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Buddhist literature and gender in Korea: a preliminary survey and science fictional explorations

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Buddhist literature and gender in Korea: a preliminary survey and science fictional explorations

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Content BUDDHIST LITERATURE AND GENDER IN KOREA:
A PRILIMINARY SURVEY AND SCIENCE FICTIONAL EXPLORATIONS
by
Fiona Yuanjing Xu
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC DORNSIFE COLLEGE OF LETTERS, ARTS, AND SCIENCES
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(EAST ASIAN AREA STUDIES)
August 2024
Copyright 2024 Fiona Yuanjing Xu

ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract..........................................................................................................................................iii
Introduction..................................................................................................................................... 1
Chapter I: Defining Korean Buddhist Literature ............................................................................ 4
Chapter II: A Survey of Modern Buddhist Literature by Male Writers ....................................... 11
Chapter III: Locating Women Characters and Writers in Buddhist Literature............................. 23
Chapter IV: Queering Buddhist Literature: “The Prophet of Corruption” as Buddhist SF .......... 33
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 48
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 50

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Abstract
This MA thesis is a preliminary survey of Korean Buddhist literature with a focus on the
gendered subjectivities that it has so far generated. Building upon the existing studies by Hong
Ki-sam and Ko Songsŏk, I establish a broader definition of Buddhist literature as a genre that not
only engages with Buddhist thought meaningfully but also creatively adapts Buddhist motifs.
This approach aligns with the recent scholarly orientation in Korean Buddhist studies that has
moved beyond scriptures and philosophy to venture more into the human experiences of
practicing Buddhism and the interchange between Buddhism and the larger cultural spheres
which serve as the backdrop of institution and practice. In adopting this approach to Buddhist
literature, this thesis seeks to contribute to the larger conversation on how Buddhism has
influenced popular cultural productions locally in Asia, where Buddhism continues to be
practiced.
Partly influenced by Korean Buddhism’s own attempt to adapt to the colonial modernity,
Buddhist novels since the colonial period have been actively engaging in secularizing Buddhist
motifs and seeking larger social relevance. Kim Dong-ni’s “Life-sized Buddha” (Tŭngsinbul;
1961) and Kim Seong-Dong’s Mandala (1978) are such examples that demonstrate the
possibility for Buddhist literature to reverse the hierarchical relationship between the religious
and the secular and to advocate for a closer tie between Buddhism and the masses. At the same
time, the narratives written by male writers perpetuate a misogynist perspective that has been
inherited from the premodern period: Han Sǔngwǒn’s Come Come Come Upward (Aje Aje Bara
Aje; 1989), for instance, demonstrates the objectification of women’s bodies and uses them as the
vehicle to awakening. Further, I argue that by focusing on the masculine lineage of Buddhist

iv
literature that advocates for nationalist and even Social Darwinist agendas, scholars have
marginalized women writers who recorded their own experience of practicing Buddhism.
Expanding upon Hyangsoon Yi’s study of piguni literature, I examine Kim Bo-young’s
SF novella, The Prophet of Corruption (2017), as a case study of a new kind of contemporary
women’s Buddhist literature. Its narrative is built on fundamental concepts of non-self and nonduality and reveals these concepts as deeply entrenched in the patriarchal system. This SF
novella embodies the possibility for Buddhist literature to restore marginalized and queer bodies
and to validate their lived experiences. The hybridized genre of Buddhist SF brings innovation to
both Buddhist literature and SF: Buddhist SF not only challenges the boundaries of SF by
bridging the traditional with the futuristic and reclaiming the legitimacy of SF within the East
Asian cultural tradition but also encourages readers to reconsider the temporality of Buddhism as
well as its gender politics. This case study calls for the need for future studies on emerging new
popular Buddhist literature, especially by women and sexual minority writers, outside the
conventional category of doctrinal Buddhist writings.
Keywords:
Korean Literature, Buddhism in Literature, Sǒn, Gender, Science Fiction, Kim Bo-young

1
Introduction
When Mahayana Buddhism promises salvation to all sentient beings, it offers hope for an
egalitarian and liberating future for Buddhists. While this radicalism surely makes the religion
more attractive for practitioners regardless of their gender identities, some of Buddhism’s roots
seem to continue to serve as the basis of a patriarchal institution and related religious practices.
For example, the Eight Garudhammas dictated by the historical Buddha himself stipulate that
Buddhist nuns must pay respect to and obey the monks. It has become clear that the existence of
these historical precepts has made it difficult for nuns and monks to treat each other as equals
today.
1
Buddhism in Korea presents a unique context for us to understand this tension between
egalitarianism and sexism in Buddhist practice. On the one hand, Buddhism still enjoys
popularity among women practitioners because of liberating aspects in the institution and
tenants, some of which women themselves fought for. First of all, Korean pigunis, or nuns, enjoy
a relatively high status that is unmatched among East Asian Buddhist institutions except for
Taiwan.2 This is reflected by the number of formally ordained pigunis: the Jogye Order, the
largest Buddhist order in Korea, houses 7,000 pigunis in 2023, which is almost half out of the
total number of monastics.3 These pigunis actively participate in religious and social activities.
Wŏn Buddhism, a popular renovated branch of Buddhism with Christian influence, also appeals
to many women practitioners because of its founder Sot’aesan’s preaching of gender equality as
one of Wŏn Buddhism’s foundational values.4 However, despite the high level of representation
1 Cho Eun-su, “Gender Conflicts in Contemporary Korean Buddhism,” Religions 14, no. 2 (2023): 242.
2 Cho, “Reinventing Female Identity: A Brief History of Korean Buddhist Nuns,” Seoul Journal of Korean Studies
22, no.1 (June 2009): 31.
3 Cho, “Gender Conflicts in Contemporary Korean Buddhism,” 242.
4 Sung Ha Yun, “Female Practitioners’ Religious Lives: The First Generation of Female Wŏn Buddhist Clerics,”
Religions 14, no. 5 (2023): 637.

2
and relative liberty, women practitioners of Buddhism still face serious challenges within the
institutions. In the Jogye Order, the pigunis are still alienated from core leadership positions, and
women clergy face harsh backlash when they stand up to critique the misogyny within the
administration.5 Neither does Wŏn Buddhism fully keep up with its promise of gender equality.
Their discriminatory practices include but are not limited to different clothing standards and the
ban on marriage for women clergy.6
How do we understand these conflicting sides of Korean Buddhism, and how do women
practitioners reconcile with Buddhism’s inherent contradictions and persisting patriarchy? In the
light of recent trends of research in Korean Buddhism, which has shifted to focus on the human
experiences of practicing Buddhism rather than Buddhist philosophy and precepts,7
this current
study proposes to contribute to the larger issue of women’s religious experience by looking into
Korean Buddhist literature. Buddhist literature often mirror and reflect spiritual explorations in
their contemporaneous times, but they also creatively expand and shift Buddhist discourses. By
examining the lineage of writers of Buddhist literature and closely reading a case study of
twenty-first-century Buddhist science fiction (SF), I am hopeful of the potential that Buddhist
literature hold to redirect the attitude toward women and queer communities. My research
questions are the following: What marks Korean Buddhist literature, and how does it use Sǒn
tropes for rebellion and protest? What role do women play in Buddhist literature, both as writer
and subject? What are the limitations of Buddhist literature in its representation of women? How
does Buddhist SF such as Kim Bo-young’s “The Prophet of Corruption” belong to and critically
5 Cho, “Gender Conflicts in Contemporary Korean Buddhism,” 242.
6 Kim SungSoon, “Gender Issues in Contemporary Won Buddhism: Focusing on the Status of Female Clerics,”
Seoul Journal of Korean Studies 30, no. 2 (December 2017): 240.
7 Cho, “The Rise of New Studies and Approaches in Korean Buddhism,” International Journal of Buddhist Thought
& Culture 32, no. 2 (December 2022): 27.

3
expand the genealogy of this genre? Kim Bo-young, currently one of the best-known woman
writers of the genre in South Korea, tackles the common tropes of non-self, non-duality, and the
issue of embodied experience in her novella “The Prophet of Corruption.” Specifically, “The
Prophet of Corruption” begins with an idealized, disembodied sense of original unity and ends
by reconstructing the body. My project puts “The Prophet of Corruption” in conversation with
the history of Buddhist literature in Korea and recent trends in Korean Buddhism.
My preliminary survey of Korean Buddhist literature shows that the genre which has so
far been dominated by male writers can express a spirit of rebellion and protest by portraying and
embracing Sǒn practices that are liberating. However, what these male writers failed to tackle is
the lack of inclusion of the voices and experiences of women. Yet, if we look hard enough,
within this literary landscape there is also a lineage of women writers whose works reveal the
complexities of spirituality and the materiality of existence. Buddhist SF, of which “The Prophet
of Corruption” is an example, continues the work of these women writers by validating such
individual experiences. I argue that, writing in the genre of science fiction, Kim Bo-young
destabilizes the meaning of these Buddhist elements and proposes the construction of a space for
subjectivities outside of the phallogocentric system. Through the case study, I emphasize
Buddhist SF’s power to critique the existing misogyny in South Korean Buddhism and to queer
Buddhist doctrines.

4
Chapter I: Defining Korean Buddhist Literature
Before discussing the role women and their bodies have played in Korean Buddhist
literature, it is first necessary to define the genre of Buddhist literature, because the definition
impacts the way the genre is studied. By exploring several existing definitions of Korean
Buddhist literature, I arrive at the definition that emphasizes the genre’s creativity in adapting
Buddhist motifs. It is this creativity and flexibility that allow Buddhist literature to both reflect
practices in reality and open up space for interpretation and commentary. However, the
traditional genre’s often realist nature limits its otherwise subversive potential. Recent
experiments to hybridize the genre reveals the radical innovation that Buddhist SF can bring to
both Buddhist literature and SF: Buddhist SF not only challenges the boundaries of SF by
bridging the traditional with the futuristic and reclaiming the legitimacy of science fiction in East
Asia, but also encourages readers to reconsider the temporality of Buddhism and the need for a
new Buddhist literature.
The genre of Buddhist literature may sound intuitive, but existing debates on the topic
show a much more complicated picture. In Pulgyo munhak yǒngu, Hong Ki-sam maps out three
approaches in scholarship to delineating Buddhist literature. The first approach includes “all
written work related to Buddhist scripture and Buddha’s teaching.”
8 This approach is most
expansive and includes all literary modes such as poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. This approach
allows scholars to recognize the flexibility of Buddhist scripture and its resemblance with a
variety of other literary genres. The second approach is a slight variation of the first: it limits
Buddhist literature to “Buddhist scripture and all literature that portrays Buddhist themes.”
9 This
8 Hong Ki-sam, Pulgyo munhak yǒngu 불교문학연구[A study on Buddhist literature] (Seoul: Chimmundang,
1997), 17.
9 Hong, 18.

