Building a Heaven on Earth : Religion, Activism, and Protest in Japanese Occupied Korea

Why and how did Korean religious groups respond to growing rural poverty, social dislocation, and the corrosion of culture caused by forces of modernization under strict Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945)? Questions about religion's relationship and response to capitalism, industrialization, urbanization, and secularization lie at the heart of understanding the intersection between colonialism, religion, and modernity in Korea. Yet, getting answers to these questions has been a challenge because of narrow historical investigations that fail to study religious processes in relation to political, economic, social, and cultural developments. In __Building a Heaven on Earth__, Albert L. Park studies the progressive drives by religious groups to contest standard conceptions of modernity and forge a heavenly kingdom on the Korean peninsula to relieve people from fierce ruptures in their everyday lives. The results of his study will reconfigure the debates on colonial modernity, the origins of faith-based social activism in Korea, and the role of religion in a modern world. __Building a Heaven on Earth__, in particular, presents a compelling story about the determination of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), the Presbyterian Church, and the Ch'ŏndogyo to carry out large-scale rural movements to form a paradise on earth anchored in religion, agriculture, and a pastoral life. It is a transnational story of leaders from these three groups leaning on ideas and systems from countries, such as Denmark, France, Japan, and the United States, to help them reform political, economic, social, and cultural structures in colonial Korea. This book shows that these religious institutions provided discursive and material frameworks that allowed for an alternative form of modernity that featured new forms of agency, social organization, and the nation. In so doing, __Building a Heaven on Earth__ repositions our understandings of modern Korean history.

Why and how did Korean religious groups respond to growing rural poverty, social dislocation, and the corrosion of culture caused by forces of modernization under strict Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945)? Questions about religion's relationship and response to capitalism, industrialization, urbanization, and secularization lie at the heart of understanding the intersection between colonialism, religion, and modernity in Korea. Yet, getting answers to these questions has been a challenge because of narrow historical investigations that fail to study religious processes in relation to political, economic, social, and cultural developments. In Building a Heaven on Earth, Albert L. Park studies the progressive drives by religious groups to contest standard conceptions of modernity and forge a heavenly kingdom on the Korean peninsula to relieve people from fierce ruptures in their everyday lives. The results of his study will reconfigure the debates on colonial modernity, the origins of faith-based social activism in Korea, and the role of religion in a modern world.

Building a Heaven on Earth, in particular, presents a compelling story about the determination of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), the Presbyterian Church, and the Ch'xc5x8fndogyo to carry out large-scale rural movements to form a paradise on earth anchored in religion, agriculture, and a pastoral life. It is a transnational story of leaders from these three groups leaning on ideas and systems from countries, such as Denmark, France, Japan, and the United States, to help them reform political, economic, social, and cultural structures in colonial Korea. This book shows that these religious institutions provided discursive and material frameworks that allowed for an alternative form of modernity that featured new forms of agency, social organization, and the nation. In so doing, Building a Heaven on Earth repositions our understandings of modern Korean history.

"This book studies the religious community's response to these vast material and ideological developments in colonial society through an examination of the origins of faith-based social movements in Japanese-occupied Korea (1910-1945) in institutions that used religion as a vehicle to question the established norms of modernity, pursue social change, and promote the achievement of political, economic, and social justice. ... this study, in particular, focuses on the pursuit by the rural movements of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), the Presbyterian Church, and Ch'ŏndogyo to create a heavenly kingdom on earth anchored in religion, agriculture, and a pastoral life."--Introduction, page 3. Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Religion, Revolt, and Reimagining a Modern Korea, 1860– 1937 Chapter 1. Origins of Protestantism and Tonghak in Late Chosŏn Korea Chapter 2. Economic and Social Change under Japanese Colonialism Chapter 3. A Heavenly Kingdom on Earth: Th e Rise of Religious Social Ideology Part II: Building a Heaven on Earth, 1925– 1937 Chapter 4. The Path to the Sacred: Korea as an Agrarian Paradise Chapter 5. Spiritualizing the National Body: Sacred Labor, Community, and the Danish Cooperative System Chapter 6. Constructing National Consciousness: Educating and Disciplining Peasants’ Minds Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index This work examines the progressive drives by religious groups to contest standard conceptions of modernity and forge a heavenly kingdom on the Korean peninsula to relieve people from fierce ruptures in their everyday lives. The results of this study will reconfigure the debates on colonial modernity, the origins of faith-based socialactivism in Korea, and the role of religion in a modern world