Asian Millenarianism: An Interdisciplinary Study of the Taiping a ...

difficult, if not impossible, to fully understand the Chinese and Korean people's millenarian dream. To understand two East Asian peoples' millenarian dream, we need to understand their spiritual and socioreligious roots. These are areas crucial to a full understanding of Taiping and Tonghak millenarianism, but to date few scholarly studies have attempted to pursue a comparative approach and explore this ground in detail. The Taiping has been largely viewed by many prominent scholars either as a movement influenced by Western Christian missionaries or a movement that should be studied within the framework of Chinese-Western relations. Additionally, the Taiping has not been comparatively discussed in relation to the Tonghak movement whose spiritual root was in ancient Korean millenarianism. The Tonghak movement has been viewed from various perspectives as a movement advocating anti-Westernism, an anti-Japanese group, a political organization, and a superstitious cult. Most scholars also have argued that the Tonghak movement was influenced by Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, but in doing so overlook the crucial importance of Korean millenarianism in defining the movement's character. Although the Tonghak movement had a millenarian characteristic, it was significantly different from Christian or Islamic God-related millenarian movements.

This study, then, sets out to provide a comparative analysis of the Asian millenarian movements of the Taiping and the Tonghak, both of which were essentially animated by their own forms of the millenarian dream. It will identify the circumstances in which the movements appeared, study the respective motivations of both the Tapings and the Tonghaks, and examine why the participants joined the movements. The ideological influence of the ancient Korean millenarianism on both East Asian millenarian movements will be also discussed. An ancient Korean civilization seems to have existed before the four ancient civilizations (Egyptian, Chinese, Indus, and Mesopotamian). It is believed to have influenced Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, the Sumerian civilization, Christianity, and the Taiping and Tonghak movements. It also possibly inspired the first millenarian idea in the world.

Finally, existing generalizations as to these movements will be tested with relation to these Asian models, and in doing so some