5
approach excludes non-fictional writing, and representative scholars such as Moriz Winternitz
and Kim Ingsŏk focus on emphasizing the sutra’s literary value. Finally, the third approach
posits that Buddhist literature should be defined as “works created in the form of literature based
on Buddhist concerns.”
10 In other words, Buddhist literature is a literary creation and not the
faith itself. Scholars that support this approach include Kim Unhak, who argues that although
Buddhist sutra can serve as literary motifs, their own literary character is lacking and they should
not be counted as Buddhist literature.11 Taken together, the first two definitions focus on
elevating Buddhist scripture’s literary importance by comparing scripture with other literary
genres. The third definition alone emphasizes the nature of Buddhist literature as a literary genre
over its religious value.
Furthermore, focusing on Buddhist novels, Ko Songsŏk identifies the lack of a commonly
accepted and coherent definition of the genre as one of the main issues impeding current
research.12 Ko implies that without a clear definition of Buddhist novels, the genre, currently
widely studied by Buddhist scholars, can easily get subsumed under the discipline of Buddhist
studies, which prevents a full appreciation of the novels’ literary value. Building on Hong’s
work, Ko argues for a focus on fictional works that are completely constructed on a Buddhist
worldview and excludes works that only engages Buddhist motifs on a superficial level.13 This
definition is echoed by Kim Sŭngho, who writes that “it will be hard to call anything a work of
Buddhist novel if it avoids the integration of [Buddhist] philosophy or ideology with which the
masses are not commonly familiar, such as the four noble truths, dependent origination, and
10 Hong, Pulgyo munhak yǒngu, 19.
11 Hong, 19.
12 Ko Songsŏk, Han'guk kŭnhyŏndae pulgyososŏl yŏn-gu 한국 근현대 불교소설 연구[A Study on Korean Buddhist
novels in modern and contemporary era] (Seoul: Somyŏngch'ulp'an, 2014), 28.
13 Ko, 13.

6
karma.”14 Thus for Ko and Kim, in order for a fictional work to be included in the category of
Buddhist novels, it has to engage with Buddhist philosophy, rather than simply incorporating
characters or settings of Buddhist origins.
Ko’s definition of Buddhist novels is essential to the current study because it emphasizes
that although Buddhist literature takes inspiration from Buddhist teachings, the literary works
remain literary creations and can take on additional significance outside of a religious context by
transforming the motifs. Ko highlights four reasons for further research on Buddhist novels as a
distinct genre. Firstly, Buddhist novels showcase traditions that can be traced back to the Chosǒn
dynasty, and its history parallels the intellectual history of Korea.15 Secondly, Buddhist novels
discuss religious and spiritual themes unique to the lives of Korean people that realist and
modernist novels fail to cover.16 Here, Ko criticizes the intellectual trends in Korean scholarship
that has overwhelmingly focused on western rationalism and urges for the rediscovery of
Buddhist novels. Thirdly, Ko argues that Mahayana Buddhism, the basis of Buddhist novels, has
contemporary value: he highlights Bodhisattvahood, non-self, and Sǒn as the three most
important pillars of Mahayana thought that are frequently integrated into Buddhist novels.17
Bodhisattvahood is the benevolent act of the enlightened ones who decide to linger in samsara to
help all sentient beings attain enlightenment. As a result, with the concept of bodhisattvahood,
Mahayana Buddhism has the potential to effect social change. Non-self means understanding the
changing phenomena as not part of a self. It “connects the concept of emptiness with beliefs in
reincarnation and karma,”18 and this flexible concept can take on various forms in Buddhist
14 Kim Sŭngho, Han'guk Pulgyosŏsaŭi Segye 한국 불교서사의 세계[The World of Korean Buddhist Narrative
Literature] (Seoul: Somyŏngch'ulp'an, 2023), 44.
15 Ko, Han'guk kŭnhyŏndae pulgyososŏl yŏn-gu, 182-183.
16 Ko, 183.
17 Ko, 184.
18 Ko, 36.

7
novels. Finally, Sǒn is the branch of practice adopted by the Jogye Order and is widely reflected
in the religious engagement of Buddhist novelists and their writings.19 Finally, Korean Buddhist
novels serve as the foundation of building an “Asian Buddhist fictional literature” from a
decolonizing perspective by moving away from a Eurocentric perspective.
20 Overall, Ko’s
analysis of Korean Buddhist novels is set against an intellectual atmosphere that privileges
European and American philosophical thoughts. As a result, Ko emphasizes the need to
simultaneously value the genre’s unique traditional cultural roots and its continued social
relevance.
However, while Buddhist novels that Ko deems valuable revive a genre that draws
inspiration from a uniquely Korean experience, the role that Ko assigns for Buddhist novels has
significance limitations. As mentioned previously, the value of Korean Buddhist novels lies in its
ability to reflect Buddhist doctrines accurately. Pervasive use of canonical Buddhist doctrines in
literature then indicates that these Buddhist novels have no power to transform existing Buddhist
thoughts, even when some of these thoughts may be discriminatory or more specifically, sexist.
Surely, modern history of Korean Buddhism shows successful attempts to reform the aloofness
associated with the religion from Chosǒn dynasty into a more socially involved religion.
However, unquestioned glorification of realist Buddhist novels can perpetuate destructive
attitudes instead of encouraging creative and subversive use of Buddhist thoughts.
Recent examples of South Korean Buddhist SF reveal the above limitation and urge for a
need to rethink Buddhist literature. South Korean SF writers experimenting with this subgenre
were likely influenced by Western SF from the 1950s to 1970s that have been inspired by
Buddhism and Daoism. American and European SF writers from this period, such as J. G.
19 Ko, Han'guk kŭnhyŏndae pulgyososŏl yŏn-gu, 36.
20 Ko, 184.

8
Ballard, Philip K. Dick, and Ursula K. Le Guin, frequently evoked Asian characters and
philosophies in their works.21 Sang-Keun Yoo surveys these New Wave SF novels and coins the
term “Speculative Orientalism” to describe the use of Asian motifs as the main novum to revive
the SF genre. Yoo writes, “[t]he New Wave writers found Asia not only as a reforming tool for
the genre but also as a useful way out from the seemingly enclosed Western society and its
problems.”
22 In other words, in seeking a solution for problems in the West, these writers
incorporated fragments of Asia to imagine possible alternatives. In this process, “[New Wave SF
writers] imagined and somewhat created a new Asia they needed, not Asia in actuality.”
23 One
example that clearly demonstrates the concept of Speculative Orientalism is Roger Zelazny’s
1967 novel Lord of Light. Lord of Light depicts a dystopian world where new technology enables
reincarnation and transfer of mind, and the circulation of bodies is monopolized by a group of
“gods,” taking the names of Hindu and Buddhist deities. The novel’s engagement with Buddhist
thoughts is superficial and at times self-contradictory. At its core, Lord of Light uses an
uncoordinated mosaic of Hindu and Buddhist beliefs to tell a Protestant story. Sam, the
protagonist who embodies the Buddha, is a savior figure who strives to free mankind from the
oppression of the “gods.” A key moment that highlights the core of the story is when Sam
expresses his determination to rebel: “The religion by which you rule is very ancient, goddess,
but my protest is also that of a very venerable tradition. So call me a protestant, and remember—
now I am more than a man.”24 It is no coincidence that Sam uses the word “protestant,” and Julia
21 Sang-Keun Yoo, “Speculative Orientalism: Zen and Tao in American New Wave Science Fiction” (PhD diss.,
University of California, Riverside, 2022), 43-44.
22 Yoo, 50.
23 Yoo, 39.
24 Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light (New York: Eos, 2000), 96.

9
List comments that the novel’s emphasis on individual agency and self-determination is a
hallmark of mainstream American Protestant ideology in the 1960s.25
Despite clear issues in Lord of Light, the introduction of it into Korea by Kim Sanghun’s
translation in 1993 highly likely influenced a generation of SF writers who, in Lord of Light, saw
the possibility to indigenize and localize science fiction. While science fiction is commonly
considered an imported genre, Zelazny’s work, along with other canonical American and
European SF writers mentioned above, sets a precedent for using conventionally Asian motifs. In
early 2000s, another South Korean SF writer Park Seonghwan pioneered Buddhist SF with his
short story “Readymade Bodhisattva,” where a robot preaches the inherent buddha-nature in
every sentient being, heralding a posthuman agenda. Kim Bo-young similarly localizes SF by
incorporating Buddhist elements and traditional creation myths.
These examples of Buddhist SF clearly continue the lineage of Buddhist novels and fit
into Ko’s definition to a certain extent, as they are built on foundational Buddhist thoughts
emphasized in Korean Buddhism and engage meaningfully with concepts such as non-self and
Sǒn, which are highlighted by Ko above. For example, “Readymade Bodhisattva” points out that
robots can achieve enlightenment because of their mechanical bodies that are impervious to pain
and desires. In “The Prophet of Corruption,” non-self and non-duality are fundamental to its
worldbuilding. In addition, unlike Zelazny’s superficial use of Hindu-Buddhist elements and the
favoring of technological enhancement, “The Prophet of Corruption”’s use of Buddhism
questions the effectiveness of the seemingly liberating doctrines such as non-self and advocates
for the validity of alternative and queer subjectivities that reveal the constructed-ness of
homogeneity.
25 Julia List, “‘Call Me a Protestant’: Liberal Christianity, Individualism, and the Messiah in Stranger in a Strange
Land, Dune, and Lord of Light,” Science Fiction Studies 36, no. 1 (March 2009): 33.

10
“The Prophet of Corruption” demonstrates to us that SF’s power to reshape Buddhist
literature lies in its ability to create “cognitive estrangement,” a term coined by Darko Suvin as
the defining feature of SF. For Suvin, SF is “a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient
conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main
formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author’s empirical environment.”26
By defamiliarizing the familiar through creative imagination, the SF genre explores issues in
their social reality and how these issues might unfold or come to different resolutions. This
approach necessarily differs from “naturalistic or ‘realistic’ literature” that is based on the
empirical world.27 In the case of Buddhist literature, the novels produced thus far that are
acknowledged by Ko fall under realistic literature, and it takes the hybrid form of Buddhist SF to
reform oppressive doctrines and harvest their queer potentials.
Ultimately, Buddhist SF such as “The Prophet of Corruption” fits into the genealogy of
Buddhist literature because these works demonstrate an in-depth understanding of Buddhist
thought with their storylines infused with Buddhist philosophy. The hybridization of Buddhist
literature and SF highlights the continuing relevance of Buddhism as a source of cultural
inspirations in South Korea and beyond. Buddhist SF as a subgenre reevaluates important tenets
through cognitive estrangement, shapes the temporality of the Buddhist tradition, and establishes
SF as a legitimate genre to express East Asian culture, echoing Ko’s call for decolonization.
26 Darko Suvin, “On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre,” College English 34, no. 3 (December 1972): 375.
27 Suvin, 377.

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Chapter II: A Survey of Modern Buddhist Literature by Male Writers
Buddhist SF’s exploration of Buddhism’s social relevance is not unique or new; Buddhist
novels since the colonial period have been actively engaging in using Buddhist motifs for social
commentary. The philosophical debates in the novels are influenced by contemporaneous trends
in Korean Buddhism, which has been trying to recuperate itself since the end of Chosǒn dynasty
by becoming more socially active. This section introduces examples of Buddhist novels that
effectively demonstrate the possibility for Buddhism to reverse the hierarchical relationship
between the religious and the secular and to advocate for a closer tie between Buddhism and the
masses. While these works challenge one paradigm, they leave untouched other types of status
quo, such as the misogynist nature of Buddhism and its institutions.
Korean Buddhism found itself in an awkward position at the turn of the twentieth
century. While the suppression of Buddhism during the Chosǒn dynasty has already forced the
exile of Buddhism to the mountains and unofficial spaces, Buddhism now faces new problems.
The violent modernization that Korea underwent had two implications on Korean Buddhism. On
the one hand, Buddhism as a traditional faith was challenged by the rising popularity of
Christianity. Under the threat of Japanese colonization, the bright hope of salvation provided by
Christianity offered new consolation to Korean people. Older faiths such as Neo-Confucianism
and Buddhism were considered “hypocritical,” resistant to reform and evading social
responsibilities instead of being practical.28 In contrast with traditional belief systems,
Protestantism presented a unique attraction as it “seemed to relate more to the poorer people and
appeared more socially oriented.”29 By setting up schools and hospitals, Protestantism presented
itself as highly practical. Christianity also presented a unique appeal to Korean women, who
28 Kevin Cawley, Religious and Philosophical Traditions of Korea (London: Routledge, 2019), 139-140.
29 Cawley, 136.

