This new book by Remco Breuker (currently a researcher at Leiden University) is a welcome addition to the growing body of Anglophone literature on Koryŏ Dynasty's (918–1392) ideology, which was recently enriched, among others, by a seminal work by Sem Vermeersch (Seoul National University), The Power of the Buddhas: The Politics of Buddhism during the Koryŏ Dynasty (918–1392) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008). While Vermeersch attempts to deconstruct the popular concept of “state-protecting Buddhism” and shows the full complexity of the relationship between bureaucratic state and Buddhist community it quite successfully attempted to control, Breuker refutes the dichotomizing approach to Koryŏ ideological history, which became a commonplace in the Korean nationalist historiography from the days of its founding father Sin Ch'aeho (1880–1936) onwards. This approach dissects Koryŏ ideology into competing “religions”—Buddhism, Confucianism and “nativism” (supposedly an “originally Korean” line of religious thought and cult, purportedly traceable down to...
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