Articles and Chapters by Kyuhoon Cho
![Research paper thumbnail of [In Korean] Beyond Contemporary West-Centric Globalization: Religious Traditions and Multiple Globalizations in Asia](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/61953355/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Studies in Religion (Chonggyo yon'gu), 2019
Globalization, which refers to the world becoming a single living place beyond political borders ... more Globalization, which refers to the world becoming a single living place beyond political borders and regional or cultural boundaries, is known to maximize religious diversity and/or hybridity. This article aims to seek methods by which studies of religious traditions in Asia deepen and enlarge academic discussions on ‘religion and globalization’. In light of criticism that globalization is centered on the contemporary global transformations the West has led, I attempt to distinguish a series of topics usually chosen under the theme of religion and globalization. Then, I briefly look into the semantic places of Asia in the emergence of global modernity. Based on these discussions, I propose three major subjects – religion and development in Asia, multiple religious diversities in Asia and transregional religious networks in old Asia – which can expand the horizons of research on religious globalization/glocalization in the context of globalized Asia.
![Research paper thumbnail of [In Korean] Religion and Globalization: The Formation, Disjuncture and Expansion of the Modern Religious System](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/59870024/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Studies in Religion [Chonggyo yon'gu], 2019
A theoretical breakthrough for the scientific study of religion in a modern context can be achiev... more A theoretical breakthrough for the scientific study of religion in a modern context can be achieved when the scope of observation and analysis on religion is extended to the whole of global society beyond a series of theoretical perspectives on religion that are based on the paradigm of modernization. This article is aimed at providing a perspective through which to holistically observe the contemporary construction of religion in the processes of globalization. Leading social scientific theories of the 20th century on religion display a tendency toward the concentration on the Western religious landscape, the application of nation-state society as the basic unit of analysis and an epistemological dependency on the paradigm of the secularist and rationalist modernization. To get over such theoretical impasse, the 21st century theories of religion are requested to observe and explain the entirety of unprecedentedly high religious complicity that is caused by globalization. In this article, I recognize contemporary religious diversity as ‘global religion’, something formulated by the rise and transformation of the modern religious system in processes of globalization, and analyze it as a threefold phenomenon that can be divided into the schemes of ‘religion’, ‘post-religion’ and ‘post-secular’ that may differently appear, but are nevertheless connected to each other.
History of Science, 2018
This paper presents an analysis of the birth and growth of scientific creationism in South Korea ... more This paper presents an analysis of the birth and growth of scientific creationism in South Korea by focusing on the lives of four major contributors. After creationism arrived in Korea in 1980 through the global campaign of leading American creationists, including Henry Morris and Duane Gish, it steadily grew in the country, reflecting its historical and social conditions, and especially its developmental state with its structured mode of managing science and appropriating religion. We argue that while South Korea’s creationism started with the state-centered conservative Christianity under the government that also vigilantly managed scientists, it subsequently constituted some technical experts’ efforts to move away from the state and its religion and science through their negotiation of a new identity as Christian intellectuals (chisigin). Our historical study will thus explain why South
Korea became what Ronald Numbers has called “the creationist capital of the world.”
Journal of Korean Religions, 2017
This article concerns the configuration of religion in the media sector of modern Korea. With the... more This article concerns the configuration of religion in the media sector of modern Korea. With the globalization of the modern world, mass media have increasingly become a differentiated field of communication through which to process different understandings of the religious or the spiritual in any given society. This article focuses on how religion is presented in the news media such as newspapers and broadcasters in contemporary South Korea. Since the 1990s, media industry in Korean society has rapidly turned into an autonomous profession as the nation-state has made great progress toward democracy and social reformation. In this new social context, a majority of media workers have internalized the standards of liberal or even progressive journalism. Reflecting on the socio-political shift, media professionals have actively produced information and assessments about different religious groups, many of which are concerned with cultural, anti-social, and sensational dimensions of religion. The author studies the underlying trends and logics in the media’s articulation of religion, which are selectively intertwined with the secular and religious constellation of Korean society.
Journal of Korean Religions, 2017
Acta Koreana, 2016
This article explores the changing role of Protestant schools in the context of the transforming ... more This article explores the changing role of Protestant schools in the context of the transforming landscape of secular modernity in Korea. I argue that the historical process of secularization in the late 19th and 20th centuries enabled Protestantism to take a lead in creating a modern public sphere in Korea. In the former half of the 20th century Japanese colonial secularism became the fertile soil for Protestant mission schools to cultivate Korean nationalist aspiration. The incorporation of East Asia into the Cold War world order led South Koreans to use Protestant institutions as a space to practice the spirit of capitalism and also to secure citizenship under the anti-communist dictatorship. By way of educational modernization and national education, Protestant educational institutions made a great contribution to the rise of modern public education in colonial Korea and post-colonial South Korea. Since the late 20th century, however, Protestant schools have transformed into a field in which the religious and the secular clash. This clash has exposed the acute conflict between Protestant churches claiming a right to the freedom of religious education and students and the civil society asking for the liberty to choose religion or not. Apart from the development of the nation’s public educational system, the social and ideological transformation of contemporary South Korea has increasingly required the equal representation of cultural and religious differences in the educational system. Protestant schools and their allied institutions suffer from deprivation as there has been a relative decrease in their socio-cultural status in the public sphere, which was caused by the change in Korea’s landscape of modernity. Protestantism, once the symbol of modern civilization, has been increasingly viewed in contemporary South Korea as an obstacle to the nation’s progress in a newly globalized Asia.