12
were traditionally the target of Buddhism and shamanism. Hyaeweol Choi points out that
compared to Chinese and Japanese feminists of the twentieth century, Korean women were
overwhelmingly influenced by Christianity, and this generation of New Women became agents
in the women’s movement.30 Despite ultimately creating little change to the Confucian gender
roles, as argued by Choi, Korean women considered Christianity as liberating at the time. While
Confucianism and Buddhism were considered patriarchal traditions waiting to be overthrown,
Christianity was the modern alternative that promised “equality for women and men under
God.”31 It also provided women with new educational and professional opportunities by setting
up the necessary institutions. While Buddhism was already in decline due to official NeoConfucian discourses condemning the religion, Buddhism’s waning clout can be summarized in
the words of a missionary from the 1920s: “Buddha’s sun seems to be setting in Korea.”32
On the other hand, Buddhism was increasingly antagonized due to its close ties with
Japanese colonial forces. While American missionaries had a benevolent image as the “bearers
of Western civilization and potential allies for the Koreans in their anti-Japanese movements,”
33
Buddhist monks did not enjoy such reputation. As a result of the hegemonic rule of NeoConfucianism and its oppression of Buddhism during the Chosǒn dynasty, Buddhist monks felt
little allegiance towards the elite ruling class in Korea. Stemming from their own religious
interests, the monks were open to Japanese influence, as they “were often attracted to Japanese
Buddhist missionaries, who were instrumental in abolishing in April 1895 the centuries-old ban
on monks entering Seoul, and to the religious policies of the Meiji state, which they believed to
30 Hyaeweol Choi, Gender and Mission Encounters in Korea: New Women, Old Ways (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2009), 7.
31 Choi, Gender and Mission Encounters in Korea, 2.
32 Cawley, Religious and Philosophical Traditions of Korea, 151.
33 Choi, Gender and Mission Encounters in Korea, 8.

13
be more pro-Buddhist.”34 As a result, Buddhism gained a negative reputation as “a nonnationalist religion” and frequent collaborator with Japanese colonialism.35
As early as in the colonial period, Korean Buddhism urgently needed to reform itself for
revival. Cawley points out that there were two issues that Korean Buddhists needed to take into
consideration in order to preserve itself, and Buddhists took different approaches to address these
issues.
36 Firstly, Korean Buddhism needed to preserve its legacy, with a particular focus on Sǒn
practices. Secondly, Korean Buddhism needed to proselytize by recasting itself to be more
practical and socially engaged, offering support to Korean people who were suffering from
colonial violence. In other words, the first issue concerns solidifying Korean Buddhism’s essence
and traditions, while the second issue concerns adapting the faith to the colonial modernity and
extending its social relevance. Sǒn masters such as Reverend Kyŏnghŏ (1957-1912) took on the
task of reviving the Sǒn tradition by focusing on meditative methods to enlightenment and taking
on disciples to ensure the continued lineage.37 His disciples went on to strengthen this tradition,
and it is interesting to note that one of his disciples, Reverend Man’gong, taught many female
disciples and established the first known meditation hall for the pigunis after the end of the
Chosǒn dynasty.38 On the other hand, the most active advocate for the modernization of Korean
Buddhism from the colonial period is Han Yongun (1879-1944), or Reverend Manhae. Not only
did Han write essays that opposed Japanese imperialism and advocated for reforming Korean
Buddhism, but he was also a leading figure in the March 1st Movement and helped to draft the
34 Vladimir Tikhonov and Owen Miller, “Introduction: Han Yongun: From Social-Darwinism to Socialism with a
Buddhist Face,” in Selected Writings of Han Yongun: From Social-Darwinism to Socialism with a Buddhist Face,
trans. Vladimir Tikhonov and Owen Miller (London: Global Oriental, 2008), 4.
35 Tikhonov and Miller, 4.
36 Cawley, Religious and Philosophical Traditions of Korea, 152.
37 Cawley, 152.
38 Cho, “Reinventing Female Identity,” 39.

14
Declaration of Independence. The items added by Han highlights values of self-determination
and non-violence.39
Even though the participation by Buddhists in the March 1st Movement was low, Han
Yongun’s prominent status as an activist, a writer, and a cultural figure warrants our attention,
specifically concerning the future vision he has for Buddhism to thrive in Korea. His attempt to
modernize Korean Buddhism reflects the trajectory of the reforms of Korean Buddhism, part of
which has continued throughout the twentieth century. Han’s 1913 essay, “On the Reformation
of Korean Buddhism,” offers a detailed diagnosis of the problems in Korean Buddhism and a list
of concrete suggestions for change. Rhetorically, the essay is a bold attempt to bridge the ancient
traditions with Western schools of thought by reinterpreting Buddhist thoughts with new
vocabulary that is considered more modern. Through his rhetorical choice, Han suggests that the
beliefs that had been criticized as outdated are still relevant after all. The first set of new
vocabulary that Han brings in is Social Darwinism. The essay opens by questioning, “Why do
we believe that failure and success exist in this world as such? Everything depends on us
humans.”40 Han’s question reflects the nationalist and reformist sentiment at the time. Many of
the Korean nationalists in the early twentieth century were influenced by Liang Qichao’s
writings, which express a Social Darwinist understanding of national survival and a need to selfstrengthen in the Chinese context.
41 Han applies the same logic that only the strong survives to
illustrate the need to reform Korean Buddhism: he writes in the essay that “it is also undeniable
that the survival of the fittest – when the stronger prey upon the weaker – is a natural law,” and
39 Cawley, Religious and Philosophical Traditions of Korea, 155.
40 Han Yongun, “On the Reformation of Korean Buddhism,” in Selected Writings of Han Yongun: From SocialDarwinism to Socialism with a Buddhist Face, trans. Vladimir Tikhonov and Owen Miller (London: Global
Oriental, 2008), 41.
41 Tikhonov and Miller, “Introduction,” 6.

15
that without reforms, Korean Buddhism cannot compete with “all the foreign religions that have
entered Korea exhausting themselves in missionary enterprises.”42
The second set of vocabulary prominent in the essay is that of Enlightenment values,
which Han uses to urge Buddhists to become more engaged in social and political change. Han
imagines that the world he lived in is in constant change and progress toward an ultimate ideal
state. While Korean Buddhism is stuck in stagnation, “the tendency of today’s world is for
ceaseless progress that does not rest until it reaches a level compatible with the ideals of true
civilization.”43 For the Buddhist faith to stay up to date, it must modernize itself so that the faith
highlights its most universal values, which, according to Han, are egalitarianism and altruism.44
Egalitarianism and altruism are new names that Han gives to Mahayana thoughts: the fact that
Buddha nature exists in every sentient being reflects equality, and Bodhisattvahood represents
altruism. If Buddhists focus on promoting these values and proselytize, Han argues that “the
world of the future will be called ‘the world of Buddhism.’ For what reasons will it be called ‘the
world of Buddhism’? Because it will be equal, because it will be free, and because the world will
achieve great unity.”45 In this way, Han establishes the legitimacy of Buddhism as the faith that
reveals universal truth that resonates with the more progressive western philosophies.
The updated sets of vocabulary allow Han to reconcile the conflict between his religious
faith and the radical thoughts of Marxist materialism. While Marxist materialism criticizes
religions as superstition and negation of socioeconomic reality, Han’s reinterpretation of
Buddhist doctrines suggests that religion is not necessarily incompatible with modern values of
civilization, and that Buddhism should not shy away from a nationalist or activist agenda. It
42 Han, “On the Reformation of Korean Buddhism,” 74.
43 Han, 44.
44 Han, 53.
45 Han, 55.

16
should be noted that even though his proposals were not completely put into practice, Han’s
pioneering essay has a lasting impact, and its legacy was carried on by Minjung Buddhism in the
1980s. Minjung Buddhism developed out of the dictatorships of Park Chung Hee and Chun Doohwan and aimed to liberate the oppressed masses under the dictatorships. The goals of the
Minjung Buddhists included political goals such as “(1) the democratization of both Korean
Buddhism and the political system of South Korea; (2) the removal of foreign influence –
specifically the United States – in South Korea; and (3) the reunification of the Korean
peninsula.”46 Significantly, the origin of the term Minjung Buddhism is first found in the 1976
essay “On Minjung Buddhism” written by Jeon Jaeseong, who borrowed the term from Han’s
“On the Reformation of Korean Buddhism.”47 Not only does the term itself reflect a clear
genealogy, but Minjung Buddhism also reinterpreted canonical Buddhist thought with their own
vocabulary similar with Han. For example, a group named the Movement for the Revitalization
of the Temple’s Original Roles, aiming to activate a more socially involved role for the temples,
reinterpreted concepts of suffering and karma to emphasize a collective rather than individual
nature. Their perspective was “facilitated by a sociological interpretation of the central Buddhist
doctrine, the theory of dependent origination, which holds that all existing things are dependent
upon one other for their existence.”48 In this way, Minjung Buddhists are considered very
radical, because they attribute suffering not to insatiable desires but to “external social
structures.”49 In fact, Minjung Buddhists played a key role in the June Uprising of 1987, leading
the struggle and offering the temple as a space for gathering. Although Minjung Buddhism
46 Chanju Mun, “A Historical Introduction to Minjung (Liberation) Buddhism: A South Korean Version of Radical
Buddhism in the 1980s,” Politics, Religion & Ideology 15, no. 2 (April 2014): 265.
47 Mun, 266-7.
48 Mun, 271.
49 Mun, 265.

17
concluded after the fall of the dictatorships, Mun argues that contemporary Engaged Buddhism
in Korea “follow[s] the spirit of Minjung Buddhism by engaging in various ways with social
issues such as environmentalism, human rights, and social justice,” successfully continuing the
legacy of Han who argues for “the World of Buddhism” where Buddhists lead values of equality
and justice for the masses.
Han’s call for reform and the recent movements of Minjung Buddhism and Engaged
Buddhism reflect a determination of a significant number of Korean Buddhists to become more
socially engaged, and this spirit has been reflected in Korean Buddhist literature through
aforementioned motifs in Sǒn practices. From 1960s to 1980s, a cluster of such works emerged
amidst the harsh realities of dictatorships. Kim Dong-ni’s 1961 story “Tŭngsinbul” (Life-sized
Buddha) establishes the universal innate Buddha nature in every sentient being, thereby erasing
the hierarchical difference between the secular and the enlightened and offering a basis for
Buddhist principles to expand into the secular realm. Kim Dong-ni was born in Kyŏngju during
the period of Japanese occupation of Korea, and his works explore various religions practiced in
Korea, including Buddhism, Confucianism, shamanism, and Christianity. Possibly because of his
experience living through the traumatic wars and ideological clashes, “Tŭngsinbul” reflects his
concern about the suffering Korean people by placing Buddhist elements within the war context.
“Tŭngsinbul,” or “Life-sized Buddha,” is narrated by a Korean soldier who has been forcibly
recruited into the Japanese army and is sent to Nanjing, China in 1934. To preserve his own life,
the narrator pledges devotion to the Buddha and seeks refuge in Chǒngwǒn-sa, where he
encounters a life-sized Buddha sculpture that ultimately transforms his understanding of
Buddhism.

