• The Critical Review of Religion and Culture
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• no.22
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• pp.15-50
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• 2012

This paper consists of two parts. The first part presents a review of academic studies on the concept of religion in Western countries; why the subject matters and how it has been discussed and evaluated. The second part contains a self-reflection of the conceptual analyses of religion from the Korean point of view; how we evaluate "their" studies and an attempt to understand the more than one hundred years of reception of the concept of religion in Korea. The idea of religion is an important part of the modern "map" that Korean society was obliged to accept in the middle of its crisis during the second half of the nineteenth century. Examining this process and the context of its reception can help to understand our intellectual and religious heritage. In this vein, it is of primary importance to consider how the modern concept of "Jonggyo" is different from the traditional concept of "Gyo".