The history of superstition in
the Republic of Korea

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Monks charged over temple violence
BBC News, 24 December 1998. South Korean police have charged 28 people, most of them monks, after a day of pitched battles to oust members of the order from occupying a temple. The dissident monks took over the temple last month after ousting a rival faction in a bitter dispute over who manages South Korean Buddhist funds worth millions of dollars.
Korean TV airs controversial documentary
BBC News, Wednesday 12 May 1999. A South Korean television station has managed to broadcast a documentary previously forced off air by members of a Christian sect. It examined claims that sect leader Lee Jae-rok could cure illness. Mr Lee heads the 65,000-strong Manmin Chungang Sungkyol sect, a Protestant denomination whose name roughly translates as All Holiness Church.
Korean shamans blame Christian extremists for raid on royal tomb
By John Gittings in Seoul, The Guardian, Thursday 15 July 1999. Steel spikes and iron knives driven into the mound tomb, and three statues of the mythical founder of Korea, Tangun—the mountain god who married a bear—were beheaded. Decapitation of the Tangun statues is being blamed on Christian extremists who oppose a campaign to reassert the beliefs of Korean mythology in a country where their faith is dominant.
Battlin’ Buddhists
American Athesists, 19 October 1999. Buddhist monks in South Korea took the streets last week for a series of pitched battles over which religious sect would control that country’s wealthiest monastic order.
15-Year Jail Term Sought for Doomsday Cult Leader
The Korea Times, 9 July 2000. The cult leader charged with defrauding nearly 1,500 followers of more than 30 billion won. 41 other cult officials were charged under a special law related to business crimes. Prosecutors also placed 113 other officials on the wanted list on similar charges.
Korean trade union leader denied sanctuary in church
LabourStart News, 19 July 2001. The local priests in the city’s main Christian cathedral expelling Dan Byung-ho, the leader of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, who has been living in a tent on the cathedral’s grounds since June 30th, seeking asylum.
Blasphemy against Tangun under fire
Korean News, 15 December 2001. The Federation of Christians, the Council of Evangelism, the Forum of Churchmen, and the Council of Christian Leaders of South Korea, destroyed scores of statues of Tangun, insulting the ancestral father of the nation. This is a negation of the Korean nation and an unpardonable challenge and crime against all the Koreans who have valued its history and traditions.