equivalent—represented the two major religious traditions in Korea. To be precise, the Myŏngnyun Hagwŏn was part of the Sŏnggyun’gwan (Royal Confucian Academy, hereafter the Academy), the highest-ranking Neo-Confucian educational institute, the central Neo-Confucian think tank, and a widely recognized gateway to success and privilege during the Chosŏn era (1392–1910). Although it became defunct with the demise of the Chosŏn government, the colonial government and Confucian scholars revitalized this educational facility in the 1930s.³ The students of both Buddhist and Confucian schools were elites selected from local schools across the country.

The events leading up to the explosive street brawl on July 1 began earlier that year with the March publication of a provocative article. Written by Confucian teacher Kim T’aejun, “Sex Lives of Monks as Portrayed in Korean Literature” described Korean monks as sexually promiscuous social outcasts during the Chosŏn dynasty.⁴ Korean monks were much less outraged by Kim’s identity as a scholar of Korean literature than they were by the fact that he taught at the Myŏngnyun Hagwŏn, which they regarded as the fount of anti-Buddhist policies during the Chosŏn era. Three months after Kim’s article became known to Buddhists, a response was featured in the same journal. Kwŏn Sangno (1879–1965), a prominent scholar and monk, denounced Kim’s arguments as groundless and preposterous and claimed Kim’s writing reflected the typical “contemptible and shameful” mindset of Confucians.⁵ In response to Kim’s argument that Korean monks were one of the eight categories of outcast, Kwŏn retorted that there was no textual evidence for this assertion: among the seven categories officially designated in the Chosŏn legal codes, monks were not included. Kwŏn did not deny monks [End Page 102] were socially degraded during the Chosŏn era but averred that their low social status was caused not by moral laxity but primarily by “the Chosŏn government’s mistreatment.”⁶ Kim did not back down, however, characterizing Kwŏn’s response as “ignorant of scientific knowledge,”⁷ followed by publishing a more detailed essay on the same topic in a different journal.⁸ This scholarly debate eventually escalated into the July attacks on Kim by student monks.

The Buddhist journal Pulgyo sibo responded to the incident, taking up the outcry of many angry Buddhist readers. Reflecting the seriousness of the matter, the monks’ youth association convened a meeting and made three demands: first, all the articles by Kim should be reprinted and circulated among local Buddhist groups; second, the journals that had published Kim’s articles should be charged with the crime of instigating social disturbances; third, the incumbents of the thirty-one leading temples should be asked to sign an official report and to sue Kim.⁹ Another Korean monk, Kŭmgang Sŏnin, penned an article in the same journal encouraging the ten thousand monastics to rise up and protest against Kim and the journals that had published his articles. Having lived through some of the Chosŏn oppression, Kŭmgang Sŏnin also tried to provide historical context for the incident. Deploring the fact that monks had not protested in the face of their marginalization during the Chosŏn dynasty, he excused his generation to some extent, claiming that the situation then was totally different.¹⁰ In the present, however, such degradations could not be tolerated.

How should this incident and the ensuing emotional responses of the Korean monks be interpreted? Is this an isolated case, understandable only within the context of colonial Korea, or is it better contextualized in relation to Chosŏn Buddhism (1392–1910)? Was Buddhism suppressed by the Neo-Confucians in Chosŏn Korea to an extent sufficient to explain the manner in which colonial-era monastics reacted to Kim’s article? Are Kwŏn’s and Kŭmgang Sŏnin’s perceptions of Chosŏn Buddhism and Confucianism merely imaginative and polemical interpretations or the naïve repetition of Japanese scholars’ construction of the marginalized history of Chosŏn Buddhism, as some scholars have maintained? Are such reactions to Kim’s article out of touch with historical reality and thus unworthy of scholarly acceptance? Or is there more evidence for historical conflict between Buddhism and Confucianism than contemporary scholarship often acknowledges?

Recent scholarship on Chosŏn Buddhism has greatly challenged the narrative that Chosŏn’s Neo-Confucian “orthodoxy” persecuted Buddhism, thus leading to its decline and isolation.¹¹ A general consensus among recent scholars is that the Chosŏn Buddhism that had been incorporated into the culture over a thousand years of Buddhist practice could not simply be eradicated by a new Confucian paradigm. They argue that Confucian ideology was often contradictory and that both Confucian elites and commoners, not to mention kings and royal family members, continued to follow the old tradition of Buddhism and to devoutly patronize monastics and their temples. Donald Baker claims, for example, that although [End Page 103] Buddhism lost its overall state support, it nevertheless continued to enjoy its existence as “a private matter.”¹² In addition, interactions between individual monastics and yangban literati were far more substantial than has previously been believed.¹³ Boudewijn Walraven maintains that instead of responding passively to various policies unfavorable to Buddhism, monastics “survived . . . by adapting to the dominant ideology,” that is, the “Confucian order.”¹⁴ Especially in the last few decades of the nineteenth century, late Chosŏn Buddhism not only exhibited a revival on all fronts, including the revival of Sŏn (Zen) by Kyŏnghŏ Sŏngu (1849–1912) and the establishment of lay chanting associations,¹⁵ but also—as Eun-su Cho claims—was even reestablishing itself as “the identity of a national religion” as advanced by a small group of enlightenment and reform activists.¹⁶

While fully agreeing with this recent scholarship, I believe it is important to emphasize that the new interpretative insights it provides do not fundamentally undermine the proposition that during the Chosŏn era, Buddhism experienced an unprecedented challenge as a result of the hegemony of Neo-Confucianism. At least one prominent factor in the emotional response to Kim’s essays was precisely what the monks claimed was at work: Chosŏn Buddhism did, in fact, suffer because of the dominance of the Neo-Confucians, who used their educational and political institutions to consolidate a compelling stigmatization of Buddhism as heresy and Buddhist monastics as socially harmful agents.

