What One Employee’s Dismissal Reveals about the Jogye Order
On February 28, 2022, a lay employee working at the Jogye Order’s headquarters was dismissed. I call for immediate reinstatement because I regard the dismissal as unjust. More broadly, the case reveals how badly the order operates and why its entire leadership should resign.
The stated grounds included an appearance on a podcast that criticized Jaseung’s pilgrimages as a “walking show” and used phrases such as “figurehead President” and “figurehead Supreme Patriarch.” Whether the employee personally used every phrase was disputed, but the order cited duties of diligence, maintenance of dignity, and basic conduct under its employment rules.
Even an Incorrect Criticism Should Not Lead to Dismissal
Employees must be able to criticize the order and its leaders when they take a wrong path. Correct criticism should obviously be protected. Even when criticism is mistaken, the response should not be immediate dismissal and enforced silence. The order should answer, explain, persuade, and possess enough tolerance to receive criticism.
The saṅgha was originally an equal community. Treating presidents and patriarchs as sacred ranks beyond criticism resembles clerical hierarchy, not Buddhism. Office matters less than whether a person is awakened and lives rightly. An elder may be respected for long practice, but office must not become a sanctuary from scrutiny.
Sixty Years since Founding and Eight Conditions for Monks
When the Jogye Order was founded in 1962, it announced eight principles defining a monk. These standards addressed the disorder left by colonial rule and disputes over married clergy. They included celibacy, a shaved head and robes, practice, a minimum age, abstention from alcohol, tobacco, and meat, and observance of the gravest monastic rules.
Applied today, the implications are clear. Should a monk with a spouse and children, an improper sexual relationship, or a deliberate refusal to shave and wear robes continue to be called a monk? If the order has abandoned its founding standards, it should formally change them. If it retains them, powerful violators must be removed. Diligence and dignity cannot be applied only to critics.
Defeats and the Lie of Pretended Awakening
Killing and violence, theft, sexual misconduct, and grave falsehood destroy monastic qualification. Particularly serious is the claim to awakening by someone not awakened. It does more than inflate personal fame; it leads others into false practice and submission to authority.
I understand non-killing through ahiṃsā, nonviolence. It is not confined to refraining from murder. Its heart is that the powerful must not attack the weak. If someone accused of beating a monk who tried to expose gambling remains a council member or abbot without sanction, the order mocks its own precepts.
Leniency for Power, Severity for Critics
The lecture names controversies involving violence, embezzlement, sexual misconduct, property, temple and kindergarten funds, improper messages, transfers of assets, false academic claims, family allegations, and entertainment venues. The decisive question is whether the order imposed responsibility consistent with the allegations and court findings.
Powerful monks retain office or move to another post despite violations. They continue as presidents, education directors, propagation directors, abbots, and council members. Employees and reformist monks who criticize them face dismissal, expulsion, and suspension from office. Diligence and dignity have become shields for rulers and clubs against critics.
The House of Sharing and Punishment of Whistleblowers
I also discuss the House of Sharing, connected to then-President Wonhaeng. Donations raised for survivors of Japanese military sexual slavery were criticized for not being adequately used for the residents, while an agreement allegedly offered a small monthly payment in exchange for surrendering control over donated funds. If donors were not told this, the arrangement was deceptive.
Employees exposed the problem, yet whistleblowers who deserved protection faced numerous complaints and lawsuits. If money raised for survivors is reserved for institutional projects and those who reveal it are pressured, whom does the institution serve? A board structure through which order-affiliated figures maintain control must also change.
Jaseung, Sangwol Seonwon, and a Performance of Practice
I place Jaseung’s Sangwol Seonwon retreat and temple pilgrimages in the same structure of power. Filming people enduring cold, discomfort, little sleep, and little food in a documentary encourages the public to mistake austerity for exemplary Buddhist practice. Hardship and publicity are not awakening.
A high committee office controlling money and appointments, ceremonial pilgrimages, and welcomes from abbots do not become practice by being called practice. Jaseung has faced criticism over gambling, Gamrosu, money, and power. When the employee who voices criticism is dismissed while the target stays at the center of power, we can see whose “dignity” the dismissal protects.
Jinje and the Authority of Awakening
I criticize Supreme Patriarch Jinje for praising the retreat participants and authorizing misguided austerity as practice. A person with an eye for practice would not elevate trembling in the cold and reduced sleep into a road to awakening. Someone who falsely claims awakening and authorizes false practice commits an especially grave lie.
A statue of oneself, a display of lineage with one’s teacher, and a claim to the seventy-ninth transmission reveal pride and desire for status. Questions about the lineage from Gyeongheo onward cannot be covered by authority. Nor can cultural-property designation that harms neighboring residents be called the action of an awakened person.
Why the Entire Leadership Should Resign
Jaseung should leave the university foundation committee, and Jinje, Wonhaeng, and the broader leadership should accept responsibility. When figures accused of sex, gambling, embezzlement, vote buying, violence, and falsehood retain high office while an employee criticizing them is dismissed for lack of diligence and dignity, the situation is upside down.
Monks who demanded reform in 2018 were also expelled or suspended. An institution that drives out those naming wrongdoing while protecting powerful wrongdoers has lost the capacity for self-correction. The leadership must resign and rebuild consistent standards of law and precept.
Silent Monks Are Not Free of Responsibility
I ask abbots, elders, council members, and ordinary monks what they are doing. Looking away from injustice and remaining silent when speech is required is another form of falsehood. Merely avoiding a verbal lie does not fulfill a precept. Silence sustains a structure when power crushes the weak.
To save beings in the name of Mahayana Buddhism, one must endure humiliation, practice patience, and work for others even at personal cost. The Jogye Order is not the possession of a few political and powerful monks; it is a precious asset of all Korean Buddhism.
Reverse the Dismissal and Return to a Saṅgha Open to Criticism
Reversing this employee’s dismissal is more than a labor dispute. It tests whether criticism will be criminalized or whether the order will return to an equal community in which leaders can be questioned. Dignity is not a ban on criticism. It is a standard that people in power must demonstrate through conduct.
The order should investigate the problems raised and apply the same laws and precepts to powerful figures. Reform begins by protecting those who call wrongdoing by its name and holding leaders who violate the precepts responsible.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.