Korean Templestay as a Sustainable Global Cultural Product: The Case of Manggyeongsansa

Abstract

While the trend of de-religiousization has accelerated globally, Korean Buddhism has become very hip around the world. While it was traditionally known as a symbol of a solemn and old religion, with its innovative transformation, Korean Buddhism has gained wide popularity in friendly and trendy atmospheres, especially among people in their 20s and 30s in Korea and abroad, regardless of religion. Thus, Korean Buddhism has a cultural affinity beyond religion, nationality, age, and gender. At the center of this popularization of Buddhism, there exists “Templestay”. Templestay is defined as staying in a Korean temple and experiencing traditional Korean culture, the spirit of Buddhist practice, the natural environment, and the daily life of temples. Templestay was selected as one of the world’s top five most successfully developed tourism and cultural resources by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and one of the top 10 icons representing Korea according to the Republic of Korea’s Presidential Council on Nation Branding. Thus, Templestay is not just a Buddhist cultural experience but has been officially recognized as a sustainable global cultural product representing Korea with a history of 1700 years, where a global cultural product is defined as a cultural product that is shared on a global level. Considering Templestay’s wide global popularity, as well as its significant impact on the national economy, tourism, and cultural succession, with over 7 million participants, it is important to investigate Templestay from the perspective of sustainable management, such as CSR, CSV, and ESG. However, while a few studies exist on Templestay, the theoretical aspects of Templestay as a subject of sustainable management have not been sufficiently developed, since most research on Templestay has focused on the perspectives of religion or visitor experiences. Thus, by focusing on Manggyeongsansa Templestay, which was selected as one of the best Korean temples among the 150 temples offering Templestay in 2023, the findings from this case study provide significant implications and practical guidelines for the sustainable management of global cultural products to address fundamental issues from an angle that has not been covered sufficiently.

1. Introduction

While the trend of de-religiousization has accelerated globally, Korean Buddhism has decoupled this trend and become very hip around the world. For example, the number of views of an electronic dance music video by Korean DJ Monk Newjin (not a real Buddhist monk, but a comedian named Seong-ho Yoon), has exceeded 10 million on SNS, and his performances attract enthusiastic responses from young audiences not only in Korea but also in many other countries, including Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. In addition, “Lectures on the Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra by Zen Master Venerable Pomnyun” was recently selected as the #1 best-selling book for the generation MZ (the millennial generation [Generation M] and Generation Z) and Venerable Pomnyun is an influencer with 1.5 million followers on SNS [1]. Another book on Buddhism, “The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down”, by a Korean Buddhist monk, Hyemin, sold over 3 million copies in Korea, was ranked #1 on Amazon U.K., and was translated in more than 26 countries, including Brazil, China, Germany, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States [2]. Moreover, the recent four-day Korean Buddhism Culture Expo 2024, which was held in Daegu, Korea, unprecedentedly had over 30,000 visitors, even with open-runs [3].

Likewise, while it was traditionally known as a symbol of a solemn and old religion, with its innovative transformation, Korean Buddhism has gained wide popularity in friendly and trendy atmospheres, especially among people in their 20s and 30s in Korea and abroad, regardless of religion. Thus, Korean Buddhism has a cultural affinity beyond religion, nationality, age, and gender. What makes it possible for Korean Buddhism, which was the religion of the grandparents, to become part of a global, hip culture? At the center of this popularization of Buddhism, there exists “Templestay”, a registered trademark and brand (see Figure 1; it is not “temple stay”, as it is a proper noun). Templestay is defined as staying in a Korean temple and experiencing traditional Korean culture, the spirit of Buddhist practice, the natural environment, and the daily life of temples. When the 2002 FIFA World Cup Korea/Japan was held, Templestay commenced with the aim of enhancing the national image and revitalizing tourism by providing foreign tourists with 1700-years-old traditional Korean Buddhist cultural experiences and resolving the problem of a lack of accommodation and facilities. As temple life was not open to the general public as a means of accommodation before 2002, Templestay is not a variation of the long-standing tradition of religious retreats in Korea. Since then, Templestay has played an important role as Korea’s representative cultural resource, with global competitiveness, by offering an experience of Buddhist culture that retains the original form of traditional Korean culture [4]. Templestay was selected as one of the world’s top five most successfully developed tourism and cultural resources by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) [5] and one of the top 10 icons representing Korea according to the Republic of Korea’s Presidential Council on Nation Branding [4]. Thus, Templestay is not just a Buddhist cultural experience but has been officially recognized as a sustainable global cultural product representing Korea, with a history of 1700 years, where a global cultural product is defined as a cultural product that is shared on a global level [6].

