This video is titled “The World Remembers You.” Two days ago, Shin Hee-gwon, head of Buddhist Focus—one of the outlets branded disloyal to Buddhism by the Jogye Order—announced on YouTube that it would cease publication on February 15, 2022. Founded in 2006, it is closing after sixteen years.
He cited declining health and continuing pressure from the Jogye Order. People acting at another’s direction reportedly visited almost every day to intimidate and harass the organization. After enduring all of this, he has decided to stop. I want to tell everyone at Buddhist Focus that they have worked very hard. Their principled reporting allowed many people to learn what was happening inside the order. That effort will be recorded and remembered. I sincerely hope Shin recovers his health.
We remember both Buddhist Focus and the national monks’ rally
Today’s subject is memory. We will remember the work done by the news organization Buddhist Focus. At the same time, there is another memory we cannot erase even if we wish to: the Jogye Order’s national monks’ rally of January 21, 2022.
Some may have believed there was sufficient justification for the rally. Yet during a presidential election campaign, demanding the expulsion of a particular National Assembly member and applying pressure to a political party inevitably appeared as religious intervention in the election. The public will not forget the criticism that cultural property not personally owned by the order, and Buddhist believers themselves, were used as leverage for institutional interests.
Memory made religion and civilization possible
Memory is one of humanity’s most precious tools. It made religion, culture, civilization, philosophy, and science possible. A father’s memory passes to his son, and later generations rise upon the shoulders of those before them. Because Gautama Siddhartha’s teachings were transmitted for 2,500 years, we can still study the Dharma today.
In the twenty-first century, memory passes beyond speech and writing, beyond external stores such as books, and enters digital video, websites, and text. Footprints left in history are far harder to erase. What Buddhist Focus did right and where it erred will remain. By the same principle, the Jogye Order’s conduct at the national monks’ rally will not disappear.
In the digital era, the conduct of power cannot disappear
The record will show that, when the entire country was focused on the presidential election and voting was near, Buddhist believers were used as leverage for the order’s interests. Actions asserting that cultural assets belonging to the public were the order’s possessions, demanding more money from government, and pressuring politicians to expel a particular lawmaker are preserved one by one.
Those involved do not appear to understand the magnitude of the wrong. They therefore announced another all-Buddhist mass gathering for late February. Yet before that event could even take place, they had already committed an enormous mistake that would remain in Korean Buddhist history. It will become a dark chapter that cannot easily be erased: powerful and corrupt monks held the rally, and the other monks of the Jogye Order failed to stop it.
We now live in a world where anyone can know
An age has arrived in which informed people can discover what happened without waiting for me to explain every detail. Some members of the public may applaud because they assume anything done by monks must be right. Yet many others judge the world with cool reason and a sound perspective.
Twenty-first-century Korea has high literacy and unusual freedom to express opinions. The power of Hangul helped make our political, cultural, and economic development, and continuing change in public awareness, possible. Language and writing are tools of memory. Because so many people can read, write, and record, authority’s account does not stand alone; citizens’ judgments remain beside it.
Not only direct conduct but silence is remembered
The actions of Jogye monks will not be forgotten, but this is not only about those who acted directly. Silence is remembered too. People remember that Buddhism was silent during periods of democratization, national crisis, and social turmoil.
This time the institution did more than remain quiet: it gathered and held a collective rally during an election campaign. Citizens across the country can recognize and judge that conduct as political, oriented toward group interest, and beneficial to one side.
If another all-Buddhist rally is held, it too will be remembered as election intervention that used believers as leverage, and it will accelerate reform of the Jogye Order. Whether or not that event occurs, I have resolved to achieve reform and will continue speaking.
Those who merely watched wrongdoing are not absent from history
The world remembers what each monk said, what each did, and what each chose to ignore. A person may think that, although the order as a whole acted wrongly, he carries no responsibility because he did not participate directly. But someone who claims right understanding and practice while silently watching the institution’s misconduct lends strength to the privatization of the order through that very silence.
Conversely, the public will remember that Buddhist Focus continued to speak despite the order’s pressure and persecution. An organization can be closed, but neither its records nor the judgments awakened by those records can be shut down.
I say to the monks of the Jogye Order: the world remembers you. It remembers not only speech and action but silence. Abuse committed under the shelter of authority will be judged, and voices raised despite personal cost will remain. This is why you must speak now. Buddhism must cease being an institution afraid of memory and become one that accepts responsibility before it. That is another reason reform must be achieved.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.