Far from being a naive fantasy of colonial-era Korean Buddhism, these characterizations, no matter how haphazard and contradictory, were reflected in social engineering at the state and local levels to such an extent that Chosŏn monks gradually internalized, and post-Chosŏn monks inherited and further developed, a “collective trauma,”¹⁷ to borrow the term of sociologist Jeffrey Alexander. Alexander defines a collective trauma as one a group develops in response to a wound to its social identity.¹⁸ I do not mean to imply that the trauma of the Korean monastics resulted from a “horrendous event” involving mass killing and torture, as seen in wars and racial conflicts.¹⁹ Nor do I mean to imply that the historical events inevitably led to the emergence of the collective trauma. According to Alexander, “Events do not, in and of themselves, create collective trauma,” and “events are not inherently traumatic.”²⁰ He argues that in order to understand trauma fully, it is just as important to show how it is culturally, socially, and politically constructed and represented through “meaning making” by carrier groups that consist of both victimizers and victimized.²¹ “Meaning making” is his term for the process of trauma—or, more specifically, the process of cultural trauma.²² Thus, I use the term collective trauma to refer to the process of cultural signification that resulted from the Neo-Confucians’ negative representations of monastics, the monastics’ internalization of these views, and the populace’s acceptance of the low status of the monastics. I argue that this signification led to the displacement of what Alexander calls “the core of the collectivity’s sense of its own identity”²³ and to the instilling of a sense of their political and socioeconomic marginalization.²⁴ [End Page 104]

The objective of this article is to flesh out the historical background to the deep collective memories of monastics living in colonial Korea, memories that would be manifested in the violent Kim incident. Selections from the Chronicles of the Chosŏn Dynasty relevant to Buddhism,²⁵ along with other primary materials, enable me to demonstrate how Neo-Confucian dominance over Chosŏn Buddhism was visible and tangible at international, state, and local levels.

The Chosŏn state largely presented itself to China, Japan, and Ryukyu as a faithful Neo-Confucian country rather than as a Buddhist one. Many Chosŏn kings were frequently required to testify to Confucian scholars and bureaucrats that they were not Buddhist and that they were committed to laicizing monks, thus ultimately eradicating Buddhism. The total eradication of temples and total laicization of monks did not, and could not, occur;²⁶ but many Confucian literati and bureaucrats pursued that agenda, at times destroying sacred objects or temple buildings and driving monks out of temples.²⁷ Throughout the Chosŏn period, Buddhism continued to maintain devotees among the commoners, royal and court families and ladies, and yangban elites.²⁸ But public denunciation of Buddhism was a prerequisite for those pursuing a career as a state scholar or government official. Some maintained their Buddhist faith in private²⁹ and, in a few exceptional cases, professed it publicly as well.³⁰ But the more visible a person’s Buddhist activity might be, the greater the risk to their career and social network.³¹

This was the dominant structure most elite members and government officials accepted in the public sphere. Court ladies and the women of the royal family, and more than a few yangban elites, professed Buddhism and befriended monks. Nevertheless, they did not dare challenge the hegemonic paradigm that rendered the monastic identity illegal, regarded monastics as criminals who had reneged on their duties to the state, and subjected them to harassment. During the Chosŏn period, monastics had to find a way to live by adapting to the hegemonic discourse, constantly subverting and circumventing the demands of Confucian elites and the government and undoubtedly also turning these demands to their own advantage.

Clearly, although Korean monastics had fared well during the Koryŏ period without any fundamental challenge to their religious identity and privilege, during the Chosŏn period they were stripped of much of their economic, social, and political prestige; the loss of this privileged status pushed them to the margins of society, leaving an indelible mark on their collective identity in the subsequent colonial era.

NOT A BUDDHIST COUNTRY

The first question that must be dealt with is whether Chosŏn was a Confucian country, as the Korean monks averred. “We don’t worship Buddhism in our country,” King Chungjong (r. 1506–44) proclaimed upon ordering officials to deliver his response to a Japanese envoy who had asked for Buddhist scriptures.³² [End Page 105] Believing it was surrounded by Buddhist countries, the Chosŏn state presented itself as an anti-Buddhist and pro-Confucian country. This self-understanding was relatively consistent for most of the Chosŏn era and is reflected in its diplomatic relations with China, Japan, and Ryukyu. The Chosŏn state viewed these countries as Buddhist, or at least as countries where Buddhism was sponsored and promoted by the government.

The validity of the Chosŏn state’s understanding of its own religious landscape and that of its neighbors is attested by recent scholarship. Although often facing state controls and harsh criticism from Neo-Confucians, Buddhism in Ming China continued to flourish with support from both the court and the gentry.³³ Marsha Smith Weidner writes of Ming Buddhism that it “attracted believers from all segments of Ming society—elite and nonelite, male and female, ethnic Chinese and non-Chinese.”³⁴ The succeeding Qing China, ruled by Manchus, adopted Tibetan Buddhism as its state religion,³⁵ and the Qing emperors were devout supporters of both Tibetan Buddhism and traditional Chinese Buddhism.³⁶ Buddhism also flourished among the Qing gentry, especially in the south and the north.³⁷

As for Japan, William G. Beasley writes that Muromachi Buddhism (1336–1573) enjoyed “a dominant influence on Japanese religion and culture” and even that “medieval Japan was therefore in many respects a Buddhist society.”³⁸ With respect to Buddhism during the Tokugawa period (1600–1867), Martin Collcutt states that Buddhism, especially Buddhist institutions, “enjoyed a protected and privileged position in Tokugawa society.”³⁹ Duncan Ryūken Williams notes that Tokugawa Buddhism witnessed “the unprecedented expansion of Buddhist institutions in Japanese society,” which was “due to the government’s establishment of a mandatory parishioner system.”⁴⁰ Despite a brief period of persecution in the second half of the nineteenth century, Buddhism continued to be an integral part of Japanese society, economy, and politics in the modern period.⁴¹ So the Chosŏn state was right in declaring China and Japan to be Buddhist countries.

This superior status of Buddhism in those countries, both in perception and reality, forced Chosŏn to devise dynamic diplomatic techniques to avoid damaging its relations with them, especially China, and to keep the Japanese at bay.

“I AM NOT BUDDHIST!”

The sustained disassociation of the Chosŏn state from Buddhism was enforced on the kings, and this enforcement was implemented through Confucian education. On a daily basis, Chosŏn kings were indoctrinated in Confucian ideals by royal tutors, and anti-Buddhist sentiments were deeply ingrained by this process. Even if kings might personally feel favorable toward Buddhism, they were expected to repeat their pledge not to worship and promote it.

The Hall of Royal Lecture (Kyŏngyŏn’gwan) was established in 1390, two years before the formal establishment of Chosŏn, and became one of the most important institutions (along with the Sŏnggyun’gwan) for helping kings rule the country effectively in a manner faithful to the wisdom of Confucian texts, and, even more important, for placing checks and balances on the king’s power.¹⁰³ In Chosŏn Korea, the kings had to share power with the bureaucracy and aristocracy, and thus, as James Palais points out, “were much weaker than [they] appeared on the surface.”¹⁰⁴ High-ranking bureaucrats also took positions in the Hall of Royal Lecture, and they made it a rule that lectures take place there every day. The king was expected to attend as often as he could. Although some kings flouted the instruction and often missed lectures with various excuses, their views and policies on Buddhism were instilled and shaped by what they did learn in the hall.

