The Venerable Won-song should be pleased with his new temple in northeastern Seoul.Rising on the slopes of Mt. Pukhan, the brightly painted building is capped with a gilded pagoda containing Buddhist relics. Most would agree it lives up to its name: Hall of Brilliant Illumination.''
But the abbot shows ambivalence.
Sometimes I look at this building and think it's ridiculous,'' he said. The beauty of Korean architecture lies in the line of the wood. It's difficult to achieve the same effect in concrete - but we had no choice. If a calamity like that ever happened again, I couldn't bear it.''
Two years ago, an arson attack destroyed a pair of traditional-style wooden structures on the site, which is called Ponwon Cheong-sa. With damages exceeding $5.6 million, Ven. Won-song says that only his followers' support allowed him to rebuild.
The elaborate $2.1 million building is more than a symbol of renewal; it reflects a new, vaguely combative element in the monk's outlook.
Though district police officials have never solved the crime, Ven. Won-song has drawn his own conclusions.
I hoped I would overcome this feeling, but every time I see a cross, I become angry,'' he said.
Statements like these are rare in South Korea, with its tradition of religious harmony, seasoned with Confucian restraint.
But the activities of some hard-line Christians, many of whom can be found promulgating in shopping districts, on subways and even on temple grounds, could change that.
For them (the Christians), this is a war,'' said Lee Chi-ran, a dharma instructor and member of the local Buddhist media. Much of the mainstream media is dominated by Christians, and coverage of anti-Buddhist incidents is rare. Many people don't understand what's going on.''The religious conflict is difficult to grasp. The brand of religious tension that exists here is more subtle and less publicized than that found in, say, Northern Ireland. And most South Koreans appear shocked at the suggestion that there are problems between the country's Christian and Buddhist communities.
This surface impression was punctured earlier this month when leaders of the Chogye Order, the country's largest Buddhist sect, issued a strongly worded statement decrying religious discrimination in South Korea.
In an emergency conference, the Committee to Counter Religious Discrimination (CCRD), a group comprising 21 Buddhist organizations, went so far as to demand a public apology from the government of President Kim Dae-jung for alleged pro-Christian bias.
The group's co-president, the Venerable Song-kang, cited comments by top presidential aide Hahn Hwa-kap, who reportedly said, God gave us this government.''
Distributed at the meeting were accounts of anti-Buddhist incidents of the past decade or so, including a scholarly study compiled by Dr. Frank Tedesco, a professor at Sejong University and lecturer at the University of Maryland.
A resident of South Korea for the past 10 years, Dr. Tedesco showed that between 1986 and 1996, at least 20 Buddhist temples and shrines, including one national treasure, were damaged or destroyed in arson attacks, while scores of others were vandalized.
Supplementary research by the CCRD indicates that in 1997, no fewer than 20 temples were targeted by arsonists.
The most recent assault on Buddhist property occurred last month, when a man carrying a bible smashed almost 750 granite statues in a temple on Cheju Island. The damage was estimated at 150 million won (about $111,000).
The Reverend Kim Kyung-jae, a senior professor at Seoul's Hanshin Graduate School of Theology - a 10-minute walk from Ponwon Cheong-sa - recalls how three temples were set ablaze in his Suyu-dong neighborhood two years ago, just days before the annual celebration of Buddha's Birthday.
Rev. Kim, one of a handful of South Korean Protestant leaders who have actively pursued dialogue with the Buddhist community, says the perpetrators, who remain at large, may have been Christian extremists.
But I want to stress that incidents like arson attacks on Buddhist temples and the desecration of Buddhist monuments are the work of small, fanatical circles,'' he said. Of the eight to 10 million Protestant Christians in Korea, maybe two-thirds are conservative, one-third progressive. Only a small percentage of the conservatives hold such extreme views.''Rev. Kim adds, however, that the fundamentalist orientation of most Protestant sects in Korea has contributed to an environment in which inter-religious dialogue is difficult - and one in which Christian leaders have been reluctant to criticize the excesses of their own adherents.
With the political climate governed by the previous administration's strident Christian leadership, the silence of Protestant leaders during anti-Buddhist incidents between 1996 and 1997 is better understood.
The Reverend Kim Young-ju, director of international affairs for the Korean National Council of Churches, admits that his organization failed to speak up.
Former President Kim Young-sam was a very conservative elder of the Presbyterian church, and there were many conservative Christians at the time who wanted to turn Korea into a Christian state,'' Rev. Kim said. At the KNCC, we condemn that attitude...We want to reform our position. We want more dialogue with other religions.''
He says he sees hope in Korea's younger, more flexible Protestant leaders.
But Buddhist leaders appear unwilling to wait for this anticipated generational shift.
In April, the CCRD was founded in response to reports of religious discrimination at a military base south of Seoul at the time of Buddha's Birthday.