As shown in Figure 2, after starting operation in 33 temples in 2002, Templestay programs are in operation in 150 temples nationwide as of December 2023, and cumulatively, approximately 7 million participants have experienced Templestay. Participating temples provide three types of Templestay programs: a one-day program, a relaxation program with accommodation, and an experiential program with accommodation. The one-day program is designed to allow foreigners to experience Korean Buddhist culture when they want to participate in a program, but staying overnight is not possible. Through this program, visitors can choose to participate in temple tours, Zen meditation, tea ceremonies, craft classes (involving Korean Buddhist-style light lanterns, beads, paper lotus flowers, and so on), and so on. Relaxation programs help participants relax their tired bodies and minds while staying in a temple through breathing with beautiful nature and refreshing themselves with healthy temple meals. While the third option may vary for each temple depending on the season or participants, experiential programs provide the opportunity to experience various traditional Korean cultures and Buddhist culture, such as temple etiquette, tea time with monks, Balwoo Gongyang (Buddhist meal with traditional wooden bowls), 108 bows, Buddhist prayer services, explorations of cultural heritage, and various programs to explore the natural environment, including the forests around the temple [4].

Considering Templestay’s wide global popularity, as well as its significant impact on the national economy, tourism, and cultural succession, with over 7 million participants, through the above-mentioned diverse programs, it is important to investigate Templestay from the perspective of sustainable management, such as CSR, CSV, and ESG. However, while a few studies exist on Templestay, the theoretical aspects of Templestay as a subject of sustainable management have not been developed, since most research on Templestay has focused on the perspectives of religion or visitor experiences [7,8,9]. Thus, by focusing on Manggyeongsansa, which was selected as one of the best Korean temples among the 150 temples offering Templestay in 2023, the findings from this case study have significant implications and provide practical guidelines for the sustainable management of global cultural products to address fundamental issues from an angle that has not been covered sufficiently.

2. Sustainable Management

Kuhlman and Farrington define sustainability as continuous existence and survival [10]. Thus, sustainability can cover various academic issues, including the atmosphere, food, waste, climate change, water, soil, energy, consumption, chemical pollution, water, resources, hazardous substances, safety, social justice, poverty, human rights, and welfare [11,12]. From the perspective of business administration, the issue of sustainability is not just a trend, but an important management philosophy and goal. As the minimum condition for an organization’s survival and sustainability is its financial performance, including its profitability through its activities, in the past, financial performance was the main priority. However, recently, there has been greater interest in non-financial firm performance, which includes the firm’s social and environmental performance [13]. There have been few studies covering Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Creating Shared Value (CSV), and Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG), which are the main concepts of sustainable management.

Recently, CSR has been considered an important measure when evaluating companies, for example, in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices. In addition, when selecting a target for investment, socially responsible investment (SRI) techniques that consider not only financial performance but also non-financial performance, based on the social responsibilities of the company, are widely used. Thus, CSR has become an obligation and a necessity, not an option [14]. However, even in the United States, one of the most active countries in terms of corporate social responsibility activities, the law prohibited corporate social contribution activities or donations until 1952, because it was believed that those activities did not directly contribute to shareholders’ interests. After the decision of the New Jersey Court in 1952, even if corporate donation activities do not contribute to shareholders’ direct interests, they have been recognized as part of the range of corporate social responsibility; therefore, corporate donations and social contribution activities have expanded in various fields [15].