When lectures turned to the topic of Buddhism, the rhetoric was typically negative. Ha Yun (1347–1416) lectured to King Chŏngjong (1398–1400), a Buddhist, that the Buddha was “a barbarian god” who “deceived people with the teachings of fortune and misfortune” but who failed to live to be more than seventy-nine years old himself since he could not avoid his own karma. Thus, after Buddhism [End Page 114] was introduced to China, it actually shortened the life spans of people and was rather harmful. He claimed it was therefore blatantly apparent that praying to the Buddha was not beneficial to the country.¹⁰⁵ The king chimed in with his agreement. In another lecture, the king asked where relics came from and the lecturer answered that they were nothing special and that shells and snakes produced them.¹⁰⁶ A month later, the king asked why his officials present at the lecture claimed Buddhism was wrong. In response, an official quoted Confucius, who said, “Studying heresy would be just harmful.” “Monks,” the official continued, “take it as the fundamental essence of their religion that there is no ruler and father.” He insisted, “Buddhism is not what people like” since “there has been nobody who liked Buddhism and has not then been ruined by it.” The king agreed, saying, “There was nothing greedier than monks.”¹⁰⁷ Before long, King T’aejong was being instructed by lecturers to laicize all but a few monks and incorporate them into the military, to nationalize temple servants and lands, and to reshuffle Buddhist institutions.¹⁰⁸

Additional pressure to suppress Buddhism came from Chosŏn bureaucrats and Confucian elites. Strengthening the new dynasty politically, economically, and ideologically went hand in hand with weakening the institution of Buddhism. Inculcating the king with Neo-Confucian ideals was not enough; tangible policies were required to strip away all the privileges Buddhism had enjoyed for thousands of years under past dynasties of China and Korea. Buddhism was regarded as more than a religious problem; it was also a social, economic, and political problem. As Martina Deuchler points out, de-Buddhacizing Korean society was inseparable from “Confucianiz[ing]” it, and this reorientation to Confucianism was to be accomplished by launching “an unprecedented political discourse on man and society.”¹⁰⁹ Confucian scholars unanimously attributed the rather quick demise of all the previous dynasties to the maladies of Buddhism, the most recent case being that of the Koryŏ dynasty, which they considered the peak of Buddhism in Korean history.¹¹⁰

Proposals to dismantle the institution of Buddhism varied from the most extreme—eradicating Buddhism entirely, even if it meant killing monks—to more measured ones to keep the numbers of temples and monks to a bare minimum. But Confucianists agreed that under no circumstances was political or social power to be granted to monks, and they did their best to force the king to discontinue support of royal temples and to bar monks from the capital and other cities. They wanted the monks to be contained in the mountains. Whenever the king appeared hesitant or reluctant to enforce their anti-Buddhist policies, the royal lecturers, bureaucrats, and Academy students questioned the king’s faith in the Neo-Confucian ideals indispensable to the legitimacy of the king. If the king continued to ignore their suggestions that he dissociate himself from Buddhism, the Confucian officials could count on the formidable backing of Confucian students at the Academy.

The Royal Confucian Academy, a school with little significance during the previous dynasties, emerged in the Chosŏn period as the institution exerting the [End Page 115] greatest influence on the civil exams from which Confucian elites and officials were produced. Located in central Seoul close to the palaces, the students of the Academy were the leading and most vocal critics of the king’s policies on Buddhism. If the king showed any sign of pro-Buddhist sentiment or gave any indication that he was not serious about eradicating Buddhism, he was deluged with student petitions, protests at the palace, and, sometimes, even the more public actions of hunger strikes or leaving the Academy. For instance, when King Sejong decided to support the renovation of the royal Hŭngch’ŏn temple, a student at the Academy convinced 648 students and other Confucian scholars to sign a petition to the king accusing him of supporting Buddhism. Their petition was supported by other state officials.¹¹¹ Their collective action and accusation successfully constrained the king, and he did his best to assure them that he “had never worshipped the Buddha” and had been faithful to the suppression of Buddhism.¹¹² He conceded that although there had been occasions on which he had ordered that some Buddhist scriptures be copied, he had done so merely for the sake of his older brother.¹¹³

Sejong’s father, King T’aejong, responded to a similar petition by demanding proof that he was worshipping Buddha. Even though he partly admitted to holding a favorable view of Buddhism, he still fully accepted that Buddhism was heresy.¹¹⁴ Other kings¹¹⁵ followed suit in one way or another, although some, like King Sŏnjo, took a “noninterference” stance on Buddhist matters.¹¹⁶ Of course, several kings had no qualms about pronouncing their faith in Buddhism, including King T’aejo (1392–98), King Sejong, and King Sejo. But in general the Chosŏn kings had to acquiesce to the hegemony of Neo-Confucian ideology and had to give almost ritualistic testimony confirming their orthodoxy whenever issues or events arose that might put the king’s commitment in question.

Despite the personal commitments of a few kings, the inculcation of Neo-Confucian ideals and the emphasis of the dangers of Buddhism through Confucian education directed to royalty inevitably influenced the Chosŏn kings. As a result, Buddhism was treated with disfavor in the public sphere throughout the Chosŏn period.

“BECAUSE OF THE REQUESTS OF MY MOTHER”

In spite of the relatively thoroughgoing anti-Buddhist policies of the Chosŏn kings, Confucian propagandists jumped on any opportunity to critique even the semblance of pro-Buddhist activities, and this hostility required the kings to constantly make excuses. Throughout the Chosŏn period, almost all kings continued to support the royal temples, to recognize the right of monks and nuns to preside at these temple complexes, and to provide them financial and administrative assistance. But the kings assured their followers that these seemingly pro-Buddhist measures were not taken because they themselves supported Buddhism. Instead, [End Page 116] they often argued that preserving the royal temples was a tradition and custom that could not be neglected; or that even though the eradication of monastics, and thus Buddhism, was an ultimate goal of the Chosŏn state, it could not and should not be implemented too suddenly and radically; or that however parasitic and debased the monastics might be, they too were the king’s subjects.

The excuse kings most frequently resorted to, however, regardless of their personal religious faith, was “because of the requests of my mother” and the royal families. Although the general mood of the government was unfavorable toward Buddhism, Buddhist influence among the court ladies and female members of the royal family did not fade away during the Neo-Confucian Chosŏn dynasty. These royal ladies had their own monetary resources coming from the king’s private royal treasury called Naesusa.¹¹⁷ They ran nunneries inside and outside the palaces, maintained relationships with monastics to fulfill their worldly and other worldly needs, and continued to conduct rituals and to support the royal temples across the country. If scholars’ characterization of Chosŏn Buddhism as women’s Buddhism has any truth, the evidence can be found in the influence of these court ladies.

