Eastern Learning and the Heavenly Way

Introduction

Along Chongno, the busiest street in Seoul’s crowded city center, is a park that is walled off from the hustle and bustle. It is called Pagoda Park (T’apkol kongwŏn), because of an ancient Buddhist pagoda located on the site. In this small piece of greenery where old men play chess and paduk, there are several bronze murals along the walls commemorating demonstrations against Japanese colonial rule in March 1919 that first began in the park. In front of these murals is a statue of Son Pyŏnghŭi, the first signer of Korea’s Declaration of Independence and leader of a native religion called Ch’ŏndogyo (Teaching of the Heavenly Way). Although the demonstrations were brutally suppressed, they are seen as the first mass manifestation of the Korean desire for freedom from Japanese colonial rule that had been imposed just nine years previously. March 1 is still a national holiday in South Korea, and celebrations take place in the park and throughout the country in commemoration of this important part of Korean national construction.

The Declaration of Independence and the demonstrations were a collaborative venture; thirty-two others signed the declaration and thousands throughout the country demonstrated in the following month. The signers included sixteen Christians, fifteen from Son’s Ch’ŏndogyo religion, and two Buddhists. As can be seen from the background of the signers, religious organizations were important in the organization of the March First Movement. What is also interesting is the prominence of Christians and Ch’ŏndogyo followers, who came from two new traditions that had just entered into the Korean religious scene in the nineteenth century.

Most educated people outside Korea have heard of Christianity and Buddhism, but it is unlikely that many have heard of Ch’ŏndogyo. It is also probable that many Koreans know little about Ch’ŏndogyo because it is a much smaller religion now than in the early twentieth century. So what was Ch’ŏndogyo? It was the continuation of the earlier Tonghak, or Eastern Learning, movement that was founded in 1860 by Ch’oe Che-u, an impoverished member of the literati class. Like Ch’ŏndogyo, Tonghak also played an important part in the history of late nineteenth-century Korea through its prominent role in the peasant rebellion of 1894 (often known as the Tonghak Rebellion in English-language sources), which was the largest peasant rebellion in Korean history and which led to the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895. Both movements, therefore, were involved in events that led to deep changes in both the domestic and international spheres that occurred in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Korea. This is why there has been much written about Tonghak during the 1894 rebellion and to a lesser extent, Ch’ŏndogyo’s role in the March First Movement.

In spite of the historical importance of these movements, there is little written, especially in Western languages, about the twenty-five years between these two events and the transition from Tonghak to Ch’ŏndogyo that occurred during this period. The political and social situations had changed drastically between the 1894 uprising and the March First Movement, and this resulted in a different style of demands in the two events. Because of the strong hold that neo-Confucian ideology had on Korean traditional society during the period of the Tonghak peasant uprising, many of the insurgents’ demands were couched in the neo-Confucian discourse of the day, even though the ideas behind them may have been more radical. When one looks at the demands of the March First Movement, on the other hand, one sees a definite shift to an ideology influenced by Western-style nationalism.2 The main reason for these differences is the immense social, political, and cultural changes that took place between these two events. The aim of this book is to trace the developments in the Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo movements in the last years of Korean independence between 1895 and 1910 in order to explain how these movements successfully made the transition from the disarray following the 1894 Tonghak peasant uprising to lay the foundations for Ch’ŏndogyo’s important role in the March First mass nationalist demonstrations.

Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo in the Construction of Korean Nationalism

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were periods of momentous change in Korean history. During this period, the forces of imperialism and international commerce in East Asia forced Korea to abandon its previous isolation from much of the world, and Korea became a political football, with different powers vying for influence as the Korean court struggled to maintain the country’s independence. Domestically, factional infighting and official corruption weakened the kingdom’s attempts to institute an effective reform program to strengthen itself internationally. The situation both at home and abroad continued to deteriorate, and by 1910 Korea had lost its independence and was annexed to the Japanese empire. In spite of this, the beginnings of a modern Korean national consciousness had already been formed, and it grew steadily as the colonial period progressed. The most obvious sign of this modern nationalism in the first decade of Japanese rule was the mass demonstrations for independence in March 1919.

