Talk:Religion in South Korea

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 January 2021 and 29 April 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Daki9644 (article contribs).

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 January 2021 and 29 April 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Daki9644.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 07:59, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Buddhist are persecuted by Christians?

I don't know wheter it's true or not, but it's not NPOV und the sources are not very reliable.

THere arent any sources for anything in this article could someone pleasse add more? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.145.63.237 (talk) 06:21, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

There's no such "persecution" anymore, but Korean Christians were highly intolerate of Buddhism, and to some degree still are. There is physical evidence in various regions throughout Korea, particularly in the mountains where Buddhist sites are most prominent; however, I'll try to locate some literary evidence, that is if it's actually necessary for the article. --Bentonia School (talk) 13:55, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Statistics controversy

So much edit wars about numbers. I don't know anything about the issue, but I propose to write your claims here. Write your numbers and any comments here, please. It's better then anonymous changing of numbers. 0xFFFF (talk) 03:17, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I want a solid source. About.com suggests very different numbers - 49% Christian, 47% Buddhist - so we need a solid figure and a solid source, that primarily being the Korean government. --Bentonia School (talk) 13:57, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I've also seen very different numbers for #s of Chondogyo followers, eg http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=shm&sid1=103&oid=003&aid=0003273705 hope this can be clarified.

96.237.232.7 (talk) 20:45, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

http://www.koreanconsulate.on.ca/en/?b_id=81&c_id=355&mnu=a06b04&start=1 suggests that there are 1.13 million Cheondogyo followers in the ROK, which would be quite a difference from 0.1%. Kiralexis (talk) 20:19, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

"ome sources have given the number of adherents of Korean new religions as 7.373.364 million people,"

umm, that seems to be a bit too much :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.96.33.11 (talk) 00:53, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Christianity in Korea

"Religion in South Korea is dominated by the traditional Buddhist faith and a large but declining Christian population". An alleged proof of this is a reference where we have one sentence about it: "in the 1990s church growth in South Korea reached a plateau and membership, particularly among young people, is now declining at up to five per cent per year."[1] Well I don't know from where these informations come from, but this is just an ordinary lie. Reliable sources, such as Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, which base on korean National Census Bureau, show us somewhat different picture, depicting steady growth of christian community in recent years.[2] Ammon86 (talk) 10:13, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I note that the statistics given for the total population percentages of Protestants and Catholics do not match from the opening section to the section on Christianity in Korea. These need to be verified and fixed.134.154.240.39 (talk)

I have heard that most Prot. churches in the ROK are Presb. The article just lumps a number of Prot. churches together. Aren't there any citable numbers available? Also, there is at least one Russian Orthodox church/cathedral in Seoul ( www.korthodox.org/eng/KOM.html) and "Today there are ten Korean Orthodox parishes with several hundred members in South Korea, as well as one monastery" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Orthodox_Church) Kdammers (talk) 06:49, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Section on Unification Church

This seems to be mostly uncited and not really neutral in point of view. I would also question why such a long paragraph is needed when the Unification Church has only a few thousand members in Korea. Borock (talk) 22:48, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

The section seems to be copied from here —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.24.163.189 (talk) 00:29, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Most of the article seems to be copied from the same source. I tagged it as a copyright violation. Borock (talk) 02:32, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Rather than deleting the article, it would be better to find the date where the copyrighted material was introduced and delete from there, forward. If you can find it, we can selectively delete. --B (talk) 03:44, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Never mind, I found it. Many thanks to WikiWitchWest (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) for introducing the text block copied from this source. Sadly, everything else he wrote needs to be checked too. --B (talk) 03:48, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I'm in error, this text is public domain text from the CIA fact book. See [3]. As a publication of the US government, it is public domain and we can use it to our heart's content. --B (talk) 03:58, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorry. My mistake. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.24.163.189 (talk) 13:49, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Me too. I am adding some references to the section. Borock (talk) 14:17, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) There is also this sentence: "Moon, for example, has arranged marriages for his younger followers; United States television audiences were treated some years ago to a mass ceremony at which several hundred young "Moonies" were married." A Blessing ceremony of the Unification Church was not broadcast over public TV, but video links were provided so that couples in remote locations could take part. I wonder what else the CIA has gotten wrong over the years. :-) I will change the sentence to make it more informative.Steve Dufour (talk) 19:49, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Korean Orthodox Church

It needs to be mentioned. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.33.10.214 (talk) 22:49, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Why no § for the largest group?

