Picture a world in which scholars come from all over the world gather to share research.  Imagine how such interactions would help alter preconceptions and forge new directions in the field. Visualize also that all discussions are held in an environment free from government interference or surveillance, free from de-platforming, free from any kind of ideological pressure. Such a world was once taken for granted. It now recedes from memory, leaving crumbling chunks of recollection of a bygone time.

One such recollection that has left a deep imprint is the CESNUR conference of 2016. The conference was held on the campus of Daejin University. Daejin is a medium-sized university of neat buildings reaching up a mountainside near Pocheon, a city some 50 kilometers south of the DMZ. Attendees made good use of the facilities—we stayed in student dorms and ate in the cafeteria. There were some 100 presentations, fully half by overseas visitors. It is no exaggeration to say that for me it was a life-changing trip because it re-introduced Korea to me.

I had worked in Korea over the years, so I cannot say I was unfamiliar with the culture. But my understanding of Korea was inevitably filtered through a Chinese lens. I first lived in Taiwan when I was 17 and later went on to settle in Hong Kong for over thirty years. Born American, I became a long-term expat. As often happens when you live overseas for a long time, the surrounding culture—in my case, Chinese—becomes second-nature. This is both good and bad.  Familiarity allows you to go about your days with little concern for your status as an outsider.  You are accepted (or rejected) as a person, and the many cultural barriers become invisible. But you also begin to see things through that culture’s lens. In Korea’s case, the traits shared between Korean and other east Asian societies were so familiar that it was easy to overlook their differences. I knew about tofu and noodles, filial piety, and Confucianism. And I felt comfortable in Seoul and other Korean cities. I had visited South Korea for work throughout the 1980s. I’d been to the DMZ. I trudged through freezing Korean factories. And I was there on some momentous occasions—the day President Park Chung Hee was killed, for instance. So short of living there and learning the language, I could claim some familiarity with Korea.

Or not. Easy assumptions are perhaps the most pernicious. And you cannot simply cast off the assumptions of your culture of birth, or the ideas you pick up as you go through life. Nevertheless, the Daejin meeting would help open my eyes to a deeper appreciation of the Korean world.

Following the conference we visited a number of new religions, including the Unification Church’s Spiritual Training Center at Chung Pyung and the Won Buddhist Central Headquarters in Iksan. The group also spent a fruitful day at the Daesoon Jinrihoe Headquarters complex in Yeoju.

The CESNUR forum was followed by two World SangSaeng Forum International Conferences hosted by the Daesoon Academy of Sciences, in 2017 and 2018, for which I was grateful to have been offered the chance to participate. These were scholarly meetings not unlike CESNUR, with multiple presentations by Korean and international scholars, over several days. While hosted by the Daesoon Academy of Sciences and Daejin University, the discussions were not limited to topics on Daesoon Jinrihoe, and we discussed multiple issues in philosophy and Korean new religions.  

Participating in scholarly discussions is one thing. Another layer of meaning is offered by the people you meet at such events, both scholars and other Koreans. Through research visits to Korea, I’ve been able to deepen ties with several individuals very important to me on a personal level, something for which I’m grateful. 

Another layer of meaning is place, the act of being in a location of significance. After a year of ZOOM meetings and enforced isolation, we may be in danger of losing touch with this aspect of life. The sounds of the subway ticket machines, the touch of the seat cover on a Hyundai car, the feel of the winter sun bathing the countryside outside Incheon—these things move you into a sensual register. So when it was possible to visit, simply being in Korea put me face to face with a world I could finally begin to see as separate from the Chinese world I knew. I was, I found, ready to explore it on its own terms.

Once I realized this I dove in. I read more on Korean history and literature. I began formal study of Korean. And I followed my gut in the way I’ve been trained, through research. I’ve now done a number of papers on Daesoon Jinrihoe, in areas I had no idea I would explore: food and healing folkways, organizational structure, and colonial history. For the last topic I used a Japanese colonial-era source suggested to me by the scholar Ingu Park, a bureaucratic report that summarized social conditions throughout Korea in the 1930s. It offers a unique, if slanted, primary source perspective on Mugeukdo, the early Jeungsanist religion that is a direct predecessor of Daesoon Jinrihoe. The Japanese and Korean writers were thorough, although still subject to mistakes. One of the side benefits of the study on Mugeukdo was how it revealed the large number of contemporaneous new religions then flourishing in Korea. It turns out that the 1920s and 1930s were a time of religious ferment in Korea, a topic I would love to study more.

I also began to focus on understanding Daesoon Jinrihoe as an organization. And I felt comfortable in asking for the organization’s help. Daesoon Jinrihoe responded positively. I was able to spend a day visiting branch temples in the Seoul area with Bae Kyu-han, Jason Greenberger, Ingyu Park, and Kim Donghwan. Later, I requested and was allowed to interview key department heads in the headquarters structure. And in January of 2020—yes, on the eve of the pandemic—the headquarters staff arranged a trip to the holy sites of Daesoon Jinrihoe in the Gwangju area. In all these requests, I can honestly say the organization was always open and supportive.

This last point is significant. I have not always had good luck getting into organizations I wanted to study. I suspect this is a difficulty common to almost all field researchers into new religions.  In the context of Chinese religions I study, I have found that some groups, like Tzu Chi, are simply wary and so are open but only to a point. Others, like Ching Hai and Falungong, fiercely patrol their boundaries and do not often welcome outsiders. Still others are welcoming on the surface, but wish to promote only an official image. This is perhaps most common with middle and large-sized religious organizations which have become self-conscious about how they are portrayed in the media. I cannot say I don’t relate to this, especially in this social media-dominated age. At the same time, it is a problem for scholars seeking a less varnished version of reality.

Daesoon Jinrihoe has not thrown up any such roadblocks. There has been no attempt to influence my research findings. Coming from a perspective where I was often denied access, this came as a pleasant surprise. In fact, I feel overwhelmed by the access given to me. Does this mean uncomfortable issues do not exist? Not at all. But Daesoon Jinrihoe has shown a true attitude of openness.

Will meetings come back? I am confident they will, and that our old habits and assumptions will revive. All indications are that we will still have electricity and jet travel.  The apocalyptic scenarios of 2020 will recede into the background. But they will still be there. When the meetings do come back we will partake with joy and, perhaps, a touch of Dionysian abandon.  Why not? After all, we will have dodged a collective bullet. But the ominous unease will still be there. Maybe this is as it should be. Like Walter Benjamin’s angel of history, scholars of religion are fated to face the debris of the past while keeping a wary eye on the descending storms of the future.