![Research paper thumbnail of [In Korean] Religion and the Sustainable Modern: The Crisis of Modern Secularity and the Emergence of Contextual Transcendence](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/55299319/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Studies in Religion [Chonggyo yon'gu], 2016
The sustainability of contemporary world, that of the environment in particular, is in crisis tha... more The sustainability of contemporary world, that of the environment in particular, is in crisis thanks to limitless competition between secular polities founded on the paradigm of national modernization. This article questions a collaborative connection between the crisis of global modernity and the secularity of modern civilization. In a perspective of the sociology of knowledge, the author examines the historical formation of the modern immanent teleology, an epistemological basis of the global political-economic system that causes extreme competition for resources in the contemporary world. To find way to overcome such a crisis, efforts are made to search for logics in which transcendence can be brought back to the public domain. In particular, religious traditions in Asia are examined to look for cosmopolitan values of transcendence that may work toward the physical salvation of humanity beyond the 20th century model of secular development.
Social Compass, 2014
The author explores the political rise of conservative Protestantism in the larger context of Pro... more The author explores the political rise of conservative Protestantism in the larger context of Protestant Christianity’s reconfiguration in Korea. The incorporation of East Asia into the modern world resulted not only in the failure to establish a single Korean state, but also in the rise of the category ‘religion’ in this region. The remarkable growth of Korean Protestantism was, in large part, due to its great contribution, as a model religion, to the building of Korea as a modern nation. Since the late 1980s, however, the public has lost confidence in it and there has been a rise in discourses of nation re-building that give great emphasis to indigenous cultures and regional resources. Meanwhile, Protestant Churches have emerged as a key opponent to nationalist aspirations and programmes for social reform. The re-politicization of Protestantism in post-Cold War South Korea reflects the extent of the insecurity stemming from of Korea’s shifting place in a newly globalized East Asia. Religion makes the re-entry of Korea into the late-modern world at once dynamic and unpredictable
![Research paper thumbnail of [In Korean] Niklas Luhmann's Theory of Religion: Religion as Autopoietic Communication System in Global Society](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/55299343/thumbnails/1.jpg)
The Critical Review of Religion and Culture [Chonggyo munhwa pip'yong], 2014
Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory has been applied to many areas of contemporary social research fr... more Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory has been applied to many areas of contemporary social research from organizational studies to communication studies, and to ecology. This essay is intended to examine how Luhmann’s theoretical insights can be used to explain the meaning and location of religion in the contemporary social world. The author first offers the gist of Luhmannian social systems theory, by succinctly mapping his theoretical argument on systems theory and the historical development of modern society. Secondly, the construction of today’s world society is explained as the process of globalization through which functionally differentiated societal systems have been increasingly worldwide since the 16th and 18th centuries. And then, based on the displayed summary of the Luhmannian systems theory and his version of globalization theory, the author explains some key concepts of the religious system and the historical process in which a modern religious system has risen as one of the self-referentially differentiated autopoietic communication systems that have their respective codes and functions. Finally, the author grope for the possible ways of applying Luhmannian theory to a variety of religious issues and phenomena such as religious organization, relationship between religion and the secular social spheres, and the conceptualization of religion in a globalized modern social world, by offering some examples of the theoretical applications.
![Research paper thumbnail of [In Korean] Concept of Religion in South Korean Legal System: From a Global Perspective](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/55299425/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Journal of Religion and Culture [Chonggyo munhwa yon'gu], 2009
'Jonggyo' or 'religion' is a modern and global category which had not existed in Korea before it... more 'Jonggyo' or 'religion' is a modern and global category which had not existed in Korea before it opened its ports to Western countries at the end of the 19th century. The term religion was introduced to Korea in the context of its acceptance of the Western
modernity in the Opening Era in order to make the nation-state stronger. In the last several decades, the understanding of modernity in South Korea has radically changed with the advance of globalization, democratization, and new frame of multiple modernities; the concept of religion has been re-formed within this social change in the post-Cold War context. This re-formation of the notion of religion bears a conflictive nature. The legal sphere is a social system in which such conflict is dramatically expressed. A series of legal cases, from the Jehovah's Witnesses'
conscientious objection to military service to Mr. Kang Ui Seok's objection to forced religious education at his high school, uncovered the degree of religious liberty that religious representations located outside of the hegemonic, 'authentic', or official conception of religion might have. It is found out that the Korean notion of religion still has many elements descended from Christian tradition. In contrast to 'world religions', minority religions located outside of the mainstream notion of religion have experienced many difficulties in enjoying their freedom of religion in the South Korea legal system. Of course, these reflect the reality of limited religious pluralism in contemporary South Korea.
Reviews by Kyuhoon Cho
Journal of Korean Religions, 2016
Religious Studies Review, 2014
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Articles and Chapters by Kyuhoon Cho
Korea became what Ronald Numbers has called “the creationist capital of the world.”
modernity in the Opening Era in order to make the nation-state stronger. In the last several decades, the understanding of modernity in South Korea has radically changed with the advance of globalization, democratization, and new frame of multiple modernities; the concept of religion has been re-formed within this social change in the post-Cold War context. This re-formation of the notion of religion bears a conflictive nature. The legal sphere is a social system in which such conflict is dramatically expressed. A series of legal cases, from the Jehovah's Witnesses'
conscientious objection to military service to Mr. Kang Ui Seok's objection to forced religious education at his high school, uncovered the degree of religious liberty that religious representations located outside of the hegemonic, 'authentic', or official conception of religion might have. It is found out that the Korean notion of religion still has many elements descended from Christian tradition. In contrast to 'world religions', minority religions located outside of the mainstream notion of religion have experienced many difficulties in enjoying their freedom of religion in the South Korea legal system. Of course, these reflect the reality of limited religious pluralism in contemporary South Korea.
Reviews by Kyuhoon Cho