• Journal of the Daesoon Academy of Sciences
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• v.31
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• pp.199-235
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• 2018

Most of the new religions derived from Jeungsan have claimed that Jeungsan's religious thought reproduced Dangun [檀君] Thought in its original form. However, Daesoon Jinrihoe is the only religious order out of the many new religions within the Jeungsan lineage, which has constantly kept its distance from Dangun Thought since 1909 during the earliest period of proto-Daesoon Jinrihoe. Even a mere trace of Dangun cannot be found in the subject of faith or the doctrinal system of Daesoon Jinrihoe. In this context, this study aims to examine possible connections between Daesoon Thought and Dangun Thought in order to determine why other Jeungsanist religions frequently exhibit Dangunist features. Specifically, a major part of this study will be devoted to comparing and analyzing the narrative structure of Daesoon Thought and Dangun Thought as well as their respective motifs. In fact, Jeungsan does not seem to have ever mentioned Dangun in his recorded teachings, therefore, after his passing into the Heaven, most of the religious orders including Daesoon Jinrihoe derived from him did not pay any attention to Dangun Thought for almost for 40 years. These orders did not originally perceive Dangun as an object of belief. After Korea's liberation, Dangun became widely accepted as a pivotal role among the Korean people. As Dangun-nationalism claimed to unify Koreans as one great Korean ethnic society, the religious orders of Jeungsan lineage also climbed aboard this creed and their faiths or doctrines were acculturated to reflect this change. The reason for this has been attributed to following modern trends to increase success in propagation. In the meantime, Daesoon Jinrihoe was the only order that did not accept Dangun-nationalism because it was not a teaching given by the order's founder. And the two systems of thought have more dissimilarity than parallelism in terms of philosophical ideology. These seem to be the main reasons why Daesoon Jinrihoe did not adopt Dangun into its doctrine or belief system.

• The Critical Review of Religion and Culture
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• no.29
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• pp.101-133
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• 2016

The term 'myth' is modern terminology. It was introduced to the East Asia from late 19th century to early 20th century. Under the rule of Japanese imperialism, some Japanese historians insisted that Dangun(檀君) has no relation with Kochoson(古朝鮮). Some Korean historians have refuted their conjecture. The arguments between Japanese and Korean historians bring about the motives of making the concept of Shinwa(神話) The purpose of this study is to investigate the historical procedures of making myth of Homogeneous Korean as a case study of "teaching religion". For the scholar the historic beginning is to be distinguished from later myths of origins. The scholars, particularly among the historians of China, Japan and Korea take it as the beginning of the history to investigate myths, for the ending parts of narratives are in themselves involved in a social constructs in order to give legitimacy to the story. It is apparent to satisfy for the current social demands of the nation-states building. It is also an act of casting and projecting their national values into the far distant past which is considered to be authentic and authorative. The western term 'myth' had been made up in Japanese historical context in order to build "nation-state concept". In Korea, the myth of homogeneous ethnicity of Koreans had been also reconstructed as modern myth during the late 19th and the early 20th century. We can call it the invention of the tradition accordingly.

• The Journal of Korean Philosophical History
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• no.52
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• pp.213-241
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• 2017

The systematic research on the Joseon history under Japanese imperialism in the 1920s, including that of the Joseon History Compilation Committee, was one of the stratagems that Japan employed to perpetuate the colonization of Joseon. The 'renovation of national traits', one of the three cultural measures taken by Japanese imperialism after the 1919 Independence Movement, was an attempt to degrade Joseon's nationality as extraneous, dependent, factional, and uncivilized. Against this, Koreans tried to create their own tradition that could prove Joseon's uniqueness and independence. The purpose of their study on ancient history, which became animated in the 1920s, was not to escape from the reality of Joseon into the idealized past, but to construct the history of Korean people anew. In this context, Dangun could refer to cultural identity as the communal origin of the nation, and this invented identity could lead to the healing of the injured subject. An Hwak's attempt was part of this efforts to call out myth as history. He suggests that Joseon's national traits are superior even to the Western civilization in several ways, and his vast plan to set up Joseon's cultural uniqueness and identity as history of universal civilization bore fruit in the History of Joseon Civilization. With cultural research for figuring out Joseon's national peculiarity and identity and historiography for revealing Joseon's national potential, he makes it possible for people to imagine various agents in the Joseon's past as belonging to a single nation with an identical history. Through his study on Joseon, he fought back the Japanese colonial view of history and tried to exalt national consciousness. Asserting independent and rational individuals as agency of civilization and culture though firm in the national perspective, he eventually went a way quite different from that of Japanese history of culture.