American Buddhist Net

SEOUL, July 31 Asia Pulse - Buddhist leaders on Thursday reacted angrily to President Lee Myung-bak over a controversial police search of the vehicle of their head monk, demanding the Christian leader fire his police chief and stop his "religious partiality."

Lee, an elder in a powerful presbyterian church in central Seoul, has become deeply unpopular with Buddhists following a series of government policies that they say are religiously discriminative. The discontent compelled Prime Minister Han Seung-soo to officially apologize last week.

The rift took a fresh turn, however, after Venerable Jigwan, the chief executive of the Jogye order, South Korea's largest Buddhism sect, encountered an embarrassing inspection inside the Jogye Temple grounds, central Seoul. Ven. Jigwan was departing for an outside meeting on Tuesday when police officers stopped the car. The monk rolled down the window and showed his face, but two officers, aware of his status, opened the car's trunk and continued their search efforts.

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Is it not time to stop adding "disgraced" to Hwang's name every time he makes the news? He paid the price. That event is over. ABN
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07-28-2008

South Korea's Buddhist monks have urged the government to allow disgraced scientist Hwang Woo-suk to continue his stem cell research.

"It is deplorable that research by Hwang Woo-suk and his team is suppressed unreasonably," the monks said in a resolution. "The government should approve the research in order to save a greater soul."

The resolution came ahead of the Health Ministry's decision Saturday over whether to approve Hwang's request to restart his work.

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By Kang Shin-who
Staff Reporter

Seoul Plaza, the Mecca for candlelit rallies over the last two months, is struggling to get back to normal. Under sweltering heat at noon Tuesday, dozens of workers were toiling to re-turf the round plaza and decorate it with flowers in front of City Hall.

The plaza is regaining its green, peaceful appearance as candlelit vigils are apparently waning, with civic groups and religious leaders positioned not to hold anti-American beef protests, at least not on weekdays.

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By Cathy Rose A. Garcia, Han Sang-hee,
Staff Reporters

Baekdamsa ? Spending a weekend at a temple is becoming increasingly popular these days, with more people seeking refuge from the noisy city to find peace of mind.

Many temples now offer weekend-stay programs, luring Koreans, foreign tourists and expatriates who want to experience the life of Buddhist monks at their picturesque sites dotted around Korea.

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July 1, 2008

SEOUL (UCAN): Buddhists in South Korea have protested what they see as the new government's bias against Buddhism and in favor of Christianity.

The Jogye Order, the country's largest Buddhist denomination, on June 24 issued a statement charging that Seoul's transport information system, Algoga (find your way), "intentionally" omitted mention of any Buddhist temples.

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The Seoul metropolitan area transport information system Algoga (“find your way”) is at the center of controversy after it was revealed that it omits the names of the major Buddhist temples. The Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, the largest Buddhist order in Korea, argues this clearly represents the evangelical tendency of the Lee Myung-bak administration.

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May.13,2008

Archaeologists believe they have nailed down the site of the oldest wooden tower in East Asia. The area in question is within the Pungnap Fortification in southern Seoul, which dates back to the Baekje Kingdom settled around the Han River, one of Korea's original three kingdoms.

What struck the archaeologists was an area that resembled a perfect square, 11 m in both length and width. According to the experts it has the markings not of a building or home site but of some kind of monument or tower.

A 3-m deep depression in the ground also points to the remnants of a foundation for the purported wooden tower which they contend is somehow linked to Buddhism. This got the team excited that the finding, given the date of the site and its size, is a tower older than any other in East Asia.

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May.13,2008

Nearly 2,500 years after Siddhartha was born, Buddhists in Korea commemorated his birth on Monday in thousands of temples and homes across the country.

For weeks before the day temples have been decked out with colorful lanterns with people's wishes attached to them by strings.

One of highlights of the day is the washing of the Buddha statues. By bathing little Buddhas, Buddhists believe they are also cleaning the Buddha in their minds. It's an act meant to cleanse a person's soul that's tainted by affliction and distress.