There has been substantial debate among Korean historians about the importance of Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo, their place in modern Korean history, and their role in the formation of a modern Korean national consciousness. Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo have been studied mainly because of their involvement in the 1894 rebellion and the March First demonstrations. These events have been considered watersheds in modern Korean history, and because of their importance, competing ideologies have tried to incorporate them in their constructions of national identity and history.

In his book Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China, Prasenjit Duara states that “nationalism is rarely the nationalism of the nation, but rather marks the site where different representations of the nation contest and negotiate with each other.” Duara continues by saying that nationalism is not static but is a constant negotiation between different ideas and forces within the nation:

Indeed, we may speak of different “nation-views,” as we do “worldviews,” which are not overridden by the nation, but actually define and constitute it. In place of the harmonious, monologic voice of the Nation, we find a polyphony of voices, contradictory and ambiguous, opposing, affirming and negotiating their views of the nation.

In his book on the construction of nationalism in Korea, Gi-wook Shin also notes that there are competing views of nationhood in Korea by which the “nation can be considered a ‘field of politics’ in which different conceptions of nationhood and forms of nationalism compete for dominance.”5 Historical interpretation is an important part of national construction. Therefore, different ideological streams of Korean nationalist thought have interpreted Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo’s contributions to the construction of Korean national identity according to their own underlying philosophy and have strongly influenced the way these movements are assessed by many Korean secondary sources.

Mainstream South Korean nationalist histories usually consider Tonghak as a response to the problems of the nation during the late Chosŏn dynasty. The following quote from an article by Shin Yong-ha is typical of many assessments of Tonghak by South Korean historians:

Tonghak, established in 1860 by Ch’oe Che-u, was a religious thought founded and propagated to “sustain the nation and provide for the people (poguk anmin)” and “save the oppressed people (kwangje ch’angsaeng)” by achieving a simultaneous breakthrough in the national and the feudal crises which the Korean people faced in the mid-19th century.6

Another Korean historian, Lee Young-ho, is even clearer as to the nationalist credentials of Tonghak in the 1894 rebellion:

The Peasant War of 1894 was an anti-feudal and anti-imperialistic movement with the aim of establishing a modern nation-state by overcoming the feudal and national crises.7

These are good examples of the general consensus that Tonghak was antifeudal and nationalist in nature during the 1894 peasant uprising. Tonghak is deemed to have been created to overthrow the Chosŏn dynasty’s governmental and social structure and contained within it the indigenous seeds that could lead to the creation of a modern nation-state with democratic elements to replace the old “feudal” system. According to this viewpoint, Tonghak combined the common people’s desire for social justice, relief from oppression, and participation in government with the defense of the nation from foreign, especially Japa-

Young-ick Lew is one of a minority of historians who see the ideology of the 1894 Tonghak rebellion as a proto-nationalist, rather than a full-fledged modern nationalist movement. He asserts that Tonghak at the time was more inspired by the neo-Confucian “Way of the Sages” than by ideas of modern nationalism or democracy.8 He agrees, however, that Tonghak “was infused with a strong patriotic ardor, a burning desire to protect the nation from foreign aggression, and with the egalitarian dream of abolishing the yangban class system.”9

In general, the Tonghak peasant uprising of 1894 is seen within a wider context of other movements that arose in the 1890s, including the Kabo Reforms of 1894–1896 and the Independence Club in 1896–1898. These are all deemed important in contributing to early modernizing nationalism in Korea. In dealing with the 1919 demonstrations, Ch’ŏndogyo’s contributions are usually acknowledged, but emphasis often varies from one author to the next as to whether Christian or Ch’ŏndogyo contributions were more important. Sometimes, Ch’ŏndogyo contributions are merely mentioned in a passing phrase or footnote. A reason for this is that some South Korean historians are Christians who often link modern nationalism, Western thought, and Christianity together. Giving too much prominence to Ch’ŏndogyo would prove problematic to this point of view.

In the late 1960s, the minjung movement arose as a resistance movement against the military regimes that ruled South Korea from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s. The word minjung was coined late in the nineteenth century from two Chinese characters meaning “the people” and “a group or mass.” The minjung movement in the late twentieth century interpreted it as meaning the “oppressed mass of the people” who are the true locus of the nation and who produce change in history.

