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FROM THE MOUNTAINS TO THE CITIES: A History of Buddhist Propagation in Modern Korea. Contemporary Buddhism. By Mark A. Nathan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2018. xii, 193 pp. (Graph.) US$62.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-7261-8.
What keyword can explain the formation of modern Korean Buddhism? From the Mountains to the Cities answers this question with the term "propagation" (p'ogyo), and depicts modern Korean history through the roles of propagation and law. The term appeared in Korean Buddhism in modern times alongside rising competition of Western Christian missionaries. For more than a thousand years, propagation, or mission, was not an important concept in Korean Buddhism since Buddhism was already a major religion in Korean people's lives, and there were no more places for Buddhism to expand after its transmission to Japan. This book catches this point well, as author Mark Nathan explains clearly how propagation supported the transformation of Korean Buddhism to be identified as a legitimate religion on its own. In modern times, Korean Buddhism has changed its image from hermit Buddhism to city Buddhism, and from a minor, elite monks' Buddhism to a more popularized Buddhism.
The book is arranged chronologically, divided into four periods, using major events in the history of Korean Buddhism and Korea. These are the late Chosön dynasty, the colonial era, the period from liberation in 1945 to the end of the 1970s, and from 1980 to the present.
During the Chosön dynasty, when Korea was a neo-Confucian country, Buddhism suffered harsh suppression. In late Chosön, the ban that prohibited monks and nuns from entering...