New Age is a religious-cultural phenomenon which has been spreading globally since the last part of the 20th century, especially in advanced industrial societies and urban areas, focusing on enhancing individual religious, mental and/or physical capab ...
New Age is a religious-cultural phenomenon which has been spreading globally since the last part of the 20th century, especially in advanced industrial societies and urban areas, focusing on enhancing individual religious, mental and/or physical capability. Since the 1980s, the religious landscape of South Korea has been visibly changed by the popularity of ki-training and the introduction of New Age commodities of foreign origins. Nevertheless, Korean scholars tend to be reluctant to see amorphous or less-structured phenomena like New Age as genuinely ‘religious’. A narrow concept of ‘religion’ or ‘what religion should be’ is, in this way, one of the major reasons why the New Age is not yet established as an important research-field within religious studies in South Korea. This research aims to deliver sufficient materials and conceptual and theoretical discussions for further study of Korean New Age as well as comparative study of New Age. In the first place, a New Age definition was proposed, which is broad enough to comprise non-western counterparts of the New Age, but serves to differentiate it from other religious and cultural phenomena. After the conceptual discussion the ki-training culture which constitues the core of Korean Age was scrutinized, while its a series of important characteriscs are drawn out, like sysncretic, nationalist, global, commodification etc., with their socio-cultural backgrounds respectively. Especially, the attention is paied to the coexistence of globalism and nationalism in some ki-training groups and it is detected that the discourses on those compensate with and strengthen each other. As the last part of the research, the development of New Age in South Korea is outlined chronologically alongside the major events and socio-cultural shift of each period. To summarise, Korean New Age was roughly divided into four sectors according to the degree of organisation and affinity to Korean religious tradition: (a)traditional ki-training; (b) yoga and qi-gong; (c) New Science, alternative or holistic health care, and self-development programmes; and (d) well-being culture. At the conclusion, some accepted theories on New Age were re-examined in light of this presentation of New Age in South Korea. They are New Age as an indication or a symptom of advanced secularisation, as counter culture, as subjective religion or "self-religion'. It is suggested, to understand New Age as a global and at the same time as a very local phenomenon, studies on New Age need to be carried out more in a global context (including consideration of global power relations between western and non-western countries) and from a cross-cultural perspective, instead of being concentrated on western societies and considering the latter as the sole observational field of New Age