There are two phenomena of interest here. One is the fact that belief in god/spirits has been at roughly the place it is in Western scientific subculture since Han times amongst the literate classes in Sinitic societies. The other is the reception this gets in the West, particularly in heavily religious countries like the US. The article clearly shows nearly half profess "no religion" and then blithely proceeds to make the entirety of the article about the mutually incompatible (except for being systems of irreason/mysticism) fractions of the other half! 72.228.177.92 (talk) 05:43, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I've made a start on this, but the main article to which it links is currently little more than a stub; but the 2012 Gallup International poll has some extra info on Korea, which I can hopefully add to the main article Tlhslobus (talk) 05:33, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Are you really asking why the "Religion in South Korea" article spends the vast bulk of its time discussing religions in South Korea? It should also be noted that "irreligion" should not (and generally does not) imply atheism.--172.129.14.93 (talk) 07:03, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Pie Graph makes absolutely no sense!

That pie graph has only four sections each looking like an unrealistic exact 25%. The statistics on the caption are obviously more accurate as thery show more than 4 religions and none are exactly 25%. Why does the pie graph not match its caption at all? 64.90.28.18 (talk) 14:12, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Something must be wrong with the rendering on your computer. Pie charts are, I think, rendered as a page is loaded, and my guess is you're using an older web browser. I see 5 different sections, with the sections quite well matching the numbers in the caption. I don't know if there's a fix to make it look right on your computer or not. Qwyrxian (talk) 03:21, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

I think that was it. It's appearing properly now. 64.90.28.18 (talk) 15:16, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

It's just on the mobile version. See here. Jon Harald Søby (talk) 14:45, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Scientology

This blog links to sites mentioning very small numbers of Scientologists: http://rokdrop.com/2005/05/09/scientology-in-korea/. Kdammers (talk) 05:32, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

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Confirmed as correct. Thanks, Cyberbot II. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 21:48, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Errors in demographics > percentages

On the table "The 907 major temples of Korean Buddhism by school (2005)" shouldn't the percentages add up to 100%?

And above, in "Demographic trends of the main religions in South Korea, per censuses" the percentages here reach much higher than 100% as well, which could be misleading and reduce credibility if not properly explained. For example, during the census multiple positive answers could be given, because...

- Artful

Korean shamanism is not Sindo.

There is no word like Sindo or Singyo in korean. Sindo is just translated word of Sinto - the Japanese religion. Usually Korean call Korean Shamanism as Musok, which means shamanism.

Move information to Religion in Korea article?

There is a lot of information in this article and in the Religion in North Korea that concerns Korea before the country was divided. Does it make sense to others to move the majority of that information to the Religion in Korea article (which is pretty empty right now)? Lenoresm (talk) 02:06, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Information should remain in both articles, since they share the same background prior to 1945, and yet religion has developed in radically different ways in the two countries after 1945.--5.94.50.238 (talk) 15:37, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

One could rename Religion in Korea to Religion in Korea before 1945 for information up until the split so as to avoid repeating info in both the North Korea/South Korea articles and then reference that article in each of the two countries' articles on religion. Religion in South Korea and Religion in North Korea could have a briefer summary and then deal more in depth with the post-1945 era. --Erp (talk) 03:42, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

That's what I was imagining, Erp. And it's similar to the way many Korean articles are written, for example, History of Korea, which directs readers to History of North Korea and History of South Korea for events after 1945. Lenoresm (talk) 14:52, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Things do look to be a bit of a mess. I would work on getting the Religion in Korea article looking like a renamed one of before 1945. Once that is done, have Religion in ancient Korea point to it, change the necessary pointers, and remove the duplicate stuff in the two current day Religion of articles. --Erp (talk) 01:01, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Sikhism in South Korea

Main article: Sikhism in South Korea

Sikhism is a minority religion in South Korea. Sikhs have been in South Korea for 50 years. Early Sikh pioneers came to the country as traders and businessmen. The first South Korean gurdwara was established in 2001. There are about 550 Sikhs in South Korea, now recently the Sikhs in South were allowed to acquire South Korean citizenship.

Should get a mention on this page under Other religions. Doremon764 (talk) 04:48, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

References

Rollback of removal of 2015 census data

I note that @TruthInMesopotamia made a large number of major edits including removal of much of the 2015 census data on the grounds that it had been heavily criticized (with almost all the major edits being marked as minor, if they had not been marked as minor I might have manually restored rather than a fullscale rollback). I note the US State Department uses the 2015 data in its reports https://www.state.gov/reports/2021-report-on-international-religious-freedom/south-korea/ I also note that the 2015 census data on non-religious seems to follow from the 2005 census data while the data put in the table seemed completely out of kilter. There may well be useful changes in what I rolled back which should be put back. Erp (talk) 13:02, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