Women of the royal court were responsible for helping many temples—in fact, almost all the major Chosŏn temples—to avoid destruction and extortion. Specifically, the mothers and wives of the kings constantly stood up for Buddhism. No matter how determined kings driven by their officials and Confucian ideologues might have been to marginalize Buddhism and monastics, implementing anti-Buddhist policies was often hampered by the countermeasures of queen mothers and queens. They tempered the king’s harsh policies on Buddhism and persuaded him to accept their pro-Buddhist practices. As a result, the king was caught between Confucian ideologues who believed he should be committed to eradicating Buddhism and royal women with no intention of giving up their religious faith. Trying to satisfy both groups, kings often vacillated, frustrating both. But when it came to the temples inside and outside the four gates of Seoul that were affiliated with the royal family, the king largely acceded to the will of the queen.

The case of Yŏnsan’gun best represents the influence the queen mothers could exert to oppose anti-Buddhist regulations. In 1494, when King Sŏngjong passed away, his successor, Yŏnsan’gun, decided to conduct a Buddhist ritual (suryukche) for his deceased father. This decision caused an uproar among state officials and Academy students. They showered the king with petitions arguing that such conduct ran counter to the state ideology and also counter to the anti-Buddhist stance held by King Sŏngjong during his lifetime. They pleaded with King Yŏnsan’gun to rescind his plan to permit the Buddhist ritual. When Yŏnsan’gun ignored their requests, the Academy students protested in front of the palace. However, a petition by an Academy student, Cho Yuhyŏng, particularly irked the king. In his petition, Cho argued that according to a rumor, monks had happily announced there were signs of a revitalization of Buddhism: the previous king, who had disliked Buddhism, had passed away; the new king was too young to rule the country; and [End Page 117] the queen mother and queen grandmother were Buddhist.¹¹⁸ Among other things, Yŏnsan’gun was angered by Cho’s claim that the queen mother and grandmother had tried to push their agenda to promote Buddhism. Cho implied that the queens were behind the decision and argued that Yŏnsan’gun should prod them to withdraw the plan.

Cho was right that the queens were responsible for the whole plan, but Yŏnsan’gun saw the petition as condescending to him and his mother. When he eventually punished Cho along with twenty other Academy students, an explosion of petitions ensued in support of the students, claiming they had justifiably spoken out “to oppose Buddhism.” Despite this vocal protest, however, Yŏnsan’gun did not reverse his decision to conduct the Buddhist rituals and to impose a minor punishment on the students.¹¹⁹ This reaction contrasted with that of his father, King Sŏngjong, to a similar petition from Academy students accusing the queen mother of being a supporter of Buddhism. King Sŏngjong did not punish them since he regarded their intention, “to oppose Buddhism,” as noble and justified.¹²⁰

In 1495, another set of petitions plagued Yŏnsan’gun. This time, the Academy students accused him of allowing a project to publish Buddhist scripture at Wŏn’gak Temple, squandering the funds in the state coffers. Yŏnsan’gun argued that the queen mother had made the decision and that the money would come from the royal treasury, not from the state accounts. They asked him to dissuade her, to which Yŏnsan’gun replied, “I cannot dare to do it.”¹²¹ The officials and students did not back down, however, and Yŏnsan’gun countered, “No matter how much I beseech her to stop, she will move the scriptures to a different place and publish them there anyway. Are you saying that I should chase after her and stop what she is doing?”¹²² At one point, he said simply, “I cannot hurt my mother.”¹²³ But the petitions continued to pour in, and Yŏnsan’gun eventually gave in and consulted with his mother on the matter “six or seven times.” To his disappointment, she would not give up the plan.¹²⁴ “Why don’t you guys talk to her directly?”¹²⁵ he suggested to his officials. “We can only express our disappointment with your highness,” they replied. Yŏnsan’gun tried to dissuade her one more time but had to come back and tell his officials, “I just hurt her feelings even more.”¹²⁶

The most influential of all queen mothers during the Chosŏn period was the mother of King Myŏngjong (1545–67), Queen Munjŏng (r. 1545–65), who ruled as regent for two decades.¹²⁷ Unlike other queens and queen mothers, who mediated between the king and monastics, Queen Munjŏng controlled the country directly. She restored the state exams for monks that had been abolished in 1492, thus reinstating an official Buddhist institution dismantled during the reign of Yŏnsan’gun. In this radical shift in policy regarding Buddhism, Queen Munjŏng relied on the monk Pou (1515–65), who frequented the palace; together they reduced the compulsory labor of the almost four hundred monks of the royal temples¹²⁸ and prevented the dispatch of military forces to the temples to arrest illegal monks.¹²⁹ Some monks believed the Chosŏn state had finally changed from an anti- to a pro-Buddhist country and, as a royal lecturer lamented, had even begun [End Page 118] to harass Confucian literati by declaring, “Since you [Confucians] harassed us before, now we [monks] are harassing you.”¹³⁰ Some monks even beat a Confucian scholar, telling the scholar he did not know that “the time for contemptible Confucians has ended.”¹³¹ Incessant petitions and advice directed to the king went unanswered, and the queen’s pro-Buddhist policies prevailed.

Nevertheless, as soon as she passed away in 1565, all her pro-Buddhist policies were reversed, and the old anti-Buddhist paradigm was quickly reinstated. The officials and Confucian scholars and students petitioned the king to execute Pou, the monk who had collaborated with the queen to bring Buddhism back to the center of the state. Following the queen mother’s will, King Myŏngjŏng did not submit to their pressure despite incessant protests, but he did have to demote Pou to a soldier monk and exile him to Cheju Island. There, out of reach of the king’s protection, he was subject to the local magistrate of the island, who flogged him daily until he died.¹³² This rapid change in the fate of Buddhism shows that the queen mother’s influence had alone been responsible for bringing about the previous policy.

Like King Sŏngjong, King Yŏngsan’gun, and King Myŏngjong, other kings made similar excuses or took contradictory measures toward Buddhism due to the influence of queens and court ladies—Queen Wŏn’gyŏng (1365–1420) in the case of King T’aejong¹³³ and the same queen in the case of King Sejong;¹³⁴ Queen Grandmother Chŏnghŭi (1418–83) in the case of King Sŏngjong;¹³⁵ Queen Mother Chŏnghyŏn (1462–1530) in the case of King Chungjong;¹³⁶ Queen Mother Insun (1532–75) in the case of King Sŏnjo;¹³⁷ Queen Mother Insŏn (1618–74) in the case of King Hyŏnjong (1641–74);¹³⁸ and Queen Min (1851–95) in the case of King Kojong. Thus, despite the fact that the Chosŏn state presented itself as an anti-Buddhist and Confucian country, and despite the fact that the Chosŏn kings repeatedly took oaths that they did not worship the Buddha, the survival of Buddhism was assured by the support of royal ladies. It is no overstatement to say that the women of the royalty were the saviors of Chosŏn Buddhism and were a key factor in making a sustained policy of Buddhist suppression almost impossible.