Regarding CSR, which is the initially developed concept related to sustainable management, Bowen first defined it as an entrepreneur’s social responsibility to comply with the purpose and values of the society to which the entrepreneur belongs [16]. Later, Carroll systematically classified CSR into four levels: economic responsibility, legal responsibility, ethical responsibility, and charitable responsibility [17]. Carroll’s definition is the most widely used in academia, and is in line with Dahlsrud’s classification of CSR as comprising environmental, social, economic, stakeholders’, and ethical values [16,17,18]. CSR activities can comprise the voluntary social contributions of a company, but there have been concerns that these activities may place a burden on corporate management due to societal demands. However, in many cases, corporate social responsibility has been known to have positive rather than negative effects on the company, improving financial performance, attracting investment, creating new business opportunities, increasing loyal customers, increasing corporate brand value, ensuring the efficient use of resources, securing human resources, establishing win–win cooperation with local communities and partners, and helping to acquire government support [19,20].

While CSR involves giving back some portion of a firm’s profits to society, CSV, as an important concept of sustainable management, involves corporate activities that themselves create both economic and social values by simultaneously pursuing profit and solving social problems, aiming to create value for both companies and social communities through regular business operations. Thus, this is a more extended concept than CSR. CSR may be less related to maximizing shareholder profits or pursuing profits if charitable activities that are not related to the company’s original business become dominant due to corporate discretion or external demands, such as those from the government or civic groups. On the other hand, CSV can maximize shareholder profits, pursue profits, strengthen corporate competitiveness, and create values for the company, society, and community through management activities such as production, distribution, and sales [21,22]. Since Porter and Kramer introduced the concept of CSV in 2011, many companies have actively introduced CSV into their management. However, as it is difficult to measure the effects of CSV in practice, discussions on the direct results of CSV have been relatively low [23,24]. A few previous studies on CSV explained that CSV activities have a positive impact on customer relationships, non-financial performance such as brand image, consumers’ purchase intention, consumers’ willingness to pay, customer loyalty, corporate image and reputation, corporate financial performance, and social and environmental performance [25,26].

As a more comprehensive concept of sustainable management, ESG pursues sustainable management by applying improved environmental aspects, social responsibilities, and corporate governance of the overall business activities. The concept of ESG emerged in 2005 when Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, suggested global institutional investors to participate in the development process of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI). Since the launch of the UNPRI in 2006, to achieve the objective of sustainable management, the social responsibility of companies and investors has become important. Thus, many global financial institutions have implemented ESG as an investment indicator, and global companies have incorporated ESG into their management strategies [27]. In Korea, the Financial Services Commission announced in January 2021 that companies with total assets of KRW 2 trillion or more would be required to disclose their ESG from 2025; this will expand to all listed companies on the KOSPI by 2030 [28]. Thus, ESG is becoming an important criterion for evaluating an organization’s value through indicators of its non-financial factors, as well as for sustainable management.

As explained earlier, since the concept of ESG was developed for sustainable management from the perspective of global organizations and investors, not from an academic background based on academic research, we can understand ESG in more detail through ESG evaluation information indicators. The most widely used worldwide indicator is the GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards, which have been continuously developed since their first announcement in 2016 by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), an organization established by the United Nations Environment Program in 1997. The GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards consist of seven topics in the economic field, eight topics in the environmental field, and eighteen topics in the social field, as shown in Table 1 [29].

Along with the GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards, the representative ESG evaluation index that is widely used in Korea is the ESG ratings (seven stages: S, A+, A, B+, B, C, and D) established by the Korea Institute of Corporate Governance and Sustainability (KCGS, previously the Korea Corporate Governance Service). As shown in Table 2, the KCGS evaluates four major environmental indicators, nine major social indicators, and four major governance indicators. Although the GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards and KCGS’s main ESG evaluation items do not exactly match, there are a number of similar items across the areas of the environment, society, and governance [30].

According to Li et al. [31], after analyzing the data on the FTSE 350 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), it was revealed that there was a statistically significant positive correlation between ESG level and firm value. The results of this study suggest that the improvements in transparency, social responsibility management, and trust from stakeholders through ESG management enhance corporate value. Some other studies also prove that the higher the ESG rating, the higher the corporate value [32,33]. However, each ESG activity has a different effect on corporate value. The ESG factor with the greatest impact on corporate value is the item related to society (S), followed by the item related to governance (G) [32]. It was found that the dimension of environment (E), which takes a relatively shorter time to show a clear achievement with a large capital injection, does not have a statistically significant effect on corporate value [32,33,34].