@Erp: I agree. Notice that there has been a recent wave of pushing ARDA data throughout Wikipedia by various relatively new accounts. As it has been already discussed many times before (see the latest one here), census data are the most reliable ones in any case, and they should never be replaced until the next census data are released. ARDA and Pew data are not reliable for a number of reasons. 1) ARDA's data and projections are reproductions of those of the World Religion Database/World Christian Database, which are ultimately produced by a team of the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary; I consulted ARDA's site last year and their data seemed quite reasonable and in line with most countries' censuses, but they have recently been changed with completely different data and projections from the WRD/WCD which are utterly wrong compared to those from censuses and significantly overestimate Christianity in every single country. 2) Pew's data are completely outdated: their latest data for all countries are those collected in 2010; no newer data have been produced since, apart from data for religion in the United States, and Pew's sets of data from 2020 to 2050 (Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures) are pseudodata projections (WP:CRYSTAL) just like those of ARDA/WRD/WCD. Here, together with other users we have been considering the deprecation of these sources.--Æo (talk) 15:51, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

I can think of a few cases where census data is not reliable such as during a civil war when portions of the country might not be surveyed or if government policy is not to survey certain groups. However those should be easily documented. In this particular case the only item cited was Sim, Eui-Yong (2021-12-30). "Religion without Religion - Korean Religion in the Modern Transformation Space Seen by Protestant Missionaries". The Institute for Korean Christianity Culture. 16: 113–140. doi:10.33199/kiccs.2021.16.4. ISSN 2384-0447. which doesn't seem to have anything relevant in the abstract (judging by machine translation). The current article version does say (end of intro) there is some controversy; however, I'm not sure whether it rises to the level of scholarship as opposed to people unhappy with the results. The reference is: Kim Han-soo, Shon Jin-seok. 신자 수, 개신교 1위… "종교 없다" 56%. The Chosunilbo, 20/12/2016. However it seems to be (I'm using machine translation) a newspaper article quoting religious figures not scholars on the census not producing good results. Erp (talk) 00:03, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

positioning of 2005 census as reputable one

I have marked this change in accordance with its significance. I note that @Æo has provided sources that suggest that the 2020 religious data is incorrect, and I have kept the data removed from the article- I also note that they implied that I was somehow colluding with Evangelical organisations to lie about the significance of religious populations on Wikipedia pages (“Notice that there has been a recent wave of pushing ARDA data throughout Wikipedia by various relatively new accounts.”), which is simply incorrect. I however am leaning towards your opinion that the 2020 religious data isn’t very accurate (mostly because you’ve presented it as a projection). Going back to the original point though- the 2015 religious data has gone slightly misunderstood. The 2015 “census” wasn’t really a census at all. The random sharp decline recorded in Buddhism & Catholicism is, according to South Korean Christians, because of the change in methodology. The 2005 census was a real proper census such as those in the west. It was an analysis of the entire population ("whole survey") through traditional data sheets compiled by every family. Everyone was counted, it was comprehensive and very accurate. The 2015 “census”, was not only largely conducted through the internet, which clearly explains the rise in irreligiosity and the apparent decline of religious belief, but limited to a sample of about 20% of the South Korean population. So the 2015 data was not only limited to only a fifth of the population, but the way that sample was chosen specifically and disproportionately affected the results. It was not a census, it was a sample survey at best, passed off as a survey to the country and international community (which is probably why the US government website simply used the census, there would be no reason for them to do any extraordinary research when the word census is used). So with both the 2015 “census” and the 2020 Pew data being clearly discredited- I have kept the 2020 data removed, put the information about 2015 census controversy under its own paragraph along with it’s important context, and created a piechart with the last reputable census data we have form 2005, as Æo said: “…census data are the most reliable ones in any case, and they should never be replaced until the next census data are released.” Considering the 2015 data was clearly not a census, which again is a survey of the entirety of a population not a sample, the last reputable data we have is from 2005. Seeing as the 2015 “census” was almost seven years ago now, let’s hope that there is another one soon and we can update the data. Until then, the 2005 piechart is the best we have. TruthInMesopotamia (talk) 07:22, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

A properly done survey can still give accurate information (sometimes more accurately than trying to ask everyone; almost always some groups will be overlooked, e.g., people who are homeless; a good survey compensates), and, I fully expect the South Korean census bureau to do a proper survey (North Korean census bureau would be entirely different matter). If it had not done a proper survey, I would expect either disclaimers in the results reported or serious criticism from statisticians (not religious leaders who happen not to be statisticians). Now changes in questions can change results (e.g., "What is your religion" versus "What is your religion, if any" versus "Which of the following do you follow, multiple choice"). Such changes or a change from everyone asked that question to only some can be noted in footnotes to the table if reliable sources have noted it as an issue. I have not yet seen anything reliable to cast doubt on the 2015 figures. Erp (talk) 21:46, 19 October 2022 (UTC)