18
This Buddha sculpture in “Tŭngsinbul” is the epitome of the seamless unification of the
religious and the secular. When the narrator sees the sculpture for the first time, he is deeply
shocked by its appearance. He describes the sculpture as the following:
What a pity-and-affection-drawing picture it was that I saw in front of my eyes! The
sitting Buddha could not even sit with a straight back. And the expression on the face
above which sat the incense-burner looked like it was crying at one glance but laughing
at another. It seemed to grimace and then it looked as if it were agonizing in
indescribable sorrow, suffering or pain.50
An outstanding feature of this sculpture is that it defies binary categorization. With the grimace
and the crouched posture, the sculpture breaches the expected beauty and dignity of the Buddha,
since it is drastically different from the commonly accepted images that are graceful and
benevolent. In addition, the emotions expressed by the sculpture are mixed and obscure. It seems
to merge various feelings, sharing the pain of the masses who have yet to reach enlightenment
but also extending empathy and benevolence. Challenged by this breaching of binaries, the
narrator is thrown into confusion and horror, without being able to “describe what exactly it was
that shocked [him] so much.”51 The narrator soon finds out that this sculpture is the remains of
Manjǒk, a monk who committed self-immolation to offer himself to the Buddha. The motif of
self-immolation came from a Chinese tale that Kim Dong-ni heard from Han Yongun, who was
his contemporary.52 Kim Dong-ni later reflects on the visceral experience of hearing the tale, as
he was deeply shocked by the unimaginable pain of self-immolation,53 which he incorporated
into the story. The making of a body of flesh and blood into Buddhahood signifies that the
secular and the religious are not contradictory: “he was not a Buddha originally. …Since he
50 Kim Tong-ni, Tŭngsinbul 등신불 [Life-sized Buddha], trans. Sun-bong Sŏl (Seoul: Asia Publishers, 2015), 41.
51 Kim T., 43.
52 Ko, Han'guk kŭnhyŏndae pulgyososŏl yŏn-gu, 114.
53 Ko, 114.

19
attained Buddhaship, everybody began to call him Buddha.”54 The story implies that even those
who are the most deeply afflicted with worldly pain and emotions can achieve Buddhahood. This
message is further echoed by the ending of the story, where the head monk of Chǒngwǒn-sa
silently scrutinizes the narrator’s finger, which the narrator has drawn blood from in order to
pledge devotion to the Buddha. This act comes after the head monk’s explanation of Manjǒk’s
attaining of Buddhahood, which radically extends Buddhahood to the narrator, implying that
even though self-harm is inflicted for preserving his own life, the narrator still has the potential
to be enlightened.
The establishment of non-duality, especially the erasure of the difference between the
secular and the religious, is essential for writers to further engage with other Sǒn Buddhist
practices that bring Buddhism down to earth. Often in the genre of kudo sosǒl, or enlightenmentseeking novels, writers can explore different ways of Buddhist practice. One such practice that
literally brings the monks out of the mountains and back into the world is the tradition of
manhaeng. Looking at the two Chinese characters of manhaeng, 萬行, one realizes that while
man means ten thousand, a metaphorical number, the character of haeng can be interpreted in
two ways and point to two different understandings of the practice. The first interpretation is
more pragmatic: haeng is read as traveling, and “traveling everywhere” is a routine practice
undertook by Korean monks up to this day when they visit other monasteries during the threemonth break between more rigid retreats of intense practice.55 On the other hand, the second
interpretation of manhaeng is more directly related to Sǒn principles and meditative practice. In
this case, haeng is understood as actions, and manhaeng becomes ten thousand acts, or “the
54 Kim T., Tŭngsinbul, 47.
55 Robert E. Buswell, “Korean Buddhist Journeys to Lands Worldly and Otherworldly,” The Journal of Asian
Studies 68, no.4 (November 2009): 1073.

20
manifold practices of the bodhisattva.”
56 While the term itself is action-oriented, the focus of the
actual practice centers on cultivating the mind and erasing any perception of delusional
differences. Even acts such as alcohol and sex that are traditionally perceived as corrupt can still
contribute to the meditative act and ultimately to reaching the bodhisattva path. Chinul, an
influential monk from the Koryŏ period who solidified Sǒn Buddhism in Korea, clearly describes
manhaeng as a practice of mind: “Although one prepares to cultivate the manifold
supplementary practices [of the bodhisattva], no-thought is the origin of them all.”
57 Here nothought is not the lack of thought, but again the erasure of binaries, as the practitioner should
cultivate himself without “retaining any sense that there is something wholesome that he must
cultivate or something unwholesome that he must eliminate.”
58 With manhaeng’s integration of
action and mind and its call for engaging in ten thousand acts (which often already include
traveling), this Sǒn practice has immense potential to be reshaped as more socially engaged.
More specifically, manhaeng literally forces the Buddhist sangha to enter the world and to
become a part of the larger social movements, be it a nationalist campaign or the democratization
movement. Thus it is this second and wider definition that writers of the kudo sosǒl genre are
most interested in.
An influential work that portrays the manhaeng practice is Kim Seong-Dong’s 1978
novel Mandala. Mandala advocates for a spirit of resistance against restrictive precepts that are
no longer effective, a message that takes on additional political meanings when read under the
historical context of the Park Chung Hee regime. The two main characters, Jisan and Pǒpun, start
out to be very different in terms of their approach to seeking enlightenment, but their paths
56 Buswell, “Chinul’s Systematization of Chinese Meditative Techniques in Korean Sŏn Buddhism,” in Traditions of
Meditation in Chinese Buddhism, ed. Peter N Gregory (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2021), 227.
57 Buswell, 227.
58 Buswell, 227.

21
converge over time. Jisan is a wandering monk who drinks wine and mingles with women, and
Pǒpun is a young monk who has been meditating on a Sǒn hwadu for three years without any
achievements. The hwadu, a riddle-like subject for meditation, given to Pǒpun by his teacher can
be summarized as thus: a bird has been placed inside a glass bottle with a narrow neck. The bird
has grown bigger and cannot be removed from the bottle. The hwadu task is to come up with a
way to free the bird, without breaking the bottle.
It is important to note that Pǒpun’s experience is highly similar to Kim Seong-Dong’s
own experience with Buddhism. Although he was not officially ordained, Kim Seong-Dong also
received a hwadu practiced meditation under a Sǒn master for six years. When, after years of
meditation, he still did not make any progress, he began to question his own capabilities to
achieve enlightenment and more importantly, became frustrated at the corrupt Buddhist
institution.59 Because of the Purification Buddhist Movement in the 1950s to 1960s which relied
heavily on state support to purge Japanese influence, many Buddhist monks became supportive
of the dictatorships.60 Kim Seong-Dong similarly divides Buddhism into two kinds. He writes
that on the one hand there is hokwǒn pulgyo, which literally means Buddhism for the protection
of the ruling authority.61 This sort of institutional Buddhism exists to support the state
unquestioningly. On the other hand, he supports revolutionary (hyŏngmyŏng) Buddhism or
Minjung Buddhism, which “subverts the dirty reality of the Sahā world and turns it into the Pure
Land.”62
59 Ko, Han'guk kŭnhyŏndae pulgyososŏl yŏn-gu, 135.
60 Chanju Mun, “Purification Buddhist Movement, 1954-62: The Recovery of Traditional Monasticism from
Japanized Buddhism in South Korea,” Hsi Lai Journal of Humanistic Buddhism 8 (2007): 264.
61 Ko, Han'guk kŭnhyŏndae pulgyososŏl yŏn-gu, 135.
62 Ko, 135.

22
Kim Seong-Dong writes his own dissatisfaction with the existing Buddhist institution
into the characters of Mandala and seeks solution in breaking away from the institution through
the act of manhaeng. Pǒpun takes the first meaning of manhaeng, traveling, to seek a way out
from his stagnation. In this process, he meets Jisan, who practices the second meaning of
manhaeng. Through their interactions, Pǒpun begins to question the strict following of precepts.
Eventually, at Jisan’s cremation, Pǒpun has a vision of his bird being released from the bottle.
This bird has the body of a bird and the head of a human being. This vision points to Pǒpun’s
enlightenment and full realization that the precepts are limitations that are meaningless, and only
by protesting and subverting the precepts can one free their bird from its confinement. Not only
is this message supported by Sǒn’s erasure of difference and binaries, but it also highlights a
spirit of protest that aligns with Minjung Buddhism under the Park Chung Hee regime.

23
Chapter III: Locating Women Characters and Writers in Buddhist Literature
“Tŭngsinbul” and Mandala are two examples of Buddhist literature that challenge their
respective paradigm of Korean Buddhism, with one pointing out that the hierarchy between the
religious and the secular is false and the other criticizing the tendency of institutional Buddhism
that unabashedly supports the state. While we have to recognize the value of the subversive spirit
of Minjung Buddhism, these works also advocate for a nationalist and masculine subjectivity.
Within this normative subjectivity, the discussion of women’s role and their religious experience
is often missing. Furthermore, women’s bodies continue to be considered as obstacles or used as
vehicles for men’s enlightenment. The sexist attitude is reflected in real life, where pigunis
continue to face misogyny in the Buddhist institutions. This section investigates the gendered
status quo left untouched by twentieth-century Buddhist literature discussed in the previous
section.
As writers such as Han Yongun adapt Buddhism into Korea’s colonial modernity by
imagining ways to put Buddhist thought in touch reality, such reimagination is achieved at the
cost of erasing the legitimacy of women’s religious experience. Historically, participation in
Buddhist and mudang rituals in Korea has been associated with women, especially starting in the
Chosǒn dynasty. Walraven points out that the rise of Neo-Confucianism in the Chosǒn dynasty
began a gendered divide: “The Confucianization of men resulted in Confucianism increasingly
becoming a marker of another social distinction, this time not of status but of gender. Popular
religion, mudang rituals, prayers to mountains, and visits to Buddhist temples came to be
associated with women.”63 Although all of the rituals eventually served to uphold the Confucian
patriarchy regardless of their religious affiliations, some religious practices like the mudang
63 Boudewijn Walraven, “Popular Religion in a Confucianized Society,” in Culture and the State in Late Chosŏn
Korea, ed. Jahyun Kim Haboush and Martina Deuchler (Boston: Harvard University Asia Center, 1999), 197.

24
rituals remained important for women, such as releasing intense emotions or protecting the living
from the vengeful spirits of the dead, which were not fulfilled by Confucian rituals.64 However,
Han’s discussion of Buddhist reforms clearly dismisses such practices that are associated with
women. The belief in shamanism and deities other than the Buddha is considered superstition
that needs to be cleansed.65 Furthermore, within Buddhism, yǒmbul, the chanting of Buddha’s
name as prayer, is also commonly practiced by women, but Han dismisses it as “[not] prayerful
concentration upon Buddha, let alone the invocation of Buddha.”66
Han’s characterization of superstition as backward and outdated is rooted in an imported
ideology of Enlightenment and humanism. Previously, I discussed that Han, like his
contemporaries, were impacted by Liang Qichao’s writings on Social Darwinism. Liang himself
led the Hundred Days’ Reform in Qing China, when he attempted to follow the western
paradigm of modernization in hopes of self-strengthening. Han’s approach to reform, similarly,
is a specific kind of masculine agency, an imported western ideology. For example, Han
compares Buddhist thought with the thoughts of European philosophers such as Kant and
Descartes to argue that Buddhism is no inferior to European philosophy when representing
universal and timeless truth.67 In addition, imposing the lens of agency and self-strengthening on
Buddhism, Han writes that “the ‘paradise’ of Buddhism is … the paradise being built inside
oneself,” pointing out the importance of improving oneself and working toward the real self.68
This teleological sense of progress implicitly supports “the Western project of modernity,
including its industrial, imperialist, and bellicose inclinations.” Not only is it ironic that Han
64 Walraven, “Popular Religion in a Confucianized Society,” 182.
65 Han, “On the Reformation of Korean Buddhism,” 93-94.
66 Han, 69.
67 Han, 48-49.
68 Han, 46.