3. The Case of Manggyeongsansa Templestay

As explained earlier, Manggyeongsansa was selected as one of the best temples for 2023 Templestays. Founded in 2002, Manggyeongsansa is a temple located 800 meter above sea level at the foot of Mangyeong Mountain (1088 meter above sea level) in Kim Satgat-myeon, Yeongwol-gun, Gangwon province, Republic of Korea. The temple is a Buddhist community with a spirit of Buddhist practice based on Zen meditation and farming for self-sufficiency. Against the excellent scenery of Mangyeong Mountain, five Buddhist monks from Manggyeongsansa have taken care of their temple by farming over 200 kinds of wild vegetables and herbs. In 2021, Manggyeongsansa started Templestay with the ambitious mission of becoming a sustainable cultural product to contribute to the revitalization of the local community; this is similar to CSV in terms of the concepts of sustainable management, as the temple is located in a remote and economically underdeveloped abandoned mine area. In fact, old miners’ houses were remodeled and used as accommodations for Templestay participants as in Figure 3. Manggyeongsansa developed its Templestay based on the basic definition of Templestay, which is to stay in a Korean temple and experience traditional Korean culture, the spirit of Buddhist practice, the natural environment, and the daily life of temples [4], while avoiding religious compulsions. Manggyeongsansa provided all three types of Templestay program, including a one-day program, a relaxation program with accommodation, and an experiential program with accommodation (see Table 3 for a sample of the one-night-two-days Templestay program offered by Manggyeongsansa).

Manggyeongsansa is located over 200 km away from Seoul, the capital city of Korea, and takes almost five hours to reach via public transportation when using a combination of an express bus (or train), a local bus, and walking (the journey takes three hours by car). However, there are continuous visitors from Korea and abroad because of its special sustainable management. For the rest of this section, as a sustainable global cultural product, Manggyeongsansa Templestay is analyzed through the dimensions of the environment, society, and governance based on the concept of CSR, CSV, and ESG regarding sustainable management.

First, regarding the environmental dimension, Manggyeongsansa specializes in its natural resources, especially its beautiful landscape, surrounded by Mangyeong Mountain and a farm offering over 200 varieties of wild vegetables and herbs. Using these natural resources, the temple can provide high-quality temple food made from hand-grown vegetables, and offers various eco-friendly hiking programs around the temple (as in Figure 4), guided and free nature exploration (involving fireflies, flowers, herbs, trees, stargazing, and so on), and seasonal Korean traditional cooking experiences, such as fermented soybean lumps (October), kimchi (November), and Korean traditional red pepper paste and soybean paste (February) (as in Figure 4), all of which are very difficult to experience in the busy and complicated urban life in Korea. All these activities further strengthen Templestay’s status as a sustainable global cultural product, as it is meaningful to experience, preserve, and promote traditional Korean fermented foods, the tradition of temple food, and traditional Korean culture and nature through these activities.

While Manggyeongsansa has a lot of environmental benefits based on its location, the temple has been putting more effort into the social dimension, involving their relationship with their Templestay participants, volunteers, employees, local communities, and so on. Compared with other temples participating in Templestay, Manggyeongsansa offers various seasonal specialty programs that were co-created with its participants, such as yoga, singing bowls, and astronomical telescoping in the temple garden as in Figure 5. As the temple’s volunteer community is active, participants voluntarily take care of the temple garden, engage in farming, fix small defects in the temple buildings, and so on. The temple pursues sustainable consumption of its participants, by building long-term re-visitors through peace, happiness, and satisfaction with healing, tea time and bonfires with monks, Zen meditation, various Buddhist and traditional cultural contents, and so on. At the end of October, the temple hosts the Thanksgiving Festival, inviting visitors and sharing their harvest. Through these activities and relationships, the participants become a kind of family members of the temple.

For human resources involved in Templestay (called Templestay practitioners), Manggyeongsansa provides a four-day work week to support work–life balance, develop employee competencies, and support through assigning specialized tasks (i.e., a forest commentator, temple food specialist, artist, and so on) instead of simple repetitive tasks. Thus, employees take pride in being professionals and demonstrating their abilities.