These examples, however, do not show that all these queens consciously intended to overturn the state’s anti-Buddhist paradigm, though the motive of Queen Munjŏng seems to have come close. Instead, like the kings, the queens and the court ladies seem to have largely internalized the hegemonic dominance of Neo-Confucianism that made Buddhism a clear underdog.¹³⁹ For example, when Queen Chŏnghŏn planned to build a royal temple, she responded to the abundant petitions opposing her decision by saying she was “neither considering the heresy as right nor worshipping it.”¹⁴⁰ Like the kings, royal women also cited ancestral custom as the key reason for engaging in Buddhist projects. Relying on this justification, they continued to be major patrons of temples and monastics that provided them with a religious space a highly patriarchal Confucianism failed to provide.¹⁴¹ Thus, the support of the court ladies was not strong enough to fundamentally alter the anti-Buddhist paradigm of the Chosŏn state, and they also had [End Page 119] to be careful to proceed within the confines of this structure. Their support was limited to the royal temples and the resident monks affiliated with these temples. Later, the kings were forced to try to dismantle many of these royal temples, albeit unsuccessfully.¹⁴² The queens and the court ladies were well aware that they should not push the king too far since he could not risk his political legitimacy by ignoring the demands of state officials. Therefore, these pro-Buddhist examples do not undermine the observation that the Chosŏn state was not a Buddhist country and that the king and his family were expected to be committed to Neo-Confucian norms—at least in public and in no matter how contrived a manner.

HIDE-AND-SEEK

To the Confucian officials, scholars, and Academy students, Buddhism was a heresy to be eradicated. They believed the formation of an ideal Confucian country depended on achieving this goal, a goal the kings and the royal family members had also internalized. The most urgent matter, then, was how to get rid of the temples and monks, numbering over three thousand and one hundred thousand, respectively, at the end of the Koryŏ dynasty.¹⁴³ Despite the frequent tensions and negotiations among the ideologues and the king and his court ladies, numerous measures for attaining this goal were enacted. By the 1910s, these measures had succeeded in reducing the numbers of temples and monks to fourteen hundred and eight thousand respectively,¹⁴⁴ while filling the country with Confucian schools such as Sŏwŏn, the enrollment of which is believed to have reached seventeen hundred toward the late Chosŏn.¹⁴⁵ But the officials failed to eradicate the Buddhist establishments. The royal support of Buddhism was one factor in this survival, persistent worship by commoners and aristocrats was another. But the common interests of central and local officials and the strategic responses of the monks to state policies also did much to prevent the complete disappearance of Buddhism and to guarantee a continuous presence of temples and monastics.

The argument by the Confucian ideologues that monks were illegal and therefore criminals persisted throughout the Chosŏn period. The illegality and criminality of monastics was the rationale for arresting them and forcing them into the military and labor forces and also for dismantling the temples in which they were hiding. From the perspective of state officials and Confucian literati, these monks were peasants, servants, and fugitives who had run away to avoid taxes, service to the state, and punishments. This attitude prompted a game of hide-and-seek between officials and monastics.

When the anti-Buddhist policies became apparent in the early Chosŏn, monks protested at the palace with petitions.¹⁴⁶ Some of them fled the country to Ming China, and some clashed with Confucian scholars who visited their temples and harassed them.¹⁴⁷ Most, however, simply hid deep in the mountains, where state control could not extend. It was relatively easy to investigate monks roaming in [End Page 120] cities and villages, but tracking them down in remote mountains was costly, requiring police forces and other resources. In 1538, an experimental drastic crackdown on monks in hiding was initiated by an official in Chŏlla Province. Pak Seong (1493–1541) destroyed many temples and arrested three thousand young monks, some of whom were killed by torture, leading to a state investigation.¹⁴⁸ With this success, another crackdown a year later that destroyed many temples and laicized monks was implemented in Kyŏngsang Province. Elated, a group of Academy scholars petitioned the king to implement the enforcement in all other provinces,¹⁴⁹ but the king quickly realized these measures would prove ineffective. Soon after police forces retreated, the monks returned, and their numbers quickly increased as new temples were built.¹⁵⁰

Even more problematic, sending troops to arrest monks in the mountains incited social unrest and threatened to turn the monks into thieves and rebels, as soon happened in Chŏlla Province.¹⁵¹ This result further undermined the monk-seeking effort. Not only was it difficult to find and eradicate monks hiding in the mountains, but in difficult times their numbers actually increased. Whenever there was famine or natural disaster or war, a significant number of people disappeared into remote mountains, many of whom adopted the monastic lifestyle, one cultural avenue available for those who sought an alternative life. Therefore, the numbers of monastics, either legal or illegal, remained high throughout the Chosŏn era. Given these realities, the government found that its eradication efforts constituted an extreme drain on its coffers and military forces. In addition, the commoners who remained were burdened with added taxes and labor. The state had to find a way to solve this chronic problem. It had to find a way to entice the monks who were hiding so they could be put on record and then laicized by force.

Out of desperation and necessity, the government decided to quarantine rather than eradicate illegal monastics by giving them legal certificates in return for their labor on state projects. The government believed that in this way it could differentiate between legal and illegal monks. In the beginning, monks distrusted the offer, but when the first group of monks was indeed granted certificates after completing a project, other monks flocked in and begged for work as well.¹⁵² It seemed to be a win-win situation for both the authorities and monks. The government was able to finish a number of state projects that would have been too costly had it hired commoners, whereas the monks believed that in return for laboring for a couple of months, they would be able to return to their temples with a legitimate certificate guaranteeing lifelong legal status and freedom from taxes and labor.

But problems soon occurred. The more monks the government took in for state projects, the more certificates it had to issue to them, thus drastically increasing the number of legal monks.¹⁵³ Worse was the behavior of monks with certificates. Now they freely came to cities and even visited the four gates of Seoul to find patrons. They also contacted the court ladies, mostly through nuns,¹⁵⁴ who provided them with the signatures of the king, the queen, and other high officials [End Page 121] for donation books. Using these royal signatures, monks travelled to collect donations from commoners and local aristocrats; as a royal tutor once complained, “All temple related matters [or projects] come from the royal court.”¹⁵⁵ As a result, temples previously destroyed or deserted because of anti-Buddhist policies or war were rebuilt and renovated. In order to ensure the safety of the temples and to avoid extortion, monks deliberately placed tablets of the royal families in them as key sponsors, thereby turning temples into royal temples.¹⁵⁶ These reciprocal relationships between monastics and the royal family became frequent sources of tension and debate between the Confucian ideologues and the king. The Confucian officials and the Academy students constantly demanded that ladies in the court be disciplined,¹⁵⁷ monks and nuns be strictly prohibited from entering the four gates of Seoul, and royal temples be dismantled.¹⁵⁸

When state officials realized the number of monastics had not declined in consequence of state labor programs, they had to formulate another measure to better use monks’ labor, this time in a more organized way: they decided to force monks, even legal ones, to produce various products for the central and local governments. The wars with Japan and the Manchurians in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries made it advisable to use monks as soldiers as well. Out of desperation, especially during the Imjin war, the state ordered the monks to rise up against the Japanese but, again, promised to give certificates and prizes to whoever could bring enemy heads they had cut off in battle.¹⁵⁹ Most Chosŏn monastics were thus mobilized as military forces. Many monks were willing to participate in order to gain benefits in return for their service, including the benefit of being able to live at their temples without fear of being harassed or arrested.