25
implies the backwardness of women’s practice and laments the lack of men among lay
followers,69 but the inherent aggression in Social Darwinism also contradicts Han’s own
imagination of a future of Buddhism. Without deconstructing such humanist and Enlightenment
values, “the World of Buddhism” led by values of equality and justice cannot actualize, as
humanism’s definition of subjectivity is uniform and excludes other subjectivities.
Not only are women’s roles in religion ignored and dismissed, but their bodies have been
consistently used as a vehicle for men’s meditation and practice. In early tales included in
Samguk yusa from the Koryŏ dynasty, such as “Nambaekwǒl yisǒng nohil pudǔk taltal pakpak”
(The two saints on the southern side of Mt. Baekwǒl, Nohil Pudǔk and Taltal Pakpak), female
characters play a role similar to hwadu. The two monks, Nohil Pudǔk and Taltal Pakpak, retreat
into the mountain for meditation, and one night a young woman knocks on their doors to ask for
lodging. She is described to be beautiful and emanating the fragrant smells of orchid. While
Pakpak firmly rejects the woman, Pudǔk becomes more conflicted and takes the woman in. After
Pudǔk complies with all of her requests, including giving her a bath, the woman transforms into
Bodhisattva Gwan-eum and turns Pudǔk into an immortal. Pudǔk then asks Pakpak to also take a
bath, which turns Pakpak into an immortal as well. Here, Pudǔk is clearly awarded with his
ability to understand non-duality and discern the correct action when presented with the
predicament, as he says:
This place is not to be corrupted by women. However, abiding by the wish of the masses
is also one of the Bodhisattva acts; besides, the night of the remote mountainside is dark,
and how can I mistreat her?
69 Han, “On the Reformation of Korean Buddhism,” 75.

26
이곳은 부녀자가 더럽힐 곳이 아니오. 그러나 중생을 수순(隨順)함도 역시
보살행(菩薩行)의 하나인데, 하물며 궁벽한 산골에 밤이 어두우니 어찌 홀대할
수야 있겠소?
70
The monk Pudǔk realizes that, especially in Mahayana Buddhism, as long as the act is done out
of care and compassion, the principle of nonduality tells us that “samsara is none other than
nirvana, that passions are no different from awakening.”
71
This trend of using women’s bodies and sexuality as vehicle to awakening is still popular
in twentieth-century Buddhist novels, such as Han Sǔngwǒn’s 1989 novel Aje Aje Bara Aje
(Come Come Come Upward). Interestingly, this novel also uses the trope of manhaeng, but this
work takes two pigunis on the journey from the mountains back into the secular. The two female
monks, Sunnyo and Chinsong, both leave the temple on a journey of unifying compassion with
wisdom by interacting with people from all walks of life. Han’s novel emphasizes that “religious
liberation is incomplete without an understanding of humanity as flesh and blood; enlightenment
can be meaningful only when it is attained through suffering.”72 However, for the two nuns’
manhaeng experience, Han Sǔngwǒn focuses overwhelmingly on the sexual imagery. For
example, after Sunnyo is expelled from the temple, she has sex with numerous men. Chinsong is
not exempted from the sexual imagery, as she is often “confronted with the teachings about
Tantric ritual sex.”73 Hyangsoon Yi writes that the overuse of sexual imagery in Aje Aje Bara Aje
“mars the integrity of [Han’s] text and calls into question the sincerity of his criticism of the
70
“Nambaekwǒl yisǒng nohil pudǔk taltal pakpak” 남백월이성 노힐부득 달달박박(南白月二聖努肹夫得
怛怛朴朴), in Samguk yusa 삼국유사, 국사편찬위원회
한국사데이터베이스 https://db.history.go.kr/ancient/level.do?levelId=sy_003r_0020_0170_0010.
71 Bernard Faure, The Red Thread: Buddhist Approaches to Sexuality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998),
40.
72 Hyangsoon Yi, “Neither Mountain Nor Marketplace: Placing the Buddhist Nun in Contemporary Korean
Literature,” International Journal of Korean Studies 6, no. 1 (2002): 153.
73 Yi, 155.

27
religious establishment.”74 While manhaeng for male monks ultimately involves some sort of
liberation and realization, it seems that for Han Sǔngwǒn, the nuns’ journeys culminate in
sharing compassion through continued sexual acts. Overall, the novel challenges the severing of
the religious and the secular, but the female characters remain bound by their sexual desires and
suffering: having been deprived of the potential to achieve full awakening, they become a subject
of meditation for the readers.
The depictions of women’s bodies above reveal the contradictory nature of Buddhism
toward women’s bodies: despite Buddhism advocating for the potential of all sentient beings to
be enlightened, it also largely rules out women’s bodies from such potential and conversely, uses
women’s bodies to demonstrate the delusional nature of senses and desires. In The Red Thread:
Buddhist Approaches to Sexuality, Bernard Faure explores the questions of desire and sexuality
in Chinese and Japanese Buddhism by examining Vinaya rules and doctrinal justification for
Buddhist antinomianism.
75 Faure points out that one distinct feature of Buddhism is its
ambivalence toward desire. Specifically, “Mahāyāna Buddhism … argued that the ultimate truth
can be discovered only by those who awaken to the reality of desire and are able to transmute
it.”
76 However, in this discussion of transcendence and enlightenment, “woman is often
conspicuously absent, or she appears inasmuch as she is an element of the Buddhist discourse on
sexuality: not for herself, as individual, but as one pole of attraction or repulsion in a gendered
male discourse about sex.”
77 One of the goals of Buddhist practice seems to be a closed,
enduring, ritual body. While men’s body can achieve such closure, women’s body is “penetrated,
74 Yi, “Neither Mountain Nor Marketplace,” 156.
75 Faure, The Red Thread, 7.
76 Faure, 4.
77 Faure, 14.

28
and cannot help overflowing their bodily limits, spilling an impure blood.”78 The biological
structure of women’s body thus determines that it is “practically impossible for them to
transcend sexual difference.”79 The vulnerability and frailty of the body, especially that of
women, leads to the common trope of “deforming the female body, turning it into a memento
mori”80 that reminds Buddhists that the body and its related desires and sensations are all
delusions. Buddha Shakyamuni himself, upon seeing the ugliness of the women of his palace
quarters as they are asleep, realizes the vanity of his life as a prince, and decides to seek wisdom
elsewhere. Ultimately, the contradiction reveals that the Buddhist faith is ambivalent, if not
reluctant, about women’s ability to achieve enlightenment.
The theological misogyny can lead to continued inequality within Buddhist practice and
institutions. As mentioned in the introduction, fundamental precepts set up by Buddha
Shakyamuni such as the Eight Garudhammas serve as justification for preventing pigunis from
speaking up against the pigus, the male monks. Among these rules, “the seventh, that a nun
should never abuse or revile a monk in any way; and the eighth, that it is forbidden for a nun
ever to admonish a monk”81 are the most harmful for contemporary Korean pigunis who want to
fight for more rights and leadership roles within the Buddhist institution. In addition, the
historical dependency of pigunis on male monks as teachers and leaders poses, as pigunis often
“followed [their] teacher’s words to the letter”82 and accept the unequal status between male and
female clergy.
78 Faure, The Red Thread, 57.
79 Faure, 57.
80 Faure, 56.
81 Cho, “Gender Conflicts in Contemporary Korean Buddhism,” 242.
82 Cho, “Reinventing Female Identity,” 52.

29
Pigunis’ own silence and self-seclusion due to the multi-layered oppression has
contributed to the overall lack of writing and records on their lives. When pigunis do write for
themselves, how do they shape their own identities as practitioners? These female writers are not
easy to find, but several pigunis did leave essays behind that record their experience and
reflection on practicing Buddhism. The piguni writers, while recognizing the gendered difference
between monks and nuns, continue to seek liberation for themselves and their peers. For
example, Reverend Son’gyong’s autobiography showcases early on her sharp awareness of the
difference between monks’ and nuns’ roles and statuses in Buddhist temples. She writes that she
came to a realization after hearing Reverend Man’gong’s talk that “the role of monks and nuns
was very different from what [she] had been led to believe”: while young nuns are expected to
serve older nuns and are taught to weave, monks are told to focus on meditation and
understanding deeper meanings of sutras.83 Even her elder nun tried to stop her from moving to a
nunnery and attending the dharma talks, because the elder nun believed “that to go would not be
in accordance with [the true] role [of a nun].”84 The elder nun’s internalization of the gender
roles within the temple did not prevent Reverend Son’gyong from starting meditation practice.
Interestingly, Reverend Son’gyong was even able to come to terms with the manual work
performed by nuns such as washing and cooking through a hwadu, “All things return to the one,
where does the one return?”85 This reconciliation came after she had broken through the
frustration and self-doubt from fruitless meditation practice, and she found herself at peace
returning to manual work that used to be meaningless distraction.
83 Son’gyong Sunim, “My Autobiography,” in Women in Korean Zen: Lives and Practices, Martine Batchelor and
Son’gyong Sunim (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2006), 79.
84 Son’gyong Sunim, 79.
85 Son’gyong Sunim, 85.

30
On the other hand, Kim Ir-yŏp, perhaps the most significant Buddhist female writer, tries
to extend this sense of liberation and reconciliation from personal meditation to all beings,
regardless of their gender. Kim Ir-yŏp was born in 1896 into a Christian family: her father was a
Christian pastor. Although she eventually lost interest in Christianity, Ir-yŏp herself attributes her
parents’ generous support for her education to their Christian faith.86 From 1913 to 1918, Ir-yŏp
was able to attend Ewha Hakdang and Ewha Chŏnmun, culminating in an educational level
equivalent with today’s undergraduate degree. In 1919, Ir-yŏp went to Japan to continue her
studies, where she met other progressive writers and intellectuals like Yi Kwangsu (1892–1950)
and Na Hyesǒk (1896–1948).87 Their acquaintance led to Ir-yŏp’s growing passion about
women’s issues, and upon her return to Korea in 1920, Ir-yŏp founded the journal Sinyǒja, or
New Women. She wrote extensively in the 1920s as a feminist writer and advocated for women’s
sexual liberation and broadened definitions of chastity. Her work helped coin the term “New
Woman,” which came to represent a generation of women in Korea who were educated and
embraced modern values of enlightenment and western feminism. It was only toward the later
half of her life that she converted to Buddhism and studied under Reverend Man’gong.
Liberation of the self is a thread that ties Ir-yŏp’s seemingly disjunctive life together. Iryŏp’s experience in feminist activism made her painfully aware that the New Woman ideals were
not always effective in freeing women from social realities. In particular, the concepts of free
love and new chastity were feeble and constantly subject to change. Jin Y. Park argues that the
limitation of the idea of free love is that “free love itself was a cultural product, not a timeless,
universal truth,” and that “it could not be the only ultimate manifestation of individuality and
86 Jin Y. Park, “Translator’s Introduction: Kim Iryŏp, Her Life and Thought,” in Reflections of a Zen Buddhist Nun,
trans. by Jin Y. Park (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2014), 3.
87 Park J., 4.

