The Buddhist Purification Movement in Postcolonial South Korea: Restoring Clerical Celibacy and State Intervention

Korea was colonized by Japan from 1910 to 1945, during which Korean Buddhism was severely Japanized. As a result, Korean monasteries were reorganized according to the Japanese main monastery system, by which Buddhist clerics were bureaucratized and competed for the limited abbot positions. Most of them adopted the practices of Japanese Buddhism, wearing Western-style clothes, taking wives, eating meat, and drinking wine. Korean monks regarded cleric marriage, their having fewer regulations, and living in cities as a more convenient way for them to relate to and assist lay people, as compared to living in monasteries as celibate monks. Cleric marriages already had become prevalent when they were officially approved by the government in 1926.