During and after the wars, the government successfully turned the monks into permanent military forces.¹⁶⁰ The militarization of monastics was further systematized after the Manchus’ invasion.¹⁶¹ The government had monks construct fortresses around the country and also build temples as places of residence.¹⁶² The latter represents one of the most conspicuous contradictions of the state’s Confucianization policy, for according to Chosŏn law, the building of new temples was prohibited.¹⁶³ Nevertheless, over ninety temples were newly built inside various fortresses, starting with the Namhan and Pukhan fortresses defending the palace and the capital.¹⁶⁴ Preexisting temples were also incorporated into the fortifications of the country,¹⁶⁵ and the state enforced the conscription of seven or eight hundred monks from temples in southern Korea to take turns serving in the strategically vital Namhan and Pukhan fortresses.¹⁶⁶

By 1652, the government had successfully allocated a total of two thousand soldier monks to five provinces.¹⁶⁷ The monks had to take turns a couple of times each year, serving in shifts of two months or more, and they had to bring their own food and other provisions.¹⁶⁸ Their local temples had to provide for their expenses. The assignments imposed on the monks for Namhan and Pukhan fortresses alone drained the temple economy in the country. With the militarization of monks established, monks were doubly burdened: subjected to military service and [End Page 122] compulsory labor simultaneously.¹⁶⁹ These double labors forced some monks to vacate their temples and run away into the remote mountains, resuming the hide-and-seek game; many others disrobed. Paradoxically, officials were now concerned about the rising number of monks who were disrobing since this would undermine the defense and the state coffers, to which monks had become integral.¹⁷⁰ They wanted monks to return and occupy their temples.¹⁷¹ To have any hope of maintaining the current arrangements, the government had to alleviate the burdens on the temples and monks.¹⁷² Thus, the government ordered officials to reduce the miscellaneous labors, help soldier monks pay their expenses in a different way, and grant government funds to provide provisions.¹⁷³

But when it came to reducing the forced labor, the central government’s order was not adhered to at the local level. The local authorities were unwilling to listen; they derived great benefit from the monks’ labor, which yielded many products replenishing the coffers of the local governments, not to mention helping local authorities to amass personal wealth. Even nuns petitioned the king to exempt them from compulsory labor.¹⁷⁴ In the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, temples were frequently deserted as a result of unbearable compulsory labor.¹⁷⁵ Even major temples were empty of monks.¹⁷⁶ A vicious cycle of burdens was perpetuated, for the remaining monks had to pay to maintain the soldier monks and work extra hours to meet the quotas of assigned products. When more monks deserted their temples, some of the expenses fell on the families of the deserters and even on the villages of the temples. Without a doubt, some Neo-Confucian ideologues considered the desertion of the temples to be a good sign. Various efforts had to be made by the monastics to preserve their downtrodden temples.¹⁷⁷

The monks were not entirely passive in this process. Monks who performed their military service in the capital treated it as a golden opportunity to find patrons inside and outside the palaces for temple projects and for their own personal gain.¹⁷⁸ Some also marketed their building and mercantile skills to Seoulites and people in other cities and sold the items they brought with them from their temples. Moreover, their multiple, ambiguous identity—simultaneously monk, soldier, craftsman, and merchant¹⁷⁹—made it easier to take on wives, a practice common among soldier monks in the capital and as far away as Cheju Island.¹⁸⁰ Various state projects that made monks more legitimate and mobile escalated the situation. But despite the initiative exercised by some monks in this system, their identity and social status were deeply disrupted and tarnished.

UNBALANCED POWER RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CONFUCIANS AND BUDDHIST MONASTICS

The obfuscation of the monks’ monastic identity also persisted in their interactions with yangbans throughout the Chosŏn era. Most of this contact took place in the temple complexes nestled in the remote mountains in which monastics were [End Page 123] quarantined. Monastics received Confucian officials as guests, but the reverse rarely occurred. Thus, this contact itself is reflective of the power imbalance of these two social groups that resulted from the anti-Buddhist policies of the era.

In addition to the roles Chosŏn temples played as military posts and manufacturing factories, temples also functioned as destinations for sightseeing, accommodations, and entertainment. Temples and their environs provided Confucian scholars a respite, giving them quietude and peace away from the hustle and bustle of city life. Due to the remoteness of these temples, they were also desirable places for Confucian scholars to prepare for state exams and, when in political exile, to better cope with their sorrow and frustrations. Whatever the occasion, monastics—often against their will—gave these scholars convenient accommodations.

The Travelogues to Chiri Mountain (Chirisan yuramgi), which lists twenty-nine scholars who visited temples on Chiri Mountain of Chŏlla province from the sixteenth to the mid-twentieth century, best illustrates the ways in which Confucian scholars interacted with monastics in the temple and mountain spaces. When the scholar Sŏng Yŏsin (1546‒1932) visited Chiri Mountain to do some sightseeing, he requested that Ssanggye Temple prepare four open palanquins and provide ten monks to carry him around the mountain, as well as a guide monk who would accompany him throughout his trip. When Yang Kyŏngu (1568‒?) made a trip to the same mountain, eight or nine monks, both young and old, from the same temple transported him on a palanquin. For a similar excursion, Pak Changwŏn (1612‒71) asked for about seventy monks from a temple to carry him and his attendants. Often, the number of monks who were assigned to carry palanquins for Confucian tourists ranged from 20 to 30 percent of the resident monks in any given temple. When Song and Yang toured Ssanggye Temple, the number of resident monks numbered a few dozen. Six or seven of the thirty monks at Pomun Temple had to undertake a similar labor. The situation was not very different at the temples of Mt. Kŭmgang, the most desired destination for Confucians in the country.¹⁸¹

