Chapter 101. Korea: Shamans, Confucian Kings, Christians and the Kim Dynasty

Korea’s religious history comes in layers, and each layer was laid down by a political power. The oldest is a native shamanism tied to a foundation myth. Three kingdoms and then Goryeo made Buddhism a political force. Joseon replaced it with an unusually strict Neo-Confucian state cult. Christianity arrived through scholars and missionaries and became bound up with nationalism under Japanese rule. After 1945 the peninsula split into a Christian-influenced South and a North whose official ideology some authors describe as a state religion. Korea also produced one of the most politically connected new religions of the twentieth century, Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. This chapter follows the sources in that order.

The bear, the cave and the mudang

Popular history records the foundation myth this way. Hwanung, son of the “Lord of Heaven” Hwanin, descended on Paektu Mountain with the spirits of Rain, Wind and Clouds. A tiger and a bear asked to become human and were shut in a cave without food. “In time, the tiger tired, gave in to his baser instincts, and left the cave to hunt. However, the bear persisted and did become human.” The bear-woman Ungnyeo bore Dangun Wanggeom, who founded Gojoseon with 3,000 followers [History of East Asia, #71236, Part 3 ch. 1 “Land of the Bear”, “Creation Myth”]. The Cambridge World History of Food’s chapter on Korea opens its account of traditional foods with “the myth of Tan-gun’s birth involving moxa and garlic”. It treats these as “powerful traditional substances” and links holiday foods to “the lunar calendar and Confucian rituals” [Cambridge World History of Food, vol. 2, #33333, “Traditional Korean Foods, Holidays, and Seafood”]. The myth also serves modern nationalism. Don Baker notes that Korean nationalists cite “Neolithic stone needles or the Dan’gun myth” to claim indigenous origins for Oriental medicine [Selin (ed.), Medicine Across Cultures, #29343, Baker, “Oriental Medicine in Korea: Names and Origins”].

John Matthews writes: “The shamanism of Korea is known as Muism (from Mugyo, ‘religion of the Mu’) and encompasses a variety of beliefs and practices. … In North Korea, roughly 16 percent of the population has held true to the old way” [Matthews, The Shamanism Bible, #68052, “Korea”]. The Romanian scholar Octavian Simu derives Korean shamanism from Altaic migrants coming from Siberia and Mongolia “from around 5000 BC”, and calls it “the oldest form of religious manifestation” on the peninsula [Simu, Șamanismul: Călătorie între două lumi, #48977, p. 185]. Paul Kleinman’s survey lists “Shamanism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism” as Korea’s most significant schools. He notes that native shamanism “had developed in Korea for thousands of years” before Taoist and Buddhist influence [Kleinman, Philosophy 101, #81821, “Korean Philosophy”].

Buddhist kingdoms and the Confucian purge

According to the reference shelf, Buddhism came from the Former Qin to Goguryeo in 372. Silla made it the state religion in 552, and “in the following unified state of Goryeo (918–1392) Buddhism flourished, and even became a political force” [Wikipedia: Religion in South Korea]. The Captivating History account says that Korea “officially introduced” Buddhism to Japan in 552 [History of East Asia, #71236, Part 2]. Baker adds that Buddhist monks carried Chinese medicine to the peninsula in the Three Kingdoms period, healing partly “through incantations” [Selin (ed.), Medicine Across Cultures, #29343, “History of Oriental Medicine in Korea”].

The Joseon founder Yi Seong-gye took power in 1392 after poisoning two kings. His son Taejong “closed many of the temples that were formerly constructed by the Goryeo kings, which increased the size of the treasury”. Taejong also promoted Neo-Confucianism, “an orderly society guided by people whose positions are awarded on the basis of merit”. The same source adds that “during the 14th century, Buddhism had fallen into disrepute as corruption and greed grew among the Buddhist monks” [History of East Asia, #71236, Part 3 ch. 4 “The Joseon Dynasty of Goryeo”]. The reference shelf gives the scale of the suppression. Joseon’s “especially strict version of Neo-Confucianism … suppressed and marginalised Korean Buddhism and Korean shamanism”. Monasteries fell “from several hundreds to a mere thirty-six”, monks and nuns were barred from the towns, and by 1900 Buddhism was “virtually extinct as a Korean religious institution” [Wikipedia: Religion in South Korea].

Simu ranks the traditions by how tolerant they were: “Korean shamanism was characterised by respect for nature, which confirms its closeness to the Buddhist religion. This explains the relative tolerance of Buddhism for shamanic manifestations. By contrast … Confucianism rejected shamanic rituals, just as Christianity, which also reached Korea, tolerated neither shamanism nor Buddhism” [Simu, Șamanismul, #48977, p. 189].

Catholics, Protestants and the nationalist turn

Christianity entered through books rather than missionaries. It had followers “as early as the 18th century, when the philosophical school of Seohak supported the religion” [Wikipedia: Religion in South Korea]. The clash that followed is the subject of Don Baker’s Korean-language monograph on how Joseon Confucians “Confront Catholicism in the Latter Half of the Joseon Dynasty” (Seoul: Iljogak, 1997), listed in his bibliography [Selin (ed.), Medicine Across Cultures, #29343, Baker bibliography]. As Joseon declined in the late nineteenth century, “the monarchy and Korean intellectuals looked to the West as a model for modernizing the country and endorsed the work of Catholic and Protestant missionaries”. The reference article argues that shamanism’s weakness as a “national religious culture”, compared with Shinto or Chinese folk religion, “was one of the reasons Christianity became deeply rooted early on” [Wikipedia: Religion in South Korea].