Minjung historiography has some similarities to Marxism. The concept of minjung also resembles the Marxist idea of the proletariat, but it is not linked to class. Rather, the minjung can be a class coalition of all the oppressed (laborers, peasants, artisans, dissident intellectuals, etc.), albeit mainly from the lower strata of society. The minjung are deemed to cause change in history in their attempts to regain their subjectivity (chuch’esŏng) and exercise their rightful role in society. Since the composition of the minjung can change, minjung historians search for groups and movements that can be said to constitute the minjung in different points of Korean history. Minjung historiography accepts some of the premises of more mainstream South Korean nationalism, but stresses the importance of popular rather than elite movements. This has influenced later research by more traditional historians, leading to a cross-fertilization between traditional nationalist and minjung nationalist histories.

In investigating the period of the late nineteenth century, minjung historians take the 1894 Tonghak peasant uprising as the classic example of a minjung movement, mainly because of its origins among the oppressed peasantry. In the Tonghak rebellion, the minjung rises up to destroy oppression and protect the nation. It is considered “a larges-cale anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggle that has important significance in the history of the struggle of our minjung.”10

There are both secular and religious wings to the minjung movement. The secular camp tends to downplay the religious aspects of Tonghak, saying instead that the Tonghak religion and, more importantly, its organization were used as a cover by the rebellion’s leaders to better organize the peasants to overthrow oppression.11 The religious group, mainly composed of liberal Protestant theologians, puts a more positive emphasis on religion in helping to motivate revolutionary consciousness and nationalism. Suh Nam-dong, one of the most prominent minjung theologians, states:

The Donghak [Tonghak] Revolution in many ways represents the peak of the Korean minjung movement in history. With the ideology “humanity is heaven,” it fought on the one hand, the feudal social system in Korea and, on the other, the invasion of Korea by foreign capital.

In this revolution, the oppressed minjung defined themselves as the subject of their own history and destiny. It must also be stressed that the aspiration of the minjung went beyond a mere longing for political liberation. There was a deep-seated hope for a Messianic kingdom, since Chŏn Bong-jun [Chŏn Pong-jun], the leader of the Donghak [Tonghak] revolution, was accepted as the Messiah of the minjung.12

The exaltation of the Tonghak movement implies a rejection of the more elite nationalist movements, such as the Kabo Reforms and the Independence Club, that also occurred around this time and that are traditionally considered as contributing to modern Korean nationalism. This is mainly because they were not based on minjung culture. The Tonghak movement is thus the proper place to look for the minjung dynamic and spirit and the true locus of the beginnings of modern Korean nationalism.13

There is also a secular-religious split in dealing with the 1919 demonstrations. Secular minjung historians lay stress on the student movements at home and abroad and their role in setting the groundwork for the March First Movement. They acknowledge that the religious leadership, including Ch’ŏndogyo, actually played a major role by coordinating the demonstrations, even though more emphasis is given to the actions of students during this time. The demonstrations are also deemed to be a minjung movement, demonstrating the minjung’s fighting spirit of independence against the Japanese. The March First Movement failed not only because of Japanese suppression, but also because there was a lack of “revolutionary power” resulting from the failings of “bourgeois elements.” This interpretation is similar to North Korean communist assessments of the March First Movement.14

The religious minjung theologians, being Protestant Christians, naturally put a lot of emphasis on the activities of Protestant Christians in the March 1919 movement. Ch’ŏndogyo participation is barely mentioned (there is even one case in which Ch’ŏndogyo leaders are acknowl-

edged as being central to the movement, but they are considered “minjung Christians”).15 Analysis of the 1919 demonstrations is done with the aim of providing justification for the involvement of Protestant Christians in the modern struggle for democracy and human rights in Korea.

Another important stream of nationalism is that incarnated by North Korea. The relationship between the North Korean communist regime and Tonghak/Ch’ŏndogyo is a mixed one. In the late 1920s, some Ch’ŏndogyo believers founded a political party, the Ch’ŏndogyo ch’ŏngudang (Ch’ŏndogyo Young Friends’ Party), that advocated national self-strengthening on the basis of Ch’ŏndogyo values. It absorbed some socialist ideas during the colonial period, and between the end of World War II and the Korean War it tried to occupy a middle ground between communism and capitalism. The northern wing of Ch’ŏndogyo’s political party was forced into a coalition with the Korean Workers’ Party, along with the northern wing of the Korean Democratic Party, and this structure still technically exists today, although the Korean Workers’ Party selects and controls the members of the two other parties.16 As a religion, Ch’ŏndogyo is tightly controlled, like any religion in the north.

