On August 3, the Daesoon Academy of Sciences (Director Bae Gyu-han) hosted the "2026 International Conference on Daesoon Thought and East Asian Religions (JDTREA)." Researchers from 15 countries presented 34 papers across 3 meeting rooms and 9 parallel sessions, creating an international platform for knowledge exchange that connects Daesoon Thought to the discourses of East Asian religions and global religious studies. The conference multidimensionally explored how religion can provide a "language of coexistence and a new social imagination" in an era where technological transition, pluralism, conflict, and division intersect.

On this day, Eileen Barker, Professor Emerita at the London School of Economics, proposed a "bottom-up" approach to the study of living religion—one that complements institutional and doctrinal research by carefully examining the individual beliefs and experiences of practitioners. Following her, Carole Cusack, Editor-in-Chief of JDTREA, praised the mature and broad research achievements, and urged the expansion of knowledge through the open-access journal JDTREA.