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The play culture of the Kogurye Period relates closely to work, religion, the New Year and the military arts and reflects the social, political and cultural characteristics of the time. The play culture consists of three kinds of plays. The first one is an individual contest play and is divided into both a hand to hand fight, which has features similar to Kagjo and Subak(wrestling), and training in the military arts such as Kisa(Masang Koongsool). The second is a group contest play and includes Sukjun(a fight with stones), Chookgook(traditional soccer) and Kyugku(traditional polo); it has an entertainment character and provides training in the military arts. The third is Jabhee, led by professional entertainers. The general feature of the play culture of the Kogurye Era is that the Kogurye had very good relations with neighboring countries, and it also had its own individual character. The play was used as a method of training in the military arts. Sometimes performers would have a fierce gang fight for victory when they played. Additionally, a horse-related play, which showed how to ride a horse, was performed having the characteristics of a contest. Professional wandering entertainers who were based in the region were active in the performances. Dividing the characters of the play according to gender, the males were largely fond of a fierce contest play while the females enjoyed a static play which was centered around singing and dancing. This play culture of the Kogurye Period formed a foundation for the Korean play culture of later ages.

This article will look at the overall composition of DongMyung, a magazine from the early 1920s and through Sukjun Park Han Yeong’s article from this magazine we will try to find a sketch of the creation of the modern age from a Buddhist perspective. First, we will look at how DongMyung tried to establish the state of the 1920s and how it distinguished the changes that occurred from five perspectives: the people, origination, current affairs, new knowledge, and literature. Through this we can see that while the 1920s introduction of ethics and the study of the reconstruction of humanity was popular and the inflow of socialism was vigorous, DongMyung handled articles about the tendencies of that time. The concept of the magazine was affected by Sukjun’s article of his Buddhist view of the world. Taking lead of the current flow of the time, magazines tried to take in new knowledge and new culture as a medium, and Sukjun’s thorough Buddhist view of the world as a writer was characteristic as well as having the reader being irrelevant to a certain color of any religion. This composition was hard to see in any other magazine. We can guess the possibility of the magazine’s viewpoint by showing modernization from a perspective different to that of the universal perception of the time. In this perspective Sukjun states that through introspection with the foundation of the Buddhist speculation system we can take action against modernization. Furthermore, he states that it is an indicator of ‘how we should live’. He criticizes and warns against modernism as well as acceptance of it. This action of maintaining the position of a Buddhist and independently accepting modernism shows an aspect of his character.