31
freedom for which these New Women so desperately searched.”88 The disillusionment likely
impacted Ir-yŏp’s decision to become ordained in 1933 as a Buddhist nun. She was seeking
liberation from the Buddhist non-self so that one could reach an ultimate self, or the big “I” (daea).89 The Buddhist non-self does not contradict her previous goals of liberating women, but now
the solution lies in transcending a limited, egoistic understanding of self and perceiving all
differences as non-self. In an intimate personal letter, Ir-yŏp writes, “We should realize that …
different genders were originally one in oneself. If a person reaches this state of understanding of
the nature of self, … he leads an independent life without being derailed.”90 In other words, Iryŏp’s big “I” is the ultimate liberation that is able to break free from restrictions of “[a]
disappointing … this world.”91
This section raises critical questions about realist Buddhist literature and its guiding
principles’ tendency to prioritize human agency in ways that reinforce traditional gender roles
and marginalize female perspectives. Male Buddhist writers are eager to reintroduce
sociopolitical relevance into Buddhism; however, the lofty goals of these explorations often end
up assigning misogynist gender roles in their prescription of the path to enlightenment. The
female characters either are vehicles that help men meditate on the truth, or become bodhisattvas
by engaging in sex. When piguni writers engage with their religious experiences in writing, they
bring valuable insights that challenge these conventional narratives. The piguni writers
demonstrate that Buddhism can play an active role in creating a feminist discourse. As piguni
writers avoid “display[ing] such masculine rhetoric” of individualism and heroism and focus on
88 Park J., “Gendered Response to Modernity: Kim Iryeop and Buddhism,” Korea Journal 45, no. 1 (2005): 127.
89 Park J., 129.
90 Kim Ir-yŏp, Reflections of a Zen Buddhist Nun, trans. Jin Y. Park (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2014),
195.
91 Kim I., 195.

32
“discuss[ing] women’s experience of Buddhism in the socio-cultural and historical context of
modern Korea,” they prove to us that the gender roles within and outside of Buddhism are
constantly evolving.92 They acknowledge the inherent challenges, but remain optimistic about
their journeys toward enlightenment. These women embody a spirit of resilience and creativity,
and the focus on validating such lived experience would come back to us through the genre of SF
in Kim Bo-young’s “The Prophet of Corruption.”
92 Park J., “Gendered Response to Modernity,” 135.

33
Chapter IV: Queering Buddhist Literature: “The Prophet of Corruption” as Buddhist SF
It seems like twentieth-century realist Buddhist literature, like the Buddhist institutions,
failed to incorporate gender equality into their agenda. The task remains that Buddhist literature
must make sense of the imbalanced impact that embodied experience has on different genders.
In this section, I will examine Kim Bo-young’s “The Prophet of Corruption” as a case study
continuing and expanding the lineage of Buddhist literature. I focus on “The Prophet of
Corruption” because, despite Kim Bo-young’s popularity, this novella has received very limited
critical attention in existing English-language scholarship on South Korean SF, not to mention
the novella’s creative engagement with Buddhism. However, it is an important work that
demonstrates the rich potential of the hybridized genre. As we have seen, the Buddhist tradition
straddles two attitudes toward the body and its desires. As the two attitudes coexist, Kim Boyoung must have found potential in Buddhism to resolve the dilemma of the body, having been
encouraged by the introduction of western SF works to not only hybridize SF with Buddhist
elements but also use the SF genre to “subvert… gender, sexual and bodily norms.”
93 For queer
communities in particular, the body is a contested site, because the queer body is often
considered abnormal and subhuman and is subject to categorization and discipline. Concerning
the novella’s queer experimentation, Kim Bo-young has also been likely influenced by Djuna,
who creates “carnivalesque, multiethnic, multilingual, multispecies and gender-fluid universe” in
their SF works to challenge “the heteronormative, illiberal and conformist South Korean
society.”
94 “The Prophet of Corruption” is an excellent example of Buddhist SF that seamlessly
integrates an in-depth understanding of Buddhist concepts along with reevaluation of the same
concepts through cognitive estrangement, challenging the traditional genre of Buddhist literature
93 Sunyoung Park, “South Korean Science Fiction,” Unpublished manuscript, 2024.
94 Park S., “South Korean Science Fiction.”

34
dominated by a masculine perspective. Ultimately, I argue that by fracturing the narrative voice
and inverting the meanings of keywords, the novella portrays the concept of non-self as
dangerously oppressive and successfully restores the material body to allow for new kinds of
subjectivities that await definition.
“The Prophet of Corruption” depicts a fictional world where the movement of matter
loosely follows the Buddhist notion of reincarnation. The novella constructs a world composed
by “the prophets,” who have been divided from one original entity that no one clearly
remembers. The prophets are deity-like beings without bodies or organs, and they believe in
notions of non-duality and non-self much like the Buddhist notions. As the prophets further
multiply themselves through division, the primal, unified state of the cosmos ceases to satisfy
them, and they create several realms: the Dark Realm (myŏnggye or chŏsŭng), the Lower Realm
(hagye or isŭng), and Hell. The prophets and their children occupy the Dark Realm, while the
Lower Realm is constructed as a school and a playground, where the prophets and the children
experience and learn. Finally, Hell is a space created to contain the so-called corruption. The
main plot of the story involves the protagonist Naban trying to contain the corruption brought by
one of their children, Aman, but Naban becomes similarly corrupted in the process of
suppression.
The novella’s sharp understanding of the Buddhist reincarnation is immediately
recognizable in its opening passages. Within the first two pages, the readers are introduced to the
narrator Naban describing their feelings and sensations being transported into a wheatfield
landscape. Naban remarks,
The landscape was as intensely hued and vivid as an impressionist painting. Not because
the light was any brighter, but because my senses had grown sharper. They felt crystal
clear, like they had been rinsed clean in water. What I had thought was red seemed closer
to a deadened bloodred now, and what I had thought was blue, the color of sewage. I

35
smelled the wild grass, deeply fragrant as steeped tea, and even heard the breeze
whispering beyond the horizon. Everything was resplendent, almost overwhelming, as if
a fog had cleared from my head. It would be so until I grew accustomed to my state.95
The vivid sensations described here characterize an intermediate state of existence after the
protagonist’s passing away in the Lower Realm. Here Naban seems to be quite familiar with the
quickly-fading intermediate state and recognizes where they are as chungŭm or bardo.96
According to beliefs in the Buddhist afterlife journey, beings in such “intermediate existence”
experience “[p]ossessing only a frail body, constantly in search of nourishment, and beset by
unknown shapes, sounds, and smells,”
97 quite similar to the sharpened sensations described
above. It turns out that chungŭm of each prophet are satellites orbiting the world of the living,
and this space is used by the prophets and their children to reflect on their lived experiences. The
use of chungŭm as a space in between cycles of reincarnation not only reflects the novella’s
conscious and informed engagement with Buddhist worldviews, but also implies that changes
and disruptions are possible in this liminal stage. Indeed, for corrupted beings like Aman, their
corruption prevents them from staying in chŏsŭng, because the corrupted beings cannot
recognize that chŏsŭng is their final destination: “Aman still can’t escape their own bardo.
They’re convinced that it’s the entire afterworld.”98 Here Naban’s kin uses the term sahu segye,
literally the world after death, to refer to the belief that the dead would travel to an alternative
space that mirrors the living world. For the uncorrupted prophets, there is a clear difference
between chungŭm and the afterworld (sahu segye): while sahu segye is a belief held by human
beings of the Lower Realm, it is not a real existing space for the prophets. The prophets do not
95 Kim Bo-young, “The Prophet of Corruption,” in I’m Waiting for You: And Other Stories, trans. Sophie Bowman
and Sung Ryu (New York: Harper Voyager, 2022), 65-66.
96 Kim B., 67.
97 Stephen F. Teiser, The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994), 23.
98 Kim B., “The Prophet of Corruption,” 67.

36
consider death the extinguishment of themselves, and for them, chŏsŭng is the ultimate life to
return to. Naban recalls, “In some lives, I stumbled in here when I teetered on the brink of death.
Then I went back and told everyone excitedly that I had seen the afterworld. But all I had seen
was my bardo.”99 In a less enlightened state, the human reincarnation of Naban believes that the
afterworld is the end. In other words, the return to chŏsŭng is only possible when one lingers in
chungŭm for a while, recalls the principles of non-self and non-duality, and regains the abilities
of the prophets.
Thus corruption is defined as the loss of faith in non-self and non-duality, which
simultaneously signifies an increased attachment to one’s body and desires. At the beginning of
the novella, Naban is in their uncorrupted state and determined to contain corruption, and here
we can observe a sense of despise towards the body as illusions. Upon remembering their
identity as a prophet, Naban reflects on the human body that they used to occupy:
I was trapped in a body no better than a crude chunk of meat whenever I returned to a
life, a body that used every means possible to distract me from thought. A brain with poor
cognitive skills, hormones akin to narcotics, a pitiful range of neurotransmitters, neurons
with slow processing speeds. It was like having a cognitive disorder compared to my
present state of heightened perception.100
The human body is described as fragile, decaying, and full of limitations. The human body is
impermanent, because it constantly under the influence of changes from external stimulants. In
the ideal state of chŏsŭng, the prophets’ bodies are fluid and perceptive, unobstructed by such
materiality. The contempt for a body made of flesh is rooted in the prophets’ belief in non-self.
In Buddhism, non-self signifies everything outside of the Self, “one that would be permanent and
free from all pain, however subtle – so as to be happy, self-secure, independent.”101 To reach full
99 Kim B., “The Prophet of Corruption,” 67.
100 Kim B., 67.
101 Peter Harvey, “Dukkha, Non-Self, and the Teaching on the Four ‘Noble Truths,’” in A Companion to Buddhist
Philosophy, ed. Steven M. Emmanuel (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013): 34.

37
liberation, everything outside of this secure Self must be understood as non-self, including the
materiality of the body itself.
To verify the notion Buddhist non-self, Kim Bo-young strategically uses scientific
language to analyze and rationalize the body. For example, pleasure “was just a navigational
instrument created to keep us, who are sent down to the Lower Realm as simpletons, from dying
and returning too quickly. To allow us to eat and sleep and mate and reproduce instinctively
without having to learn how. And at the same time to make us curious enough to discover new
knowledge.”102 In other words, pleasure has been coded into the reincarnated human bodies by
the prophets as an instrument of learning, and from the perspective of the inventors, pleasure is
clearly an illusion.
In addition, the belief in non-duality is fundamental for the prophets’ abilities to travel
and to merge or separate. The prophets are free to merge or separate to produce new personalities
and, as a result, narrative voices. In fact, by the end of the first chapter, readers are presented
with a Naban that has gathered all of their pieces. Throughout the first chapter, Naban
emphasizes that “You are me,” “This place is me,” and “Everything is me.”103 This understanding
leads them to merge with their kin at the end of this chapter, producing a new identity: “Once I
merged, I easily recognized that my current form was closer to my essence. How silly and
pointless it had been to obsess over my individuality in such a broken, incomplete state.”104 Here
Naban seems to believe that merging with the kin allows them to reach a complete form of Self.
The recognition that there is no difference between binaries like you and I marks a state of
wholeness, purity, and enlightenment. Interestingly, the prophets’ complete recognition of non102 Kim B., “The Prophet of Corruption,” 80.
103 Kim B., 67.
104 Kim B., 72.