Even before starting Templestay, the temple established a long-term relationship through fair trade transactions, which means that the temple purchased vegetables growing at a lower altitude, which the temple cannot produce, at reasonable market prices from local farmers and has never sold their hand-grown vegetables and herbs to their participants to protect the local farmers (instead, the temple introduced and promoted local farmers to their participants). Templestay’s mission to become a sustainable cultural product that contributes to the revitalization of the local community has been implemented. For example, the temple not only promotes regional tourism through the exploration programs of the Yeongwol local community, including traditional market tours with monks and the King Danjong Culture Festival, but also boosts the local economy by developing experiential marketing programs and collaborations with producers of local specialties (e.g., Yemil winery and Yemil grapes), neighborhood farms, and the Yeongwol pottery studio. Through this active local community engagement in Manggyeongsansa, it is possible to improve the local image, enhance the tourism capabilities of local communities, and increase the local income.

Along with activities involving co-creation with participants, volunteer communities, employees, and local communities, Manggyeongsansa has engaged in CSR activities by sharing its Templestay program with diverse marginalized and disabled people, police officers, students, and so on, which can positively impact the temple and Korean Buddhism overall through improving its financial performance, creating new opportunities, increasing loyal participants, increasing the brand value of Templestay, establishing a win–win cooperation with communities, and acquiring government support [19,20]. In addition, Manggyeongsansa has engaged in CSV activities by joining the World Wide Organization of Organic Farms (WWOOF). CSV activities also have a positive impact on long-term relationships with Templestay participants, brand image, participants’ intention to re-visit, participants’ loyalty, and Manggyeongsansa‘s image and reputation, as well as social and environmental performance [25,26].

Moreover, Manggyeongsansa Templestay is a good example of citizen diplomacy, as it provides a channel for globalization, improves Korea’s national image, and revitalizes traditional cultural tourism resources and local tourism resources. Due to these strong effects regarding the social dimension, Templestay is not just a one-time fad among people in their 20s and 30s, but is expected to be preserved as a sustainable global cultural product.

Lastly, regarding the dimension of governance, Manggyeongsansa is not a corporation, but a temple belonging to the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, which is the representative order of Korean Buddhism. The Templestay program has been controlled, supported, and promoted by the Cultural Corps of Korean Buddhism, an organization in charge of Templestay and Korean Buddhist cultural content. As Templestay has been partially funded by the government in accordance with the regulations on the designation and operation of Templestay, its principles and procedures have been standardized by the Cultural Corps of Korean Buddhism, and the roles of management, supervision, and transparent accounting, as well as auditing, are conducted according to the standards of the Cultural Corps of Korean Buddhism. In addition, the Cultural Corps of Korean Buddhism has developed the brand of Templestay, supported its infrastructure, including an online reservation system, helped establish diverse marketing and promotion strategies for participating temples, and annually evaluated participating temples. Similar to all other participating temples, externally, Manggyeongsansa has cooperated with the Cultural Corps of Korean Buddhism. The internal governance of Manggyeongsansa can be explained by checks, balances, and cooperation among the five monks, who consist of the venerable most eminent elder, the venerable head of the Zen center, the venerable abbot, the venerable Templestay guiding teacher, and the venerable administrator specializing in temple food. The five members work closely together, and each member has its own special domain. The members can make decisions and take actions more efficiently for sustainable management.

4. Conclusions and Discussion

Templestay was selected as one of the world’s top five most successfully developed tourism and cultural resources by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) [5], as well as one of the top 10 icons representing Korea by the Republic of Korea’s Presidential Council on Nation Branding [4]. Thus, Templestay is not just a Buddhist cultural experience but has been officially recognized as a sustainable global cultural product representing Korea. However, while a few studies exist on Templestay, the theoretical aspects of Templestay as a subject of sustainable management have not been sufficiently developed. As Templestay has had significant impact on the national economy, tourism, and culture, investigating it from a sustainable management perspective, such as CSR, CSV, and ESG, is important. This study reviews previous studies on sustainable management and analyzes Manggyeongsansa Templestay, one of the best temples to participate in the 2023 Templestay.

From the perspective of business administration, the issue of sustainability is not just a trend, but an important management philosophy and goal. While financial performance has been the main priority in the past, there has recently been greater interest in non-financial performance [13]. Along with CSR and CSV, ESG, a more comprehensive concept of sustainable management, has become an important criterion for evaluating an organization’s value and sustainable management by applying improved environmental activities, social responsibilities, and organizational governance to the overall organizational activities.

