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Buddhism during the Koryŏ period (918–1392) enjoyed the favor and patronage of the court, aristocrats and commoners alike. Its prominent position in Koryŏ society is reflected in the temples established in the capital, Kaesŏng. Although none of the Koryŏ era temple buildings remain, both the written record and some material remains suggest that Buddhist temples were a dominant feature of the capital landscape. Besides their religious function as places of worship, Kaesŏng temples were also extensions of dynastic authority and centers of economic, cultural, and social activities. Although ritual played an important role in legitimizing dynastic authority, temples were not the main stage for the chief rituals to call for protection of the state: these usually took place in the palace. Temples did play an important role however in the ancestor worship of the Koryŏ dynasty, serving as foci to keep the presence of the dynastic founder and recently deceased kings alive and connect them to Buddhism. Also, a number of the temples established by the dynastic founder, T’aejo, played a key role in the era’s two main festivals (the Eight Prohibitions and Lantern Festival) and some other events, while also serving as headquarters of Buddhist sects. Kaesŏng temples were also occasionally used for political and military purposes, and assisted in charitable events.

After the transition of power to the Chosŏn dynasty and the subsequent shift of the capital to Seoul, the capital of the former dynasty, Kaesŏng, naturally lost its role as the political, economical and cultural center of the Korean state. But its glorious past as a capital city occupied a strong place in the memories of Korean intellectuals. Kaesŏng’s famous historical and cultural sites and scenic places became important national memorial sites to which wandering scholars or travelling officials paid an obligatory visit. In the period immediately following the collapse of the Koryŏ state, Kaesŏng was a must-see site for all those intellectuals who held the old dynasty dear. Later it became a suitable object of contemplation for those intellectuals who were discontented with the political situation in their state or who suffered from world-weariness. The city’s deplorable condition as a former capital made it the ideal place for melancholic and nostalgic feelings, for contemplations on the vicissitudes of life and the transitory nature of man’s actions. This article will focus on the perception of Kaesŏng in a collection of poems written by Kim Si-sŭp, a fifteenth century dissident, and a comparison with the poetry of other intellectuals from earlier and later times.

As one of the earliest professional Korean historians, the activities of Kim T’aegyŏng (1850–1927) took place against a background of Japanese encroach-ment on the Korean peninsula. As a native of Kaesŏng, Kim tried to establish a historical narrative that would acknowledge both Chosŏn and Kaesŏng, the former capital of the preceding Koryŏ dynasty. Confucian by training and conviction, Kim’s criticism of the bankrupt Chosŏn society was harsh, but the fact that he was a Kaesŏng native played a decisive role in the formation of his historical vision. The former capital of Koryŏ had been at the periphery of Chosŏn politics, but despite its low political status or perhaps because of it, Kaesŏng developed into a city with a bustling economic and intellectual life. As a result, tension developed between the focus of the local view and that of the national view in historical narratives from Kaesŏng. Kim and his predecessors made attempts at adopting a bifocal view of history that would be able to reconcile the divergent views of the state center and the region periphery, but the Japanese annexation of Chosŏn in 1910 undercut these efforts and made them futile.

The transmission of Buddhism into Korea in the fourth and fifth centuries led to an initial period of conflict between traditional Korean religious practices and Buddhism as a missionary world religion. There were various ways in which this conflict with traditional practices was resolved—through the repetition of tales of martyrdom and faithfulness to Buddhism, through the emphasis on the filiality of Buddhist adherents to their parents, and through the telling of tales affirming that Buddhism, in a previous age, had been a pre-existent religion in Korea, although now forgotten by the time of the telling of the tale. In this article, the latter phenomenon is examined. Several ancient and modern Korean tales describe the unearthing of Buddhist monuments and statues to affirm a Buddhist presence in the land prior to contemporary times (the time of the tale). This tradition of affirming the antiquity of Buddhism through the digging up of relics was a well-established tradition in pre-T’ang China which arose to demonstrate that the advent of Buddhism did not represent the intrusion of a foreign religion. Four Korean tales from the Samguk yusa belonging to this genre are presented along with some of the Chinese precedents for the tale type, which are discussed in the general context of the transmission of religion from one culture to another.

Although South Korea is ranked highest in the world in terms of IT knowledge and usage, Internet connectedness, and broadband access, so-called ‘digital divides’ are prevalent and salient. These divides are especially dependent on people’s income, education, occupation, and age. The three variables of socio-economic status (SES), namely, income, education, and occupation, are most often used as a measure of class. Korea’s digital formation advanced even within a single year from 2001 to 2002 toward the provision of universal access and the reduction of the digital divide, but the changes were uneven. Awareness of this unevenness enables us to identify the policy priorities set by the Korean government. Training and education have been aimed much more at students or schools than at women; the provision of Internet infrastructure is more pronounced in rural areas. Unlike in the case of knowledge, access, and usage, age and the fact of being a student are the most influential determinants of what people do online in Korea. They are closely related not only in their demographic classification, but also in their social and cultural standings, as a result of a strong emphasis on education and the ‘right age’ for life stages, which are all connected to the ingrained Confucian culture of Korea. This implies that Internet activities are more of a matter of culture than class. This interrelatedness may be a result of their being different faces of the same group: namely, adolescents. What they do for their pastimes and what they do online not only distinguish them in the online subculture, but also contribute to form the age- or generation-specific online culture in Korea.

Susan Choi is one of the most accomplished novelists in America. Her debut work, The Foreign Student (1998), concerns the transition of Chang (Chuck) Ahn (a character based loosely on Susan’s father) from war-torn Korea to a small college in rural Tennessee in the mid-1950s, where he meets headstrong Katherine Monroe, herself in transition in a complex relationship with an older man, Charles Addison. American Woman (2003) focuses also on a transition, ultimately one of self-awareness and self-acceptance, by Jenny Shimada, member of a radical underground group who is entrusted with sheltering a young woman, Pauline, a character inspired by the notorious Patty Hearst kidnapping in the 1970s. This novel was short-listed for a Pulitzer Prize in fiction. Joan Didion, commenting on American Woman, captures Choi’s strengths as a novelist: “Susan Choi in this second novel proves herself a natural—a writer whose intelligence and historical awareness effortlessly serve a breathtaking narrative ability.” On a warm day in May 2004 Susan, seven months pregnant, traveled from her home in Brooklyn to Avery Fisher Hall in Manhattan for this conversation with translator Bruce Fulton.