38
duality and non-self is echoed by Kim Ir-yŏp’s search for the great self. We recall that Ir-yŏp
writes about the need to erase the separation between “life and death, suffering and pleasure, self
and others, man and woman”105 so that they can lead a life guided by the great self. She further
urges,
Isn’t it the case that while we are still alive, we should be able to separate from our own
physical body? However disappointing this world might be, we have lived this reality
repeatedly for an eternal period of time, and it would not be easy to get rid of the habitual
energy that was soaked in the complexity of that life. That gives us all the more reason to
be more dedicated to our cultivation of mind.106
Theoretically, all differences are illusional, but the belief in such differences stems the body that
is deeply entrenched in the pain and worries of this world. To reach a fuller understanding of
non-self and non-duality, “The Prophet of Corruption” translates Ir-yŏp’s determination to focus
on “our cultivation of mind” into the practice of learning through manhaeng.
Whether consciously or unconsciously, Kim Bo-young’s focus on the notion of nonduality and manhaeng puts “The Prophet of Corruption” in conversation with previous
generations of Korean Buddhist literature that has more masculine voices. Even though
manhaeng is never explicitly mentioned in the novella, the establishment of the earth school is a
manifestation of manhaeng where the split selves of the prophets are free to experience senses
and emotions. Isŭng, or the world of the living, is introduced as the following: “our school,
training center for experiential learning. Simulation center.” [우리의 학교, 체험학습 수련관.
시뮬레이션 센터.]107 Children and prophets enter the “simulation” and returns to sublimate the
experience into wisdom. When Fuxi, a hedonist prophet, mocks Naban for their ascetic
teachings, Naban refutes them by pointing out the importance of lived experiences: “Learning
105 Kim I., Reflections of a Zen Buddhist Nun, 195.
106 Kim I., 195-6.
107 Kim B., “Chŏ isŭngŭi sŏnjija” 저 이승의 선지자 [The prophet of corruption], in Chŏ isŭngŭi sŏnjija 저 이승의
선지자 [The prophet of corruption] (Seoul: Ajak, 2017), 17. My translation.

39
can only be achieved by living. If you want to know what I learned, reincarnate and live exactly
as I did. Then you will know.”108 Even though Naban acknowledges the importance of living, the
analogies used such as “training center” and “simulation” clearly points to the illusional nature of
the Lower Realm. This hierarchy of wisdom over experience is familiar in the Buddhist
philosophical debates of manhaeng, where the ten thousand acts are ultimately a mind exercise.
As a result, the prophets seem to already live in a state of enlightenment. They have
reached the ultimate truth according to them: the Dark Realm offers the ultimate truth of oneness
and the erasure of binary differences such self and other. The Lower Realm is an illusion, but
simultaneously a fun exercise for the children. However, closer reading of this worldview
already reveals the faulty logic at the beginning. The two realms have two sets of names. The
first set, isŭng and chŏsŭng, translated literally to this world and that world, is itself a set of
binary. Further, the second set, myŏnggye and hagye, indicates a hierarchy of the world of the
prophets above the human realm. The persisting difference even in the naming indicate that the
prophets may not be as wise as they think. In addition, the practice of manhaeng in simulation is
itself a paradox. When trying to convince Aman of the illusional nature of the Lower Realm,
Naban unwittingly validates the experience of life: “Life has to be real. That is what we must
believe when we are alive. Or else we would squander our fortunes or waste our lives.”109 In
other words, for someone to learn from the simulation, a life has to be lived genuinely and
earnestly. Nevertheless, the earnest belief in this life and this world contradicts the expectation to
grasp the illusional nature of phenomena.
The creation of Aman from Naban, whose former identity is Aisata, serves a similar
narrative function as the above Buddhist motifs: Aman signifies the novella’s engagement with
108 Kim B., “The Prophet of Corruption,” 80-1.
109 Kim B., 107.

40
non-self, but also reveals its vulnerability against material reality. To all of the prophets, Aman,
the corrupted child divided from Naban, is a mystery and a threat to the harmony of their
cosmos. It should be noted that Naban [나반] and Aman [아만] are respectively the father and
mother of humanity according to a Korean creation myth recorded in Hwandan’gogi
[환단고기], a book allegedly compiled from earlier texts in 1911 by Kye Yŏnsu. Kye left the
manuscript to Yi Yu-rip, who published the compilation in 1979. According to this creation
myth, the ancestor of human beings is named Naban, and he meets his wife Aman for the first
time at a place named Aisata. Based on the creation myth, we can grasp the alleged gender of
Naban and Aman, although “The Prophet of Corruption” intentionally leaves their bodies
genderless. What is more interesting is the nationalist hue of this creation myth. Recently, the
authenticity of the text Hwandan’gogi has been questioned by many scholars. Lee Sŭngho
summarizes the debates around the possibly apocryphal nature of the text, such as its
anachronistic use of language and ideology.110 Despite the possibly apocryphal nature, some of
which might be attributable to the text’s transmission process, it is notable that Hwandan’gogi
seems to be a highly nationalist text that continues a nationalist lineage originated as early as in
the Chosǒn dynasty.111 Naming the main characters of her work after the ancestors from the
creation myth is proof that Kim Bo-young is consciously interacting with a heteronormative and
nationalist discourse.
In addition, Aman’s pronunciation also coincides with the Chinese characters 我慢,
which means arrogance and attachment to one’s self in Buddhism. Kim Bo-young carefully
110 Lee Sŭngho 이승호, “Han'guksŏndomunhŏnŭi yŏn'gusa sogor chŏnsŭnggwajŏnggwa wijangnonjaengŭl
chungshimŭro” 한국선도문헌의 연구사 소고: 전승과정과 위작논쟁을 중심으로 [Some thoughts on the history
of research on Korean Daoist texts: centering on transmission process and debates of forgery], 선도문화 6 (2009):
333.
111 Lee, 333-4.

41
points out this coincidence in the notes section.112 Different from all of the other prophets, Aman
is characterized as a lively and charismatic child from their very birth. After the creation of
humans, Aman quickly identifies with the humans and tries to protect them from prophet-led
disasters. The description of hell, which is in fact Aman’s chungŭm, shows the extent to which
Aman is attached to the world of the living and not recognizing the truth shared by other
prophets.
On the far side lay the dead, those who had been imprisoned and tortured for centuries
and millennia. The dead were bewildered. Why must they pay such a terrible price for so
long when all they had done was hate their parents or lie, eat selectively or leave food on
their plates, behave a little stubbornly or pettily in just one of their lives? Why must the
laws of the Dark Realm be so merciless?
Because they were all Aman.
Pieces divided from Aman.113
Naban’s observation of hell claims that the pieces of Aman are trapped in their chungŭm because
they create the illusion of hell themselves. Indeed, Aman’s belief in a suffering hell after death is
a byproduct of their inability to see beyond their sensations and understand non-duality. In other
words, this is corruption. While Naban tries to plant the Buddhist principles back into Aman’s
mind(s), such as telling the suffering beings in hell that “[t]here is no pain,”114 Aman’s firm
belief in the existence of differences only serves to reinforce their crime of being corrupt. They
are the first to claim that “[t]he people in the Lower Realm are not us. They’re completely
different beings”115: Aman believes that the lives of the people in the Lower Realm are just as
authentic and real as those of the prophets in the Dark Realm.
If the first section of the novella represents Naban’s firm resolution to contain corruption,
Naban’s disastrous attempt to absorb Aman in hell marks a key transformation toward Naban’s
112 Kim B., “Chŏ isŭngŭi sŏnjija,” 267.
113 Kim B., “The Prophet of Corruption,” 133.
114 Kim B., 139.
115 Kim B., 107.

42
embodied experience of corruption. As Aman refuses to be convinced by Buddhist thoughts,
Naban decides to try an alternative path of containment, which proves to be disastrous. Instead of
rejecting phenomena, Naban’s attempt to merge with a piece of Aman directly engages with the
inescapable materiality by describing the chemistry of merging. As Naban forcefully “plugged [a
bundle of electric wires] into Aman’s body,”116 Aman’s body begins a series of rejection:
Aman’s body began to respond. It rejected me with everything it had. White blood cells
mobilized around my wires, and blood clotted up the wounds. When I inserted chemicals
to melt the body down, its immune system fought back by releasing more counteractive
substances.117
Naban’s attempt is a forced, penetrative act, and Aman’s body resists in a way similar to wounds
or transplants. In order to successfully merge, Naban has to acknowledge Aman’s difference in
materiality and experiment with formula to come up with the appropriate chemical reaction. The
juxtaposition of persuasion and chemical reaction reveals that persuasion relies on the complete
belief in non-duality, while pure chemistry is on the other end of the spectrum that analyzes
difference without understanding its ramifications. Indeed, the merging is an utter failure because
Naban fails to truly understand the different identities. Naban’s “half-machine body”
118
uncontrollably devours the entirety of hell, but the pieces of Aman, already different, refuses to
merge seamlessly into Naban. Instead, “Tens of thousands of personalities exploded inside
[Naban]. Emotions twisted this way and that. None mixed or blended, all churned in
pandemonium.”119
A middle ground to reconcile the two ends of the spectrum would eventually come to
Naban, but first they must learn to embrace difference by becoming corrupt themselves. In a
116 Kim B., “The Prophet of Corruption,” 140.
117 Kim B., 141.
118 Kim B., 142.
119 Kim B., 142.

43
way, this is also part of Naban’s manhaeng. Through corruption, Naban first relearns the
difference between self and others. For the first time, Naban resists the urge to merge with one of
their children Tanjae, not because Tanjae is an interesting exception that Naban “want[s] to
observe …[and] find out what it is that [Naban] is trying to learn from [Tanjae],”120 but because
Naban recognizes that Tanjae is ultimately different from them and wants Tanjae to “preach
[their] own teachings”121 free from the influence of other prophets. Interestingly, the intense
desire to merge with Tanjae comes from not Naban, but Naban’s earlier, more “complete” form
named Aisata, and Naban is no longer able to preach the same message of oneness even within
within oneself. Naban’s narration splits into two voices arguing with each other: “Eat it and
become whole again. / I will not” (original italics).122 Further, when Aisata’s identity takes over,
the voice changes its tone:
Oh, how I had ached for my homeland, my complete whole. The summation of truths.
The noble soul that had performed the sacrifice of dividing its personality for the sake of
learning and growth.123
아아, 그리웠던 고향이여, 온전한 전체여. 진리의 총합체여. 자아의 배움과 성장을
위해 제 인격을 분열하는 희생마저 감수할 줄 알았던 위대한 영혼이여.
124
Aisata’s tone loses all the empathy and self-reflection that are rich in Naban’s voice. The new
voice is impersonal, and the passage glorifies the idea of an original unity and the value of
wisdom from “the sacrifice” of an unnamed “noble soul.” Here we get a glimpse of what a
unified world might look like: there is one legitimate and ultimate form of truth, and all others
are either corruption or insignificant martyrs that are not remembered. When Naban comes back
to consciousness, they realize with horror how different and even delusional Aisata’s voice is.
120 Kim B., “The Prophet of Corruption,” 96.
121 Kim B., 158.
122 Kim B., 155.
123 Kim B., 163.
124 Kim B., “Chŏ isŭngŭi sŏnjija,” 153.