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03-13-2008
By Jang Eun-hwa
Contributing Writer

With cleanly shaven heads, an unsophisticated appearance, funny expression and short stature, they do not seem very attractive to earthly modern man's eyes. Moreover, each of them is so liberal and unique in their own body posture that no two of them seem the same ? laughing loudly, contemplating with a chin resting on a hand, riding on a tiger, lost in curiosity with a head sticking out, or being in all eagerness with palms together.

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Peter Schurmann and Aruna Lee, Posted: Mar 13, 2008

Editor's Note: South Korea's newly elected President, nicknamed "the Bulldozer", has laid out ambitious growth plans that threaten the country's sacred Buddhist temples and lands and Buddhists' deep reverence for the environment. NAM East Asian editors Peter Schurmann and Aruna Lee report from Seoul.

SEOUL -- The anonymous monk makes his way through downtown Seoul towards the presidential palace, prostrating face down in supplication with each step. His shaven head and tattered appearance are in marked contrast to the crisp suits of the onlookers. But his silent protest combines a profound humility with an iron will aimed at preventing South Korea's newly elected president, Lee Myung Bak, from building a new canal linking the nation's capital with its southernmost port.

The monk's protest and others like it signal a growing rift between a Christian president, nicknamed "the Bulldozer," and a Buddhist community fearful not just of the costs of such growth but of rising antagonism against Buddhism.

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The UCLA Center for Buddhist Studies seeks a Senior Editor to serve as managing editor of the Korean Classics Library series, including both the Philosophy and Religion and Historical Materials subseries.

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01-30-2008
By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter

Local media were already churning out the list of universities that will get licenses to run the first ever U.S.-style law schools from next year before the government's official announcement scheduled for Thursday. But the list has already triggered a strong backlash from universities that failed to win a license.

...Prof. Lee Sang-young, dean of the college of law at Dongguk, said: "Our graduates and those believing in Buddhism are reeling from the surprising news. We will look for a breakthrough in collaboration with other law professors during the emergency meeting.''

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By Sam Kim and Edward Targett

CHEONGJU, South Korea, Jan. 18 (Yonhap) -- Buddhist temples are not usually considered as hotbeds of technical innovation, nor are nuns hailed as champions of advanced technology.

But at Korea's Heungdeok Temple in 1377, a group of Buddhist monks challenged that assumption by producing what has been recognized as the world's oldest book printed with movable metal type.

The small temple no longer exists today, but its legacy of the precious book "Jikji" continues to fascinate the world, because it predates the Gutenberg Bible by nearly 80 years in terms of how it was produced.

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JANUARY 04, 2008

A copy of the Buddhist sutras is printed by a method used during the Joseon Dynasty through wood printing block of the Cheonggyesa Temple, tangible cultural property No.135.

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12-27-2007
By Oleg Kiriyanov
Contributing writer

In Korean, Ddangkkeut means ``the edge of the land.'' Usually terrifying stories are associated with such an expression. But this is not the case in Korea, which has its own edge of the land. On the contrary, Ddangkkeut is a quite nice and beautiful place, a tourist zone situated on the seashore of Haenam County of the South Jeolla Province. There are buses and boats that can take you to the ``edge of the land.'' Also if you ask a taxi driver to take you to the edge of the land, you will not hear advice to visit a doctor. For the people there, Ddangkkeut is one of the usual villages.

...The other place worth visiting is Mihwang Temple at the foot of the beautiful Dalma Mountain. The temple is interesting historically and geographically. They say that Buddhism was brought here by the sea directly from India by people who founded Mihwang Temple. Also the temple itself is the most southern Buddhist temple of the Korean mainland. If you stand in the yard of the temple, you can enjoy the view of the sea and surrounding mountains, which are especially impressive at sunset.

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By Kim Tae-jong
Staff Reporter
December 23rd, 2007

With the end of the year just around the corner, how would you define the year of 2007?

Professors used the word ``deception'' as a keyword to sum up the year in a recent survey.

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By Jang Eun-hwa
Contributing writer

``A millennium-aged downtown temple'' is the common epithet that reminds us of Bongeun Temple in the heart of Gangnam area, one of the most prosperous district in Korea. In the middle of November the temple celebrated its 1,213th anniversary. In the jungle of contemporary skyscrapers where modern man is busy struggling to live, lies the temple like an oasis for thirsty city-dwellers.

