Since 1968, the largest Buddhist Order in Korea, the Chogye Order, has administered a military chaplaincy. Hundreds of Buddhist chaplains have served over the last six decades, working with hundreds of thousands of soldiers, making the institution the largest Buddhist military chaplaincy in the world. Buddhist chaplains have served on the battlefields of the Vietnam War, endured discrimination from Christian chaplains, and have established a novel form of Buddhist monasticism. Chaplains have also navigated the changing role of the military—and Buddhism—in South Korea’s transition from colonization to independence, and from authoritarianism to democracy. I argue in this book that the chaplaincy is one of the single-most important features of Korean Buddhism’s modernization process, and the institution has continued to mediate and shape Korean Buddhists’ response to modernity. 

This book project is the first comprehensive study of the South Korean Buddhist military chaplaincy in English-language scholarship. In my research, I have been especially influenced by the discourse on lived religion, which aims to bridge the gap between institutional and more personal forms of religiosity. My incorporation of foundational Buddhist texts, Buddhist Order documents, and official military publications reflects timeless issues in Buddhist orthodoxy and displays the institutional power structures that dictate the future direction of Buddhism. However, I also read and translate Korean Buddhist newspapers and journals, specifically to seek out the voices of soldiers and students who were looking to empower themselves while serving authoritative religious and political leadership. In the course of my research, I have developed close relationships with present and former military chaplains, whom I interviewed and collected personal materials from as part of field research in South Korea, to reveal the diversity of their religious experience and the precariousness of their religious identity as chaplains.