Contemporary Religious Landscapes in South Korea : From Diversity to Commonality in a Harbermasian Post-Secular Society

The contemporary religious landscape of South Korea is summarized with three major religions – Buddhism, Protestantism, Catholicism – that monopolize 95% of religious ‘market’ consistently. This paper explains these socio-religious phenomena with historical approach and tries to diagnose it’s implications through Habermas’s post secular theory. First, Korean religious field had been subordinated and passively molded by exogenous socio-political factors such as Japanese colony, the Korean war, and military-dictatorial regimes, and democratization process. The current monopoly of religious market is the result of inter-play between internal dynamics of religion and external social forces.   Although a highly competitive ecology of religions often causes social conflicts, it also makes positive conditions to reflect on Habermasian post-secular perspectives in the public sphere. Also, peculiar tensions between traditional Asian religions (Buddhism and Confucianism) and Western religions (Protestantism and Catholicism) contribute to its realization of the public common good. In particular, Habermas emphasizes the sophistication of epistemic stance of religions in order to actualize conversation between the religious and the secular.  The highly competitive religious situation of South Korea eventually facilitates religious-secular conversation by revising and reinterpreting their own doctrines or social principles.  This research includes many case studies focusing on social debates between religions, as well as between religious institutions and secular ones.