[KS] Obituary Shim Jae-ryong

[Eunsu Cho]

Could you post this obituary? thanks.


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OBITUARY> Jae-ryong Shim (1943-2004) 
It is with the deepest 
regret that I inform you of the passing away of Professor Jae-ryong Shim, a 
respected expert of Buddhist Studies from the Department of Philosophy of Seoul 
National University, at the young age of 61. He succumbed after a year-long 
courageous struggle against leukemia on Wednesday, October 20th. As one of the 
most distinguished authorities in the field of Korean Buddhism, his loss will 
sadden many scholars of Buddhist Studies. 
After completing his 
undergraduate degree, Prof. Shim had a brief career as a newspaper reporter, 
which he later abandoned to attend the University of Hawaii, to pursue his 
interest in the philosophy of language. After finishing his M.A., encouraged by 
Profs. Kalupahana and Chung-ying Cheng, he changed his course of study to 
Eastern Philosophy. After receiving his Ph.D. on the study of Chinul (a S?n 
Buddhist monk in medieval Korea) in 1979, he returned to Korea to assume a 
professorship at his alma mater, SNU. At the time of his return, the concept of 
Buddhist Philosophy was rather new in Korea and his versatility in both Western 
and Eastern philosophies quickly made him stand out as an authority of Buddhism 
formally trained in the discipline of philosophy. Since then he devoted himself 
to teaching, training many graduate students (the writer included), and 
continued to conduct research at the same university for 25 years. 
He 
published numerous books and articles, both in Korea and overseas. While 
continuing works on the study of Chinul and Korean S?n Buddhist tradition, he is 
also remembered for having raised many seminal philosophical questions 
(especially regarding numerous long-held historical and hermeneutic assumptions 
in Korean Buddhist studies) as part of an effort to set a standard in the study 
of Eastern philosophy, which just emerged as a scholarly field in Korea, 
infusing Korean Buddhological studies with newer Western critical approaches. He 
initiated this discourse in his article "How to Do Eastern Philosophy," which 
received much attention and enthusiasm from many other scholars in the field who 
had felt a pressing need to define the field of so-called Eastern philosophy, 
its own methodology and its scope, and clarify where these needed to be 
distinguished from 
those of Western philosophy. Up to this point Eastern 
philosophy had not established its own boundaries, its differences from the 
philological and textual studies of Eastern classics informed by Western 
scholarship, or the traditional way of studying the classics that had been 
practiced in Korea for a millennium. The outcome of some 
of the sharp 
debates that took place in Korea during this time was collected and published as 
an anthology in 1986, with the title of _Stances in Doing Philosophies in Korea_ 
(in Korean). 
He also is known for his critique of the notion of 
so-called "t'ong pulgyo" (Syncretic Buddhism) ideology that had come to be 
regarded as a "uniquely" Korean characteristics of Buddhism in Korea. As 
expressed in his article "General Characteristics of Korean Buddhism: Is Korean 
Buddhism Syncretic?" (Seoul Journal of Korean Studies 2, 1989), he shook the 
foundations of previous efforts of defining the general characteristics of 
Korean Buddhism and clearly illustrated that the notion of _t'ong pulgyo_ was a 
nationalist construct that had emerged through the work of Ch'oe Nams?n, who 
wrote to counter the colonialist charactererizations of Korean Buddhism made by 
Japanese scholarship during the period of occupation. Ch'oe had responded by 
locating the culmination of the development of Buddhist history in W?nhyo's 
formulation of Buddhism.[1] These works by Shim, as well as other materials were 
collected and published as _Korean Buddhism: Tradition and Transformation_ 
(Seoul: Jimoondang Publishing) in 1999. 
Prof. Shim was known for his 
quick wit, cheerful jokes and smile, and unassuming disposition and manner, 
crowned by an immense amount of knowledge--about almost everything. His 
intelligence was legendary and thus he will be fondly remembered by his 
colleagues and friends as one of the greatest thinkers in the history of Seoul 
National University. 
He is survived by his wife and his two grown 
children. The culmination of his research was just published as _Chinul y?n'gu_ 
(A Study on Chinul) (in Korean) a month before his untimely death. His body was 
cremated and the ashes were place in a jar that was buried in the garden of his 
humble country house in northeast of Seoul, in a bright shiny autumn day. We 
will all miss him and his smile very much. 
(submitted by Eunsu Cho, 
Seoul National University, Dept. of Philosophy) 
Note 
[1] This _t'ong 
pulgyo_ debate brought a significant attention from scholars from overseas -- 
not to mention from Korea, and studies on the subject were followed up by 
scholars such as Robert Buswell and John Jorgensen, and more recently myself. 

      


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-------------------------------------------- 

Eunsu Cho 

Associate Professor of Buddhist Philosophy 

Seoul National University 

Department of Philosophy 

Gwanak-gu, Sillim-dong 

Seoul, S. Korea 151-742 

82 (country code)-2 (city code)-880-6209 (tel) 

82-2-874-0126 (fax) 

escho at snu.ac.kr

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