This practice was so pervasive and common across the country that the monks carrying palanquins took up the name Namyŏsŭng (palanquin monks).¹⁸² This does not mean there was a group of monks specifically categorized as such, other than those soldier monks who were assigned to carry material supplies.¹⁸³ Rather, monks chose among themselves who would oblige Confucian travelers, according to their numbers and body sizes.¹⁸⁴ If monastics were few in number, old monks—as in the case of Ssanggye Temple—were put to the task. In contrast, it did not matter how old Confucian travelers were; monks had to serve even very young officials—as young as twenty-one-year-old Kim Ch’anghyŏp (1651‒1708) and twenty-two-year-old Yi P’ungik (1804‒87).¹⁸⁵ If, when crossing creeks or climbing narrow paths, palanquins could not pass, monks carried scholars on their backs.¹⁸⁶ Handling palanquins on rugged mountain paths was so laborious and challenging that some Confucians, such as Chŏng Yŏp (1563‒1625), Song Kwangyŏn (1638‒1695), and Cho P’ilgam (1767‒?), took great pity at the sight [End Page 124] of the monks struggling to move forward. Cho described monks carrying palanquins as “sweating like cows.”¹⁸⁷ However, none of them regarded this extortion of monks’ labor as a problem, instead taking it for granted.¹⁸⁸

Another stressful toil often demanded of monks was to provide food and entertainment for Confucian scholars during their travels. It was a common practice for local yangbans to bring female entertainers with them to throw a party and to request that temples provide liquor, food, and even dance performances by monks.¹⁸⁹ Without a doubt, monks were bitter about their exploitation and extortion. For example, when the mayors of two cities, Hamyang and Okch’ŏn of Kyŏngsang Province, complained of not being offered breakfast at the Pudo Temple one morning while staying there for a mountain tour, the monks grew enraged, hurled rocks at them, and charged back, “Since [even] the head monk of Zen [namely, either the abbot or the most respected master of the temple] cannot abide by Buddhist precepts [owing to the mayors and his entourage] and is busy accommodating the mayors’ visit, how can we even have the time to have a meal?”¹⁹⁰ This was a rare bold response to the harassment and suffering yangbans visited upon monks who wanted only to be left alone to dedicate themselves to their religious life.

Out of fear of severe punishment, most monks complied with Confucians’ requests without much resistance. When it became unbearable, monks simply ran away from their temples, which was the case with monks on Kŭmgang mountain.¹⁹¹ Obviously, there must have been monetary compensation for their services because when it came to lodging, food, transportation, and guides, travelers had to rely on temples,¹⁹² although in many cases expenses were forced on temples.¹⁹³ But more important, monks were willing to serve Confucian scholars in order to curry favors with them, believing these scholars would later help exempt their temples from corvée labor requirements and other even worse harassments.¹⁹⁴ Networking was still crucial for their survival.

Even in this lopsided power relationship, friendships developed between elite monks and Confucian travelers. By visiting mountain temples firsthand, Confucians were able to observe monks leading sincere monastic lives as well as offering hospitality. As a result, some scholars changed their minds about monks. Tasan Chŏng Yagyong is representative of Confucian scholars who built a meaningful rapport with a number of elite monks who were well versed in Confucian texts. Progressive scholars such as Chang Yu (1587‒1638), Yi Sik (1584‒1647), Sin Hŭm (1566‒1628), and Yu Hŭigyŏng (1545–1636) exchanged poems and developed intellectual discourses with prominent monks.¹⁹⁵

Based on these amicable relationships, Yuk Chaeyong and Yi Chongsu have broadened our understanding of the roles Chosŏn monks played. They argue that in addition to roles as soldiers, artisans, palanquin carriers, and travel guides, there were also monks who were genuine monastic practitioners of high caliber. The amicable relationships Confucian scholars built with these practitioner monks confirm that the relationship between Buddhism and Confucianism during the Chosŏn era was not entirely about suppression and domination. Another scholar, [End Page 125] Son Sŏngp’il, asserts that Chosŏn monastics were not a single group deemed to be of low social class but rather a combination of divergent classes and social backgrounds. Elite monks and the heads of the soldier monks enjoyed prestige and special treatment from the government.¹⁹⁶

Nevertheless, even if all these ideas have been integrated into the narratives about Chosŏn Buddhism, they still fall short of challenging our perceptions of the deeply ingrained public stigmatization Chosŏn monastics experienced. The seemingly friendly writings and poems of Confucian scholars focused on expressing the beauty and serenity of temples and mountains, not on recognizing the legitimacy of Buddhism and the status of monastics. The personal friendships they built with monks stayed personal; whenever Confucian scholars discussed Buddhism in public, they quickly reverted to their staunchly anti-Buddhist stance, conduct best exemplified by Chŏng Yagyong and Pak Saedang, as Thomas Sungeun Kim points out.¹⁹⁷ Even when they lamented the dire conditions and ill treatment of monastics by both yangbans and the state, none argued for the necessity of fundamentally changing anti-Buddhist policies. Their relationships with monastics, whether amicable or exploitative, operated on the assumption that monks were heretics who deserved their quarantine and that they should be ready to serve Confucian officials and scholars.

This centuries-old public discourse was the foundation of a deeply rooted psychological trauma suffered by Chosŏn monastics. As the discourse perpetuated itself, monastics accepted Confucian dominance as reality and internalized a sense of their own identity as pariahs. Monastics were unable to shake off the stigma that they were illegal, parasitic, and debased and thus with good reason feared those in governmental office. Monastics developed the belief that they should serve Confucian officials, who deemed them a lower social class.¹⁹⁸ The Chosŏn state did not shift its negative social perception of them even after the perception of monastics began changing throughout society as a whole as a result of modern forces. As the Neo-Confucian paradigm was losing force in the late nineteenth century, Buddhism began to show signs of revival. Vladimir Tikhonov argues that the revival of Buddhism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries coincided with Japanese Buddhism becoming both a protector for Korean Buddhism in the waning years of the Confucian government and a model of modernity for Korean Buddhism.¹⁹⁹ Thus, it was largely in reaction to the influence of Japanese Buddhism in Korea that the Korean government finally modified its stance on Buddhism and established a centralized temple in 1899 to function as the headquarters of Korean Buddhism. But it was still reluctant to build that temple inside the four gates of Seoul. The government also planned to station “fifty healthy monk soldiers” in the temple complex.²⁰⁰ It was still unwilling to release monks from military tasks.