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Tuesday the 11th: the last Lecture Meeting of this year, with Dr. Richard D. McBride (Fulbright Senior Researcher, PhD in East Asian Languages and Cultures from UCLA), on “The World of Buddhist Devotional Practice in Silla Korea”. He will describe several of the interesting dimensions of that topic — merit-making and divination practices, repentance rituals, dharani procedures, religious communities, and cults of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and spirits — by drawing from inscriptions on Buddhist images and reliquaries, instructions in s?tra and commentarial literature, and descriptions in the Buddhist hagiography and traditional narratives preserved in the Samguk-yusa and other sources. As usual, at 7:30 pm in the 2nd-floor Resident’s Lounge of the Somerset Palace, central Seoul; free for members and w5000 donation requested from others.

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By Cathy Rose A. Garcia
Staff Reporter

Two National Treasures from Korea are now on display at a newly-opened gallery dedicated to Korean art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) in Texas.

The Museum of Fine Arts Houston opened the Arts of Korea gallery Saturday, making it the only gallery in the Southwest devoted to Korean traditional and contemporary art.

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Bongeun Buddhist Temple in the Kangnam area of southern Seoul has revealed its financial records. The Ven. Myungjin revealed the records at a news conference on Tuesday, showing W9.61 billion in income from donations, collections from prayer services, and sales of lanterns and Buddhist products, while expenditures amounted to W8.56 billion for labor costs, temple upkeep, missionary and education work and contributions to the broader Buddhist organization.

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By Bomi Lim
Enlarge Image/Details

Dec. 3 (Bloomberg) -- South Korean English teacher Lim has a dirty little secret. When she returned to Seoul five years ago after studying in the U.S., Lim lied about earning a diploma.

``I knew I wouldn't get the teaching job if I told them I didn't have a college degree,'' says Lim, 28, who asked to be identified only by her family name. ``Now I'm scared that I might get caught.''

Korean authorities are pursuing credential cheats across the country after revelations that public figures, ranging from a Buddhist monk to an actress, falsified academic certificates. The crackdown is undermining confidence in university degrees in a country where more than 90 percent of teenagers say they plan to go to college.

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The lecture is in Korean, but there will likely be some sort of translation. ABN
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By Sang Tae Kim, Ph.D / CKS Post Doc and Visiting Scholars Colloquium Series

This colloquium works on the generation and development process of the Buddhist Temple with two pagodas in the Eastern Asia in 7-8th centuries. This study was motivated from the question of why Buddhist temples around the late 7th century to roughly around 670 A.D. had only two pagodas. This period corresponds to the Silla Dynasty of Korea and Hakuh Period of Japan among the Eastern Asia while the composition of the temple being changed as Buddhism spread out from China.

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10-25-2007
By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter

Former President Chun Doo-hwan ordered a brutal crackdown on Buddhist monks in the early 1980s to remove the administrative head of the Korean Buddhist Jogye Order, who the Chun government considered a dissident, a government fact-finding panel reported Thursday.

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Oct. 24, SEOUL, South Korea -- This bronze urn, believed to contain the remains of a prominent Buddhist, was discovered at the site of Wangheung Temple in the ancient city of Buyeo, a capital of Korea's Baekje Kingdom (18 B.C.-660 A.D.). The Cultural Heritage Administration (CHA) unveiled the urn, similar ones made of gold and silver and other recently-discovered relics on Oct. 24.

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10-05-2007
By Kim Tae-jong
Staff Reporter

Buddhist monks Friday voiced their anger over an ongoing probe of financial assistance to temples.

The move came as the prosecution, which has been investigating the allegations of former presidential secretary Byeon Yang-kyoon and degree falsifier Shin Jeong-ah, began suspecting that some Buddhist leaders and temples were involved in the case.

The head monks of 25 parish Buddhist temples, which belong to the Jogye Order, the largest Buddhist sect in the nation, issued a statement calling for a fair investigation into the allegations without groundlessly damaging the reputation of the Buddhist order.

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