44
Slowly, Naban disassociates themselves from Aisata. Naban reflects that “[they] could not bear
to call that thing me” and makes the distinction between Naban’s self and a different “they.”125
Because of this new understanding of and respect for differences, the meanings of terms
used at the beginning are becoming destabilized and subverted. If Buddhism had already
challenged the commonly accepted logic between truth and illusion, “The Prophet of
Corruption” reconstructs that logic but with renewed meanings: “The Dark Realm was an
illusion. Only the lives in the Lower Realm were true.”126 The validation of the lives in the
Lower Realm is all the more precious after Naban’s arduous journey, and they now willingly
accept their corruption. Corruption is not the failure to grasp non-self and non-duality; real
corruption is defining others as corrupt and persecuting others for the so-called corruption.
Differences have become essential. The novella has hinted at the desolate state of complete
unity, because that is what the prophets’ original unity looks like: “Before we all divided, we
were a giant, conceptual lump, stagnant, aimless, and unchanging. A new thought would never
occur to us during that state, for nothing new could ever happen.”127 Without difference, the
world is stagnated without a ripple. Peter D. Hershock draws a creative connection between
diversity and Buddhist non-duality in order to search for a “‘middle way’ beyond the contrariety
of modern valorizations of global unification and postmodern valorizations of free variation.”
128
Hershock points out that despite the postmodern proliferation of marginalized discourses and
fragmentation, trends of globalization and capitalism press for homogenization, and a “middle
125 Kim B., “The Prophet of Corruption,” 164.
126 Kim B., 169.
127 Kim B., 98.
128 Peter D. Hershock, “Diversity Matters: Buddhist Reflections on the Meaning of Difference,” in A Companion to
Buddhist Philosophy, ed. Steven M. Emmanuel (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013): 675.

45
way,” guided by Buddhist thought, is urgently needed. This “middle way” is possible by slanting
our understanding of difference. According to Hershock,
To realize the non-duality of all things is to realize that whether we live in samsara
(relationships fraught with trouble and suffering) or nirvana (liberating patterns of
relationality) is a function of precisely how we differ-from and differ-for one another.
Liberation is not dissolution into an eternal space of the same. It is a process of
continually discerning how best to differ-for others through concrete acts of sharing that
demonstrate both appreciative and contributory virtuosity.129
Thus for non-duality to be a productive tool for diversity, it is not simply the denial of
differences. Non-duality is accepting differences, navigating how to live with the differences,
and thinking about how to contribute to the whole by being different. The concluding passages of
“The Prophet of Corruption” echoes this reconciliation between non-duality and difference.
Naban recalls a previous life that they have shared with Aman and they think to themselves,
The very chemicals that had traveled down my veins and nerves in that moment were me
and part of me, the pouring rain and the street I had stood on and the ground beneath my
feet, that whole world, even the person by my side, were me and part of me. That was
why all of it was real. Oh, but more than anything else, that person was meaningful
because they were the Other. Whomever I met, I could love and pity and give my life to
because they were not me.130
The passage beautifully weaves together beliefs in oneness and difference. By the end of the
novella, Naban is able to cherish everything in this world because everything is “me and part of
me.” More importantly, this appreciation of the phenomena is made possible only through the
recognition that “they were the Other” and “they were not me.” If there was no other, then there
would only be attention and egoism to one’s self, which is the real arrogance and corruption.
For Kim Bo-young, however, the overarching message of respecting and working toward
differences also has a queer edge. For feminine, queer, and disabled bodies that are considered
subhuman, the body is that part of undeniable material reality that they constantly have to
129 Hershock, “Diversity Matters,” 684.
130 Kim B., “The Prophet of Corruption,” 192.

46
negotiate with. An uncritical faith in a disembodied sense of non-duality can be oppressive, as
shown in previous generations of Korean Buddhist literature as well as in “The Prophet of
Corruption”: it allows only one normative subjectivity and threatens to subsume alternative
subjectivities into the larger collective. While Kim Bo-young constructs the Buddhist
transcendent self as the normative subjectivity in the novella, the storyline reminds us of the way
the nationalist, masculine, heterosexual and able-bodied subjectivity alienates and disciplines all
other forms of human existence. Naban’s regaining of an unspecified body and their release of
Aman back into the Lower Realm signify the potential of science fiction to expand Buddhist
thought into a queer realm. Joanna Elfving-Hwang writes about the difficulty of representing
feminine subjectivity in the realist genre, because the realist genre is unable to escape the binary
of the Symbolic.131 The fantastic genre and science fiction, however, can create “a symbolic that
recognizes the existence of multiple subjectivities (of which none is considered normative).”132
For Kim Bo-young, the creation of multiple, yet undefined, subjectivities is achieved through
what Elfving-Hwang calls the narrative strategy of the excess. In the Dark Realm dominated by
higher wisdom, the body, regardless of gender, is rejected as excess. Naban’s ultimate
development of a body and embracement of the body becomes “an instance of how to speak
from the position of excess and so to embrace plurality and difference in order to subvert
established gender categorizations.”133 The move is not just feminist, but also queer and
posthuman, as the gender of Naban’s body is never clearly indicated. The restoration of the body
thus advocates for the liberation of all beings regardless of gender. Finally, when Naban releases
the fragments of Aman back into the world of the living, they symbolically give birth to a new
131 Joanna Elfving-Hwang, “Contesting The Symbolic: The Feminine In The Fantastic,” in Representations of
Femininity in Contemporary South Korean Women’s Literature (Global Oriental, 2010),165.
132 Elfving-Hwang, 167.
133 Elfving-Hwang, 178.

47
generation of humans. Being the male character in the original creation myth, Kim Bo-young’s
decision to make Naban the symbolic mother instead of Aman inverts the genders of the parents
of humanity in the original creation myth. Finally, “The Prophets of Corruption” completes its
task to rewrite a heteronormative nationalist creation myth, and cunningly overturns the
patriarchy of Buddhism using its own doctrines.

48
Conclusion
This project has thus far examined the complex and evolving landscape of Korean
Buddhism with a gendered focus. By examining Korean Buddhist literature, this preliminary
survey brings attention to the broader discourse on women’s religious experiences as well as
Buddhism’s potential to serve feminist and queer agendas. Historically dominated by male
writers, this genre has often portrayed Sǒn practices as liberating. However, through the survey
we see that the male writers of Buddhist literature tend to exclude women’s voices and
experiences. A limited number of women writers share their religious experiences through
writing and have demonstrated that, unlike the direction that South Korean Buddhism is taking
today, Buddhism needs not be a misogynist institution. Buddhist SF, exemplified by Kim Boyoung’s "The Prophet of Corruption," continues the explorations of the women writers by
validating individual experiences and challenging established rules.
Through literature and popular culture’s continued interest in incorporating Buddhist
elements, Buddhism continues to be a source of fascination and inspiration. Besides the
examples of Buddhist SF mentioned previously, Buddhism continues to be used in fantasy and
horror. Some other examples from popular culture include Kosaribaksa’s 2018 webtoon
Kŭngnagwangsaeng (Rebirth in Paradise), which recasts almost all bodhisattvas as women who
are sent to collaborate with Chaŏn, an office worker who has been inadvertently reborn into her
teenage years. Together, Chaŏn and the bodhisattvas solve mysteries and befriend ghosts. This
webtoon not only overturns the Buddhist worldview by having the female protagonist extending
empathy to the bodhisattvas but also clearly aims to empower its women readers by telling a
feminine story filled with women characters. In episode 41, a teacher tells Chaŏn that she wants
to write a book about female mountain gods because “if [girls] know that these deities are
accompanying them, [the girls] will think of the gods as friends and feel less lonely. What a

49
splendid transformation of the world that could happen!” (만일 그런 신이 곁에 있다는 걸
안다면, 아마 친구가 있는 기분일 거예요. 세상이 얼마나 멋지게 뒤집어지겠어요!)
134
This teacher character mirror’s Kosaribaksa’s bold attempt to toss aside the masculine narrative
and to carve a space for women to reclaim their ability to connect with gods and beyond.
With examples from Buddhist SF taking queer, posthuman, and new materialist
directions, I am hopeful that the hybrid genre can open up new literary spaces, which can echo
and interact with Buddhist practices today. This project underscores the potential of Buddhist
literature, particularly SF, to offer a platform for rebellion and protest against patriarchal
structures, and calls for more research to be done on the popular representations of Buddhism
that challenge Buddhism’s own patriarchal premise. As more examples of SF and fantasy with
Buddhist elements emerge in contemporary South Korea, they hold promise for expanding and
transforming Buddhist discourse in more inclusive and progressive ways.
134 Kosaribaksa, Kŭngnagwangsaeng 극락왕생 [Rebirth in Paradise], 2018. My translation.

50
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract This MA thesis is a preliminary survey of Korean Buddhist literature with a focus on the gendered subjectivities that it has so far generated. Building upon the existing studies by Hong Ki-sam and Ko Songsŏk, I establish a broader definition of Buddhist literature as a genre that not only engages with Buddhist thought meaningfully but also creatively adapts Buddhist motifs. This approach aligns with the recent scholarly orientation in Korean Buddhist studies that has moved beyond scriptures and philosophy to venture more into the human experiences of practicing Buddhism and the interchange between Buddhism and the larger cultural spheres which serve as the backdrop of institution and practice. In adopting this approach to Buddhist literature, this thesis seeks to contribute to the larger conversation on how Buddhism has influenced popular cultural productions locally in Asia, where Buddhism continues to be practiced.

Partly influenced by Korean Buddhism’s own attempt to adapt to the colonial modernity, Buddhist novels since the colonial period have been actively engaging in secularizing Buddhist motifs and seeking larger social relevance. Kim Dong-ni’s “Life-sized Buddha” (Tŭngsinbul; 1961) and Kim Seong-Dong’s Mandala (1978) are such examples that demonstrate the possibility for Buddhist literature to reverse the hierarchical relationship between the religious and the secular and to advocate for a closer tie between Buddhism and the masses. At the same time, the narratives written by male writers perpetuate a misogynist perspective that has been inherited from the premodern period: Han Sǔngwǒn’s Come Come Come Upward (Aje Aje Bara Aje; 1989), for instance, demonstrates the objectification of women’s bodies and uses them as the vehicle to awakening. Further, I argue that by focusing on the masculine lineage of Buddhist literature that advocates for nationalist and even Social Darwinist agendas, scholars have marginalized women writers who recorded their own experience of practicing Buddhism.
Expanding upon Hyangsoon Yi’s study of piguni literature, I examine Kim Bo-young’s SF novella, The Prophet of Corruption (2017), as a case study of a new kind of contemporary women’s Buddhist literature. Its narrative is built on fundamental concepts of non-self and non-duality and reveals these concepts as deeply entrenched in the patriarchal system. This SF novella embodies the possibility for Buddhist literature to restore marginalized and queer bodies and to validate their lived experiences. The hybridized genre of Buddhist SF brings innovation to both Buddhist literature and SF: Buddhist SF not only challenges the boundaries of SF by bridging the traditional with the futuristic and reclaiming the legitimacy of SF within the East Asian cultural tradition but also encourages readers to reconsider the temporality of Buddhism as well as its gender politics. This case study calls for the need for future studies on emerging new popular Buddhist literature, especially by women and sexual minority writers, outside the conventional category of doctrinal Buddhist writings.

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Creator Xu, Fiona Yuanjing (author)

Core Title Buddhist literature and gender in Korea: a preliminary survey and science fictional explorations

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program East Asian Area Studies

Degree Conferral Date 2024-08

Publication Date 07/15/2024

Defense Date 06/26/2024

Publisher Los Angeles, California (original), University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Buddhism in literature,gender,Kim Bo-young,Korean literature,Science fiction,son

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Advisor Park, Sunyoung (committee chair), Bernards, Brian (committee member), Lee, Sonya (committee member)

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