Previous studies have found a statistically significant positive correlation between ESG activities and firm value [31,32,33,34], but not all ESG activities have the same effect on the value of an organization [32,34]. The ESG factor that was found to have the greatest impact on corporate value is the item related to society (S), followed by the item related to governance (G), while the environment (E) does not have a statistically significant effect on corporate value [32]. Considering these findings, the fact that the recent issues that have been frequently discussed, especially in relation to many corporations, are social (S)-related implies that even if an organization invests considerable time and money in making steady and significant efforts over a long period in relation to the environment (E), it may not be easy to overcome the negative impact of one occurrence of social (S)-related risk. In addition, while many corporations put considerable effort into all the ESG dimensions, there is a tendency to focus more on environmental (E) items, as it takes a relatively shorter time to show clear achievements with a large capital injection.

However, the business practices of Manggyeongsansa Templestay are the opposite of the behaviors and foci of many corporations, which has significant implications and provides practical guidelines for the sustainable management of other temples participating in Templestay, as well as other organizations, including corporations and the tourism and hospitality industry. While Manggyeongsansa has strengths related to the environmental dimension, the temple has been putting more effort into the social dimension by focusing on establishing long-term relationships with its Templestay participants, volunteers, employees, local communities, and so on, with the mission of becoming a sustainable cultural product that contributes to the revitalization of the local community. Due to this strong social dimension, Templestay is not just a one-time fad, but will be able to be preserved as a sustainable global cultural product. As sustainable management is of greater importance now than ever before, the findings of this study have significant implications for business scholars, organizations, and policymakers regarding sustainable global cultural products.

This study has some limitations. While this study focused on investigating Templestay as a sustainable global cultural product, it mainly relies on the case study of Manggyeongsansa Templestay. Thus, a more quantitative approach and a qualitative approach based on the perspective of diverse industries and countries will be necessary in future research regarding sustainable global cultural products to develop a more detailed and complete understanding of sustainable global cultural products. Future research could develop more rigorous theories and comprehensive empirical studies across various industries and countries regarding the environmental, social, and governance dimensions.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

Data available in a publicly accessible websites, https://www.Templestay.com/, https://kbuddhism.com/, and https://www.instagram.com/manggyeongsansa/ (accessed on 1 August 2024).

Acknowledgments

As the author is not a Buddhist and is not related to any Buddhist organizations, the author independently analyzed Korean Templestay and Manggyeongsansa Templestay from the perspective of a business scholar without any funding support. The author appreciates the Cultural Corps of Korean Buddhism and Manggyeongsansa for publicly sharing detailed data and information on their homepages and social networking services. The author acquired permission to use the pictures in this paper from the Cultural Corps of Korean Buddhism and Manggyeongsansa.

Conflicts of Interest

The author declares no conflicts of interest.

Footnotes

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Figures and Tables

Figure 1. The brand identity of Templestay. Source: Homepage of Templestay (https://www.Templestay.com/) (accessed on 1 August 2024).

Figure 2. Korean Templestay participation. Data source: Homepage of the Cultural Corps of Korean Buddhism (https://kbuddhism.com/) (accessed on 1 August 2024). The chart was created by the author.

Figure 3. Manggyeongsansa Templestay (main building built as a Hanok [Korean traditional house] and garden with wildflowers; Templestay plaque; remodeled old miners’ houses for Templestay accommodations; and 2023 best Templestay plaque) (source: the homepage of Templestay and Instagram of Manggyeongsansa Templestay, https://www.Templestay.com/ and https://www.instagram.com/manggyeongsansa/) (accessed on 1 August 2024). The author acquired permission to use the above pictures in this paper.

Figure 4. Environmental dimension of Manggyeongsansa Templestay (source: the homepage of Templestay and Instagram of Manggyeongsansa Templestay, https://www.Templestay.com/ and https://www.instagram.com/manggyeongsansa/) (accessed on 1 August 2024). The author acquired permission to use the above pictures in this paper.