This leads to a mixed assessment of Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo’s contributions to recent Korean history. The official North Korean history, Chosŏn chŏnsa, praises the foundation of Tonghak by Ch’oe Cheu as a movement to oppose Chosŏn’s feudal system and incursions by foreigners. The greatest weakness of Tonghak is that this desire was encapsulated in the form of “religious superstition,” which restricted the development of a “social consciousness.”17

According to North Korean histories, the Tonghak rebellion was important in promoting the demise of Korean feudalism, but the lack of a proletariat to lead the struggle doomed it to failure and weakened its “anti-imperialistic fighting consciousness.”18 Tonghak activities tend to be lumped into a “bourgeois phase” that includes the activities of the Independence Club and culminates in the March First demonstrations, which is the terminal point of this stage.19

The North Korean assessment of the March First demonstrations resembles the secular minjung interpretation and likely inspired it. It is even more critical, however, in placing the blame for failure squarely on the peaceful tactics of the “bourgeois” leadership. The demonstrations were supported by the masses, but because there was no revolutionary class, party, or leader to organize and guide the masses, the movement was doomed to failure.20 This clearly reveals that the aim of the North Korean histories is to show that a socialist revolution must have a revolutionary class, party, and leader.

Tonghak/Ch’ŏndogyo: An Example of a Religious “Imagined Community”

The above examples present only a partial view of the Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo movements. The main focus is on two events, the 1894 rebellion and the March 1919 demonstrations, with little in-depth examination of what happened in between. This is because the principal interest of these histories is not in these movements themselves, but in their role in bringing Korea to a certain destiny (the nation, getting the minjung to its rightful place, or achieving a socialist society). The methods used by these ideologies are intended to demonstrate that Korea is going through the proper historical stages to reach its eventual destiny, the making of a nation in one form or another. History is seen with only one goal of identity in mind, and all other identities are subsumed and subordinated to it.

This unfortunately neglects the fact that people and organizations often have multiple identities of class, culture, politics, religion, and family along with a national or ethnic identification. Personal self interest can also be a prime motivator. Many times, these identifications are stronger than the national one. Actions motivated by other identity forms or interests are often difficult to subsume in a nationalist narrative. Unfortunately, human history is seldom smooth enough to fit into a neat pattern, so unwanted historical details are minimized or just ignored, as has been the case for developments in Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo between 1894 and 1919 by most historians.

The Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo movements during this period present a special challenge to those historians who attempt to subsume them in a nationalist discourse. These movements were not as visible as actors on the Korean stage as they were during the 1894 uprising or the March 1919 demonstrations. Many of the events of this period do not fit neatly into the big nationalist, minjung, or socialist picture. For example, Son Pyŏng-hŭi’s long-term residence in Japan and the role of certain Tonghak followers in the creation of the notoriously pro-Japanese lchinhoe organization during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 raise complicated questions as to whether Tonghak was the true locus if the nation or minjung.

The response of most historians has been to ignore these events altogether. This causes problems because the discourse and structure of Tonghak in 1894 was quite different from that of Ch’ŏndogyo in 1919, but there are few explanations for these differences. This is why it is important to look at these movements in a way that does not put the primary emphasis on nationalism. Nationalism was definitely a motivating factor in the actions of these groups during this period, but it was not their only or even their primary motivation. Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo were religious movements, and many of their actions were motivated by a desire to protect their religious organization and increase their influence in Korean society. Attachment to a social, political, or cultural vision may have been stronger than attachment to nationalism. Personal animosities or relationships within these movements could have also influenced certain actions. The desire for power, regardless of where it came from, could have influenced the actions of others. Questioning the primacy of the nationalist narrative can lead us to take a new look at previously neglected events.