Japan took Korea in stages: protectorate in 1905, annexation in 1910. Simu writes that under the occupation “Korean shamanism was severely repressed”. He also makes a strong claim about influence running the other way: Korean shamanism “much influenced the Shinto religion of the Japanese”, and “one may even affirm that it stood at its origin” [Simu, Șamanismul, #48977, p. 187]. The reference shelf describes the political effect. Opposition to “the Japanese effort to merge native Korean shamanism with State Shinto” strengthened “the linking of Christianity with Korean nationalism” [Wikipedia: Religion in South Korea]. Yuval Noah Harari gives State Shinto as the model case of religion serving the modern state. The Japanese state “created an official version of Shinto, while discouraging many local traditions”, and “it worked like magic”, producing “a fanatical loyalty to their state” [Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, #65632, ch. 8 “Religion”].

Two Koreas, two religious orders

After division the Christian population, “centered in the northern half of the peninsula”, moved south, more than a million people by one estimate. The South Korean state then “enacted measures to further marginalise indigenous Korean shamanism”, which strengthened Christianity and helped Buddhism revive [Wikipedia: Religion in South Korea]. A 2025 survey cited there gives 51 percent no religion, 20 percent Protestant, 11 percent Catholic and 16 percent Buddhist. Shamanic practice “may account for a large share of the seemingly irreligious” [Wikipedia: Religion in South Korea].

In the North, Kim Il-sung took his model from Stalin’s “cult of personality”. He purged rival factions, Pak Hon-yong in 1955 and the Ya’an and Pro-Soviet leaders by 1960. He rewrote history so that “Kim’s guerilla faction … singlehandedly freed Korea from Japanese domination”. In 1958 he sorted the population into core, wavering and hostile classes under the songbun system, with files that “even included family backgrounds” [History of East Asia, #71236, Part 3 ch. 9 “North Korea”]. Harari goes further and calls it religion: “The North Korean regime indoctrinates its subjects with a fanatical state religion called Juche. This is a mix of Marxism–Leninism, some ancient Korean traditions, a racist belief in the unique purity of the Korean race, and the deification of Kim Il-sung’s family line” [Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, #65632, ch. 8]. Matthews’s figure of 16 percent keeping “the old way” suggests that shamanism survives beneath the official cult [Matthews, The Shamanism Bible, #68052, “Korea”].

Cultural politics reach as far as medicine. In the North, Oriental medicine is called Dongui or, increasingly, Goryeo uihak. The South prefers Hanui, with its written form changed to mean “Korean” rather than “Chinese” medicine. Baker reads this as a shift from acknowledging Chinese roots to “asserting Korean independence” [Selin (ed.), Medicine Across Cultures, #29343, Baker, “Names and Origins”].

The Unification Church: a Korean messiah with a political arm

Peter Stanford’s handbook gives the founder’s story: “Sun Myung Moon was born in 1920 in Japanese-occupied Korea. His early education was Confucian, but at the age of 10 he converted to Christianity and joined the Presbyterians. He claims that at 16 he was visited by Jesus, who instructed him to complete his unfinished work of founding the kingdom of God on Earth.” Moon’s early years as a preacher were spent partly in prison [Stanford, 50 de idei … Religie, #77349, “Sun Myung Moon”]. Sylvia Browne writes that by 1957 Moon had produced the 536-page Divine Principle, “which he claimed was directly communicated to him by Jesus Christ”. In its teaching the cross is “a symbol of failure”, because Jesus was crucified before he could father “perfect children”. She quotes Moon on himself: “There have been saints, prophets, many religious leaders in past human history. Master here is more than any of those people and greater than Jesus himself … I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end” [Browne, End of Days, #42246].

Steven Hassan, a former senior member who became assistant director at the American headquarters, presents the political side as testimony and documentary citation. He relies on the 1978 report of Rep. Donald Fraser’s House Subcommittee on International Organizations. According to Hassan, the report documented “the Unification Church’s links to the Korean Central Intelligence Agency”. He quotes “a February 1963 unevaluated CIA report” stating “that Kim Jong Pil had ‘organized’ the Unification Church while he was KCIA director and has been using the Unification Church as a ‘political tool'”. He writes that “if I had learned that it was connected with the KCIA or that in 1967 Moon had forged an organizational link with Yoshi Kodama, a leader of the Yakuza, the Japanese organized crime network, I would have never become involved” [Hassan, Combatting Cult Mind Control, #64506, ch. 1]. Hassan says he gave Fraser’s staff copies of Master Speaks, Moon’s private speeches to leaders, and he describes being told that Americans “needed to learn how to submit” to the Korean and Japanese leadership [Hassan, Combatting Cult Mind Control, #64506, chs. 1–2]. These are the ex-member’s and the subcommittee’s findings as Hassan reports them.

Comparison: state and religion in East Asia

Key points

• The Dangun myth (#71236; #33333) is still used for nationalist claims, from foundation dates to the origins of medicine (Baker in #29343).
• Muism, the “religion of the Mu”, persists. Matthews puts adherence in North Korea at about 16 percent (#68052). Simu claims it influenced and perhaps originated Japanese Shinto (#48977).
• Simu finds Buddhism relatively tolerant of shamanism, while Confucianism, and later Christianity, rejected both (#48977).
• Joseon closed temples and confined monks to the mountains. By 1900 Buddhism was nearly extinct as an institution (#71236; Wikipedia: Religion in South Korea).
• Christianity entered through Seohak scholars, met Confucian resistance (Baker), and fused with anti-Japanese nationalism.
• Harari calls Juche “a fanatical state religion” combining Marxism-Leninism, tradition, racial purity and deification of the Kims (#65632).
• Moon’s movement joined messianic claims (Browne, #42246; Stanford, #77349) to alleged intelligence and underworld ties reported by Hassan from the Fraser investigation (#64506).