Figure 5. Social dimension of Manggyeongsansa Templestay (source: the homepage of Templestay and Instagram of Manggyeongsansa Templestay, https://www.Templestay.com/ and https://www.instagram.com/manggyeongsansa/) (accessed on 1 August 2024). The author acquired permission to use the above pictures in this paper.

Table 1

GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards (source: GRI, https://www.globalreporting.org/) (accessed on 1 August 2024).

Economic	Environmental	Social
Economic Performance	Materials	Employment
Market Presence	Energy	Labor/Management Relations
Indirect Economic Impact	Waste	Occupational Health and Safety
Procurement Practices	Environmental Waste Compliance	Training and Education
Anti-Corruption	Emissions	Diversity and Equal Opportunity
Anti-Competitive Behavior	Biodiversity	Non-Discrimination
Tax	Water and Effluents	Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining
	Supplier Environmental Assessment	Child Labor
		Forced or Compulsory Labor
		Security Practices
		Rights of Indigenous Peoples
		Human Rights Assessment
		Local Communities
		Supplier Social Assessment
		Public Policy, Customer Health and Safety
		Marketing and Labeling
		Customer Privacy
		Socioeconomic Compliance

Table 2

ESG ratings by the KCGS (source: KCGS, https://www.cgs.or.kr/) (accessed on 1 August 2024).

ESG	Major Fields	Evaluation Items
E	Leadership and governance of environmental management	Governance, strategies and objectives, internalization of environmental management
	Risk management of environmental management	Risk management of environmental management
	Operations and achievement of environmental management	Climate change, resource circulation, water/soil/biodiversity, pollutants/chemicals, eco-friendly supply chain, eco-friendly products and services
	Stakeholder communication of environmental management	Responses to stakeholders, environmental information disclosure
S	Leadership and governance of socially responsible management	Strategies and policies
	Labor practices	Fair and non-discriminatory employment, work–life balance support, sound labor-management relations, worker competency development and support
	Workplace safety and health	Safety and health governance, safety and health risk management
	Human right	Human rights management governance, human rights management risk management
	Fair operation practices	Fair operation governance, fair operation risk management, establishment of a foundation for shared growth, supply chain risk management
	Sustainable consumption	Governance of consumer rights protection, risk management of consumer rights infringement, communication with consumers, active and effective compensation for damage, stimulating sustainable consumption
	Information protection and private information protection	Governance of information protection and private information protection, risk management of information protection and private information protection, investment in information protection, guarantee of information subject’s rights
	Community engagement and development	Governance of community engagement, risk management of community, community engagement performance management
	Stakeholder communication of socially responsible management	Information disclosure of social responsibility management
G	Leadership of board of directors	Independence of board of directors, diversity and specialty of board of directors, operations of board of directors, committee within board of directors (compensation committee), committee within board of directors (outside director candidate recommendation committee), remuneration of directors
	Protection of shareholder rights	Shareholder rights, shareholder return, ownership
	Audit	Organization of audit organization, operations of audit organization, accounting transparency, internal control and risk management
	Stakeholder communication with governance	Information disclosure with governance

Table 3

Sample timetable of Manggyeongsansa Templestay (one-night-two-days Templestay program) (source: the homepage of Templestay, https://www.templestay.com/reserv_temple.aspx?ProgramId=15472) (accessed on 1 August 2024).

Day	Time	Activities	Person in Charge
Day 1	by 15:25	Arrival and check-in	Templestay practitioner
	15:30–15:50	Orientation	Venerable abbot and Venerable head of the Zen center
	16:00–16:50	Enjoying the trees and lawn	Venerable Templestay guiding teacher
	17:00–17:40	Vegetarian temple dinner	Venerable administrator specializing in temple food
	19:00–20:00	Tea time with Buddhist monks	Venerable abbot and Venerable head of the Zen center
	20:00–	Quiet time and going to bed
Day 2	05:00–05:35	108 bows	Venerable abbot
	07:00–07:30	Vegetarian temple breakfast	Venerable administrator specializing in temple food
	07:30–08:00	Volunteer work	Venerable abbot
	11:20–11:50	Vegetarian temple lunch	Venerable administrator specializing in temple food
	11:50–13:00	Closing remarks and check-out	Venerable abbot

The schedule varies by week and season. Each activity is not mandatory.

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