The events within Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo during the period between the failure of the 1894 Tonghak uprising and Japan’s annexation of Korea in 1910 were crucial in creating a successful religious movement in the rapidly changing environment of early twentieth-century Korea. The transition from Tonghak to Ch’ŏndogyo was a result of several factors that will be dealt with in depth in this work, such as Tonghak’s organizational reconstruction and search for religious freedom after the 1894 rebellion. This was a major preoccupation, especially in the early part of this period. Son Pyŏng-hŭi’s rise to prominence and the consolidation of his authority through internal leadership struggles and organizational restructuring is another important development of this period. Son’s dynamism, charisma, openness to new ideas, and ability to synthesize new thought with traditional Tonghak doctrine were all instrumental in the success of Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo’s adaptation to new realities in Korea.

The entry of new leaders, some of whom had been active in reformist political movements such as the Kabo Reforms and the Independence Club, was another feature of this period. These new converts had not been associated with the 1894 rebellion, but instead were influenced by Western political and social ideas, which they brought into contact with Tonghak tradition. They became especially close to Son Pyŏng-hŭi and helped him in the consolidation of his leadership and in the synthesis of modern thought and traditional Tonghak thought. Because of this, they acquired prominent leadership positions in Ch’ŏndogyo, and several of these converts represented Ch’ŏndogyo as signers of the 1919 Korean Declaration of Independence.

The synthesis of modern thought and traditional Tonghak thought also led to a systematization and rationalization of its ritual and doctrine to better conform to new social trends and lifestyles. New communications technologies that permitted the mass distribution of newspapers and books also greatly facilitated the dissemination of Ch’ŏndogyo’s religious message. Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo’s involvement after 1904 in social movements advocating modernization and gradualist cultural nationalism in the face of growing Japanese incursions into Korea increased their visibility and popularity in Korean society.

All these processes contributed to the creation of a modernizing native Korean religious alternative that was able to fill a social and spiritual vacuum caused by the discrediting of traditional neo-Confucianism in the face of national decline and a weakened Buddhism that had not recovered from centuries of persecution and neglect during the five-hundred-year Chosŏn dynasty. The small but influential Christian churches also proposed to fill that vacuum, but Ch’ŏndogyo proved to be more attractive at the time to many Koreans who preferred a native religion that interpreted traditional ideas in a new way rather than converting to a foreign religion.

Because these movements had to act in a new kind of society, the processes that led to the conception of a Korean nation-state also influenced the way they organized themselves. Benedict Anderson’s seminal work Imagined Communities lays out how new innovations in communications, economic production, transportation, and the changing role of the state led to a new form of social organization, the nation-state, starting in the late eighteenth century. The nation is an “imagined community” because its members usually are not in immediate contact with each other, yet they feel connected by common conceptions and ideas that unite them.21 Many of these same processes were occurring in Korea during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The factors and changes that helped construct the modern national community in Korea also influenced movements and organizations based on other factors of identity, such as religion and spirituality, because they had to act within the new framework of the nation-state. The influence of the cross-fertilization of these processes on Tonghak would also lead to the creation of a new religious “imagined community” in the form of Ch’ŏndogyo and allow it to continue to thrive in the first decades of the twentieth century.

Toward a New Approach

The approach I want to take in this book is one that emphasizes the internal changes and processes within Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo between 1895 and 1910 and their interactions with other actors and processes in society in the last years of Korean independence. National develop-

ments definitely influenced this process, but I want to make Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo, and not Korea’s national construction, the main focus of this study.

There are few books or articles in English centered on Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo, and most of the ones that do exist deal with their religious or philosophical thought. The most wide-ranging English-language work on Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo is Benjamin Weems’ book Reform, Rebellion, and the Heavenly Way, published in 1964. Weems traces Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo activities from 1860 until the beginning of the Korean War in 1950. Much of his information is drawn from official Ch’ŏndogyo histories and documents from foreign diplomats during this period. It provides basic facts on the movement and its activities and is one of the few books in any language that deals with the development of Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo chronologically through all periods of their existence to the Korean War, rather than just dealing in isolation with a certain period in its history, such as the 1894 rebellion. This leads Weems to examine “lost” periods that are often not addressed in other works. Unfortunately, this work is little more than one hundred pages long, so it is sometimes short on detail and analysis. There have been new trends in historical interpretation of these movements and new sources that have been uncovered in the past forty-five years that warrant a new look at these important historical and religious actors on the Korean Stage.

