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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Dear List:</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">After reading Don Baker’s last post, I checked a few sources and arrived at two conclusions.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>One is that Baker (and Gary Ledyard) was right, and I (and Benjamin Weem) was wrong about one thing: The concept of Ch’ŏnju, as used by Tonghak founder Ch’oe Cheu, did contain a great deal of reference to the transcendent.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>To what extent that was the case—whether such transcendence was on a par with monotheism, for example—appears to be a sticking point among students of Tonghak/Chŏndokyo theology.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Nonetheless, Baker was correct in stating that the famous Tonghak/Chŏndokyo concept <I>innaech’on</I>—which continues to be presented as the signature doctrine of the faith in many sources (including those on the Internet)—did not originate with Ch’oe Cheu, that it was a concept created by Son Pyŏnghŭi and is heavily laden with Neo-Confucian metaphysics.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN style="mso-tab-count: 1"> </SPAN>That said, I must add I remain unconvinced of Baker’s following statement: “If a vernacular term for the Lord of Heaven was well known to Koreans in <BR>northern Korea and southern Manchuria in the last quarter of the 19th century (as Ross claims), yet we don't see any use of this term for an indigenous supreme Korean deity in pre-19th century Korean documents, that would suggest that Catholic and Tonghak ideas had penetrated Korean communities all over and around the peninsula, not that that term had long been a part of Korean indigenous spirituality. (We know that there were both Catholics and Tonghak believers in the northern part of the peninsula by the last quarter of the 19th century.) In other words, in the century between when Catholics first began preaching in Korea about the Lord of Heaven and Ross queried Koreans about a vernacular term for the Supreme God Above, this notion of a Lord of Heaven must have spread beyond both Catholic and Tonghak communities and become known to other Koreans as well.”</FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN style="mso-tab-count: 1"> </SPAN>If I understand Baker correctly here, in the above paragraph, he is assuming that the word <I>hananim</I> and its cognates did not exist in Korea before the 19<SUP>th</SUP> century, except the few cases that “Haneul-nim is being used as a Hangeul synonym for Ch’eon as that term is used in Confucian writing.” (Baker’s post of 12/12/03)<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>His point, in short, is that this vernacular was invented in the 19<SUP>th</SUP> century to account for a God that Catholics and Tonghaks vigorously espoused, and that they so succeed in this endeavor that by the early 1870s Ross could say <I>hananim</I> had universal currency among Koreans.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN style="mso-tab-count: 1"> </SPAN>It’s interesting that my sense of what is plausible in this case is completely opposite that of Baker’s.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>My point is this: considering the historical circumstances of Korean Catholics and Tonghaks in the decades immediately preceding 1873—the year Ross visited the Corean Gate in Manchuria—it is extremely implausible that the Catholics and Tonghaks, even together, could have had the kind of profound and widespread impact on the culture such that ordinary Koreans could readily identify <I>hananim </I>with a high god, if not a transcendent God.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> For the most part, in </SPAN>those decades, both the Catholics and Tonghaks were either on the run or in hiding.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>By 1800, the Catholics numbered around 10,000.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>In the following year, they suffered their first major persecution—the <I>kihae pakhae</I>; two more major persecutions followed in 1839 (<I>sinyu pakhae)</I> and 1846 (<I>pyŏng’o pakhae)</I>; and in 1866 (<I>pyŏngin kyo’nan)</I> there began the fiercest persecution of them all, one that continued even as Ross was looking for a Korean language teacher in Manchuria, one that killed about 10,000 Catholics.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>As a result of these persecutions, by 1900 there were only about 42,000 Catholics.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>(This figure is from Baker’s own work: “Sibling Rivalry in Twentieth-Century Korea: Comparative Growth Rates of Catholics and Protestants,” in soon to be published <I>Christianity in Korea</I>, ed. Robert E. Buswell and Timothy S. Lee)<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">What about the Tonghaks?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Have they fared any better?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Hardly.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Between 1860 when Ch’oe Cheu received his revelation and in 1864 when he was executed, he succeeded in attracting a significant following.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It is important to note that in these years, the vast majority of his followers came from the southern provinces—kyŏngsangdo, chŏllado, and ch’ungchŏngdo.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Not many hailed from the northern provinces, let along Manchuria.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>After Ch’oe Cheu’s execution, Tonghaks, like the Catholics, were driven underground, hiding in places like Mt. Taebaek.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Under the leadership of their second patriarch Ch’oe Sihyŏng, Tonghaks regrouped, but only in secret.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It was not till 1871 that Tonghaks would once again come into public eye—when one of their leaders, Yi Piljae, started the organization's first major uprising.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN style="mso-tab-count: 1"> </SPAN>If Baker’s claim is to be accepted, one would, in fact, have to accept the following statement: In the few decades immediately preceding 1873, roughly 50,000 Catholics and Tonghaks, while hiding in deep mountains such as Taebaek or in boondocks where only lowly <I>ong'gijaegnis</I> (potters) would bother to frequent, exercised such a profound and widespread influence on Korean culture that their transcendent deity Ch’ŏnju was universally recognized, with some Koreans coining “<I>hananim” </I>to account for it.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"></SPAN> This sounds rather far-fetched to me.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Given the evidence provided by Ross, I think it is much more in the spirit of Occam's razor to say that the term “<I>hananim</I>” does indeed predate the 19<SUP>th</SUP> century and that it refers to a high god.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Moreover, it appears that there is at least one piece of literary evidence that “<I>hananim”</I> predates the 19<SUP>th</SUP> century.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I stumbled upon this evidence while surfing the Korean cyberspace.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You can check it out at hananim.com (no kidding!).<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Posted on this website is a part of a poem written in pure Korean (<I>hunminjŏngŭm</I>) by the poet Pak Inro (1561-1642), in which <I>hananim</I> (the second vowel in “area a” [or lower a]) is clearly used.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I, however, say “appears” because I am not entirely sure how “<I>hananim</I>” works in this poem, and also because this website seems to belong to a nativist organization that makes outlandish claims about Korea’s antiquity.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But the poem and the word are clearly there, and perhaps someone like Professor Ledyard could check it out for us.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Best Regards,</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Timothy S. Lee</FONT></P><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Brite Divinity School (TCU)</SPAN></BODY></HTML>