Religious Nones, Globalization, and Confucianism in Korean Society

This panel tries to deal with theoretical perspectives concerned with a specific religiosity of Korean religious nones in the Korean social context. Whether they are religious or spiritual in daily life, their share in Korean religious market reaches almost 50% of the total population even if the ratio is slightly decreasing over the last few decades. Given that Buddhism, Protestantism, and Catholicism manage to occupy another half(Gallup Korea 2014), religious nones are the dominant majority of Korean society similarly to western European countries. In spite of their importance in Korean religious market, there are few academic researches,
or even interest, on who they are, why they select religious nones, what they believe and behave in everyday life, and how they are different or similar in other countries.

Each presenter of this panel respectively approaches to a religiosity of religious nones in terms of globalization and religious market, Korean Confucianism, and the cultural comparison of American and Korean religious nones. In short, the relatively high level of religious nones among Korean young people is related to economic downturn and social instability in parallel with a rapid process of globalization. Nonetheless, most of them behave and think religiously, especially in a Confucian way, in their daily life. It is very difficult to find these features of religious nones by means of quantitative method such as demographic census or uestionnaire
survey. For this reason each paper relies mainly on various qualitative methods. Another interesting thing is that Korean religious nones have a religious preference for Catholicism, while American Christianity continues to lose its share in religious market in contrast to increasing religious nones.

As a result, all presenters would like to have a good chance to share and learn many research results and experiences of European colleagues through serious discussion and criticism expected in this panel.

[Article1]

Globalization and the Rise of Religious Nones among Young Adults Generation in South Korea

By Sung Gun Kim (Professor, Social Education, Seowon University, Cheongju, South Korea, sg97kim@gmail.com)
and Kwang Suk Yoo (Research Professor, Sociology, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, South Korea, ksyooii@khu.ac.kr)

[Article 2]

?Significance of ‘Religious Nones’ in Korea: with Reference to Confucianism

By Jae-Ryong Song (Professor, Sociology, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, South Korea, jrsong@khu.ac.kr)

[Article 3]

A Confucian Religiosity behind a Variety of Religious Categorization in Korea

By Sook Hee Lee (Lecturer, School of Liberal Arts, Ajou University, Suwon, South Korea, sookheey@gmail.com)

[Article 4]

The Spiritual and Religious Lives of Young(er) Adults: Disaffiliation and Re-forming Religious Identities and Institutions

By Richard Flory (Research Professor, Center for Religion and Civic Culture, University of Southern California, LA, USA, rflory@usc.edu)