Since the late 1990s, a growing number of Korean scholars have done more research on Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo and on the last years of Korean independence. New collections such as the T’onggam munsŏ (Documents of the residency-general) have helped to increase our knowledge of the Korean protectorate period from 1905 to 1910. Ch’ŏndogyo has also come out with a new religious history and new document collections on the popular movements that Tonghak was involved with during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. There are a couple of research associations that have arisen that focus on Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo studies and that produce two scholarly journals, Tonghak yŏn’gu and Tonghak hakpo. The articles, edited volumes, and monographs that have arisen from these investigations have been useful in invigorating study from a variety of perspectives on these religions.

This book encompasses the last years of Korean independence and the rise of Japanese colonialism in the peninsula. One of the points of this work is to show how the processes of imperialism and nationalism also affect nongovernmental organizations, in this case native religion, and how nongovernmental actors cope and respond to the political, social, and economic changes that came with the worldwide rise of imperialism and the resulting changes in the international political and economic order. A major aspect of this book is an investigation into the tensions between collaboration and resistance to the imposition of Japanese imperial rule in Korea, an issue that divided Tonghak as well as much of Korean society. The debates concerning collaboration or resistance to imperialism occurred not only in Korea, but elsewhere in the colonial world. The ways Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo dealt with these issues are good examples of the strategies peoples undergoing colonization used to cope with the changes in society and the economy, as well as the tensions between collaboration and resistance to imperialism and the ambiguity that often results from these processes. The developments that led to the transition from Tonghak to Ch’ŏndogyo and their interactions with other actors in Korean society are good examples of how different elements in Korean society confronted the issues that arose in the last years of Korean independence.

This is one of the reasons this work stops at the time of Japan’s annexation of Korea in 1910, even though Ch’ŏndogyo comes to prominence in Korean history in 1919. The circumstances imposed by colonial rule were quite different from the last years of independence and

led to new forms of social action and religious development that built on the foundations of the fifteen years after the 1894 rebellion. Addressing developments in the 1910s would have made this work unmanageable in size and scope. Another reason is that most of the organizational processes that made Ch’ŏndogyo so important in 1919 were mostly set by 1910.

Since the prime focus of this work is the internal developments in structure, organization, leadership, and thought within the Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo movements, priority will be given to the investigation of sources directly connected with these movements, such as religious histories and doctrinal and social writings produced by members and leaders of these organizations. Internal change was often a response to external pressures, so this investigation will also take into account social, political, and philosophical trends in Korea, as well as international events affecting the region. Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo were much more visible after 1904, so Korean newspapers and magazines and reports from the Japanese legation and residency-general records are important sources for this later period. This is not a theological work and Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo doctrine will not be dealt with in-depth, but doctrinal and ritual developments that had an impact on Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo’s organization and its social action will be discussed.

Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo were active in a time of transition and instability in Korea in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This was a period in which Koreans struggled to create a place for their country in the new East Asian international order based on industrial capitalism, the nation-state, empire, and social Darwinism imposed by the Western powers. Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo were profoundly influenced by the events occurring around them in Korea and the wider East Asian sphere and were among many responses and solutions Koreans looked to as they coped with national and regional crises and the construction of a new Korean society. Indeed, following the “flow of the times” or the way of “enlightenment and civilization” would become important aims of late Tonghak and early Ch’ŏndogyo.

It is important to realize that ideas go through a constant process of reinterpretation. New interpretations of past ideas can give them fresh life and vigor in a new social and intellectual climate. The genius of the Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo movements was their ability to survive, adapt, and stay in tune with the changing national situation and aspirations of a large segment of the Korean people in a world undergoing radical transformation. Just scratching the surface of events during this period shows us that people in these organizations faced the same dilemmas and internal conflicts as other Koreans at the time and had similar responses. Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo, therefore, constitute a good case study of how Koreans confronted the challenges brought about by social and political change and foreign incursions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My hope is that by presenting and analyzing the often neglected developments within these organizations, this book will provide a better understanding of the actions of these movements, the influence of which is still felt in Korea’s cultural and historical heritage, and also give a clearer picture of this crucial transitional period in Korean history.