A commanding officer identified as a Christian reportedly demanded that soldiers planning to mark the holiday at the base temple submit a statement explaining their motives _ a move that immediately put Buddhists on the defensive.
In a more graphic display of anti-Buddhist sentiment, piles of sewage were found on the temple grounds. Christian extremists are suspected by authorities.
There have been many similar reports, but this one convinced us that we couldn't stand it anymore,'' Ven. Song-kang said. In the past, whenever such incidents occurred, representatives of the Buddhist community expressed their dismay to the government, which replied that it would do its best. But it has never been enough. That's why it was necessary to form this committee.''
The first step, he said, was establishing a telephone hotline for people to report instances of anti-Buddhist vandalism and discrimination.
Now, the group is demanding a public apology from local police officials, whom they say continue to attribute anti-Buddhist incidents to disturbed individuals, despite evidence that many were carried out systematically by groups.
Of the 20 arson attacks on temples that took place last year, the police apprehended suspects in 13 cases and discovered they were Christians,'' he said. The majority of the attacks took place between midnight and 2 a.m., and in most cases, there was a vehicle waiting for the perpetrators...We suspect that there is some organization behind these attacks and doubt that those involved are mentally ill. We believe they are normal people acting on extreme convictions.''
While Buddhist leaders concede that a militant Christian conspiracy is difficult to prove, they have documented instances of police indifference.''
CCRD members suggest little has changed since 1986, when an arson fire destroyed the main hall of Kumsan-sa, a temple in southwestern Korea that is listed as a national treasure. Police apprehended a suspect on the scene, an active member of a local church. Though he confessed to the crime, the suspect was released for lack of evidence.''
More recently, a 23-year-old man wielding a hammer burst into a temple in southern Seoul this past spring and severely damaged a Buddhist image. A couple of district officials, who happened to be on the scene, detained the man and contacted police, a witness said.
The Venerable Kim Ja-in, abbot of the temple, known as Podok-sa, says police released the young man without further inquiries.'' Frustrated, Ven. Kim then approached the Buddhist media, giving an account of the perpetrators' threatening behavior in the weeks leading up to the incident. He also displayed a signed bible the young man allegedly forced upon him in an effort to convert the monk to Christianity.
Ven. Kim says negative publicity alone prompted police to arrest the suspect.
A police official in the district of Pangbae-dong did not dispute the abbot's account. He added, however, that an internal investigation has since taken place, and the officers involved were admonished.'' The official attributed the incident's mishandling to a misunderstanding.''
Rev. Kim Kyung-jae attributes this growing catalogue of anti-Buddhist incidents to the exclusive brand of Protestant Christianity that has grown up in South Korea since the partitioning of the peninsula in 1945.
At first, Korean Protestants adopted the role of a creative minority,'' taking issue with the unjust practices of a highly stratified society and, later, the brutal policies of Japan's colonial government,'' Rev. Kim said. Many Koreans were inspired by a gospel they associated with liberation and progress.''
The greatest period of conversion, he continued, came after Korea's liberation from Japanese rule at the end of World War II. In the aftermath of the Korean War, schools and hospitals were built in South Korea under the auspices of missionary organizations, and assistance from Christian charitable organizations flooded the country. Along with this aid came droves of American Protestant missionaries, whose views were often informed by fundamentalism.
The missionaries taught the laity that they must believe completely in the Bible's content, word for word,'' Rev. Kim said. This view was passed on by Korean Protestant leaders. And today, when Korean laypersons read the Bible and come across Jesus and his apostles making exclusive statements, they tend to interpret them literally.''
Paradoxically, 120 years after the arrival of the first Protestant missionaries, local Buddhists leaders, who represent about half of Koreans who state a religious preference, come off like spokesmen of a beleaguered minority.
Dr. Tedesco, an American citizen who practices Buddhism, attributes this phenomenon, in part, to certain characteristics of Korean Buddhism, which was suppressed by the neo-Confucian elite of Korea's last ruling dynasty (1392-1910). He notes that the household shrines and daily rituals characteristic of other traditional Buddhist countries are nowhere to be found in South Korea.
There is an urgent need to teach Christians and the general public about Buddhism,'' Dr. Tedesco said. But I regret that many Buddhists aren't up to the job, because they themselves don't know enough...You have an astute and elite clergy, many of whom are quite brilliant. But current Buddhist education has been poor, at least in terms of mass education.''
What is being lost, he says, between the ignorance of many Buddhists and hostility of many Christians is a significant chunk of Korea's cultural heritage.
Over 90 percent of Korean cultural artifacts in museums here and abroad are Buddhist. And it's pathetic that many South Koreans, regarded as among the world's most educated people, teach their children to be afraid of Buddhist monks and nuns and do not dare venture into a compound of temples. These seemingly well-educated people who deny their heritage need to reflect on what they're doing to themselves.
Copyright(C) 1998 THE KOREA HERALD
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Added August 15, 1998
