The Korean Buddhist Military Chaplaincy and Modern "State-Protection" Buddhism: A Study of the Mass Military Faith Promotion Movement

Abstract:From 1971 to 1974, the Park Chung-hee regime and the three branches of the military instituted the Mass Military Faith Promotion Movement (Chŏn'gun sinjahwa undong). This gave the three religions with military chaplaincies, Protestantism, Catholicism, and Buddhism, an unprecedented ability to propagate to and convert soldiers. Its original purpose was to "strengthen military power through faith" (sinang chŏllyŏkhwa) to help the South Korean military combat both a growing North Korean military and domestic communist sympathizers. It also aimed to reduce incidents and mental health issues among soldiers. I argue that the Buddhist chaplaincy, only three years old at the start of the Mass Military Faith Promotion Movement, was permanently changed because of it and the current form of the chaplaincy owes itself directly to the developments made during the movement. Not only did the scale and influence of the Buddhist military chaplaincy grow massively during the Movement's four years, but its ideology was also concretized within the zeitgeist of Park Chung-hee's increasing authoritarianism. The chaplaincy became the modem incarnation of Korean Buddhism's militaristic history, namely that of "state-protection" (hoguk) Buddhism, and this ideology has gone mostly unquestioned to this day.