• Journal of Daesoon Thought and the Religions of East Asia
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.85-109
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• 2022

Yiguandao missions arrived in Korea no later than 1947. Despite many obstacles, including war and internal dissension, the movement has flourished in South Korea. Today there are three active major lineages and another seven smaller networks. This article relates the movement's overall development in Korea. We begin by discussing key missions dispatched to Korea by Yiguandao's founder Zhang Tianran. The northern port city of Tianjin was key to this effort, in particular a single temple, the Hall of Morality. In Korea the leaders found an unfamiliar cultural landscape that was soon engulfed in war. The Yiguandao missions tended to develop independently, without coordination. In an effort to unify the movement, the Morality Foundation was established in Busan in 1952. The article shows how Yiguandao's subsequent success in Korea is connected to the development of indigenous leadership. Local Korean leadership ousted Chinese members from the Morality Foundation in 1954, and this branch has continued under Korean leadership to this day. The ousted Chinese leaders continued to develop their own lineages. Two major leaders, Zhang Ruiquan and Kim Bokdang, were able to establish enduring legacies. A final section looks at organizational traits that will determine the movement's future prospects in modern Korean society.

• Journal of the Daesoon Academy of Sciences
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• v.34
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• pp.171-202
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• 2020

The nations of East Asia have similar historical backgrounds in terms of going through modernization during the nineteenth century. All of them commonly experienced socio-political hardships. Three of the most prosperous East Asian new religions, Yiguandao, Tenrikyo, and Daesoon Jinrihoe, all emerged under similar socio-political circumstances during the nineteenth century. There was no mutual interchange, but the cosmological perspectives share some analogous ideology. All of them were types of nativist millennialism. The ultimate goal in all three is redeeming lost elements by magical means-the sudden disappearance of invading forces, the return of mystical heroes or messiahs, and an altered landscape. As Stark said, although it is impossible to calculate the actual rate of success, probably no more than one religious movement out of 1,000 will attract more than 100,000 followers and last for as long as a century. By this standard, these three groups are certainly worthy of being studied. This paper will examine and compare these three groups through four dimensions: the Messiah's eschatology, the re-interpretation of that eschatology after the Messiah's death, the rational transformations of millennial dreams, and the institutionalization of those millennial dreams. Analytically, I could demonstrate the differences among these groups through two dimensions: (1) The dimension of time, which can be conceptualized in terms of this-worldly or other-worldly; and (2) Collective vision, which can be conceptualized in terms of utopia or reform. The cross-classification of these two dimensions is suggestive of the general avenues of Millennialism. Through these comparisons and observations, light will be shed on the essence and dynamics of East Asian Millennialist Thought by exploring deeper cultural implications.