Moreover, the nullification of monk labor proposed in 1897 was not implemented until the demise of the Chosŏn government and Japan’s colonization of Korea in 1910. Ironically enough, it was through their contact with Japanese [End Page 126] Buddhists that Korean monks were able to vociferously express how abused they had been by Neo-Confucians and their government throughout the Chosŏn period. It was no wonder that the Korean monk Han Yongun, in his 1913 Treatise on Buddhist Reforms, wrote, “Everyone in Korea regards monks on the same level as cows, horses or slaves . . . [and] the monks accept this, as if it were their natural status.”²⁰¹ Another prominent monk, Paek Yongsŏng, who in vain tried to build a temple in Seoul, experienced lingering discrimination and said that “monks were discriminated against by people simply because they were following Buddhism.”²⁰² In his refutation of the claims of the Japanese lay Buddhist Nakamura Kentarō (1883‒?) that Korean monks were social outcasts during the Chosŏn period,²⁰³ Kwŏn Sangno nevertheless acknowledged that Chosŏn Buddhism had succumbed to a hapless fate “unprecedented in Buddhist history, not to mention in any country of the world.”²⁰⁴

CONCLUSION

In 1936, a Korean monk with the alias of Kyeryŏng Sanin attempted to place the discussion in its proper historical context. Cynical about what Kim T’aejun had written about the Chosŏn monks in the article that provoked brawling in the streets of Seoul, he asked, “How about the level of political, social, and individual wrongdoings of the [Chosŏn] Confucians?” Kyeryŏng went so far as to maintain that all the negative stories about the Chosŏn monks in folklore had in fact been created by the Neo-Confucians themselves “in order to suppress Buddhism and disseminate Confucianism.” He asserted that “insulting Buddhism had become a habit” and that Kim had written his article with “the generic intention that has a five-hundred-year tradition.” Like many other Korean monks during the colonial period, he also accused Confucianism of being responsible for the demise of the Chosŏn dynasty.²⁰⁵ If monastics’ bitterness at their treatment under the Chosŏn dynasty has any grounds, it is certainly an overstatement to imagine that Japanese colonial scholarship, which was often represented by the leading Japanese scholar Takahashi Tōru (1878–1967), could be solely responsible for our characterization of the marginalized status of Chosŏn Buddhism.

Disproportionate though it may seem, the response of the Korean monks and others makes a telling point about the Korean monastics’ collective bitter memories of the misfortune suffered by their religion during the previous era. I have tried to provide some preliminary reasons for this reaction based on the Chronicles of the Chosŏn Dynasty and other sources. But there is no simple way to sum up the Chosŏn state’s five-hundred-year policy on Buddhism, and it is impossible to present the experiences of Korean monastics in this period in a conclusive way.²⁰⁶ The problem is compounded by the fact that the extant sources are highly skewed toward privileging the side of the Neo-Confucian ideologues and literati, as well as by limited access to primary materials and the paucity of literature left [End Page 127] by the monastics who lived the times. Buddhism experienced many ups and downs during the Chosŏn period, and the Confucian ideologues continued to be frustrated by their inability to implement their ideal of a society dictated purely by Neo-Confucian norms and totally purged of Buddhist influence. As Boudewijn Walraven has rightly pointed out, the Confucianization of Chosŏn was never complete, and the anti-Buddhist policy of Chosŏn was never fully effective.²⁰⁷ The power relations between monks and Confucians were never an entirely one-way street, and the policies on Buddhism were full of contradictions.

Nevertheless, based on the extant materials and the interpretations of scholars, one can at least conclude that the zero-sum attitude toward Buddhism held by Neo-Confucian ideals more or less prevailed throughout the Chosŏn era in the minds of most of the elite groups that controlled the central and local governments. The perception of Buddhism as heresy was inculcated in the kings through their tutelage at the Royal Hall and in the yangban elites through the Academy and the hundreds of local Confucian schools that were gateways to power, prestige, and wealth. In contrast, given their lack of access to the center of power and lack of a state-sponsored institution run by a group of elite monks that could influence the governing of the country, the Chosŏn monks were left to rely on the royal families and some yangban elites who, although sympathetic to the monastics, did not go so far as to actively question the abusive aspect of Neo-Confucian ideology with respect to Buddhism. For the most part, Buddhism in Chosŏn Korea did not fare well in comparison to either previous Korean dynasties or to neighboring East Asian countries during the same period.

Toward the end of the Chosŏn dynasty, the legitimacy of the Neo-Confucian hegemony started to erode in response to external threats and internal problems. A new foreign religion, Christianity, came to be perceived as “a worse malaise than Buddhism,”²⁰⁸ thus replacing Buddhism as the epitome of heresy. Internally, in something of a déjà vu in light of the fate of early Chosŏn Buddhism, the Confucian shrines and educational facilities, numbering as many as seventeen hundred at their peak, were criticized for harboring tax and military service evaders. It was now Confucianism that was subjected to severe state regulations, culminating in the drastic 1866 measure by the Taewŏn’gun (r. 1864–73), King Kojong’s father and the regent, to dismantle these Confucian facilities.²⁰⁹ To make matters worse for Confucians, during the twilight of the Chosŏn kingdom, Neo-Confucianism was criticized by Koreans for having led the Chosŏn dynasty to its fall—ironically, just as Koryŏ Buddhism had been scapegoated by Neo-Confucians for the demise of the Koryŏ dynasty.

During the colonial period, Buddhism came back and recovered, albeit slowly.²¹⁰ Slower still was the recovery of the monks’ social status, which had been tarnished by the state policy against Chosŏn Buddhism. As the Korean monk Kwŏn passionately argued, monks were not among the seven social outcasts. However, when monks were mentioned in official Chosŏn records, they were commonly listed along with servants, butchers, and female entertainers under the term debased. [End Page 128] Even toward the end of the nineteenth century, Koreans continued to view monastics as among the seven outcasts, a mischaracterization but an undeniable social perception of them,²¹¹ as reflected in Kim T’aejun’s writing. Neo-Confucian ideologues desired to categorize monks as such, and the institutionalization of this stigma influenced the local authorities and the commoners as well. If there is one way in which the Confucian propagandists succeeded in undermining Buddhism, it was in the social debasement of monastics and the internalization of this perception of debasement in the minds of monastics and the populace. As a Korean monk complained in 1911, “Among twenty-million Korean people, except those under the age of five, the notion of despising monks has deeply penetrated into their brains.”²¹² It is no wonder, then, that reversing the degradation of monks’ social status was one of the highest priorities of Buddhist leaders, both collaborators and nationalists, throughout the colonial period. Kim’s article was a grim reminder of the collective trauma the Korean monks had experienced at the hands of the Neo-Confucians during the Confucian Chosŏn era.

More broadly, it is not surprising, then, that the first Governor-General, Terauchi Masatake (1852–1919), aware of this history of Chosŏn Buddhism, employed its political power to engage in the meaning-making process of collective trauma when he invited Buddhist leaders to the Governor-General Office in central Seoul and promised to revitalize Buddhism. Korean Buddhist leaders proudly visited him, riding palanquins.²¹³ Thus, by the 1910s, most colonial Korean Buddhist monastics, having fully developed a sense of collective trauma into a dominant discourse motivating their religious reforms, felt that despite being under colonial rule, they had now been liberated at least politically from centuries of humiliation and marginalization. But the collective trauma Korean monastics had accepted as an integral part of their identity would not easily fade away.