The Floodgates Opened: Clerical Marriage and Korean Buddhist Reform, 1877-1912

This article examines the emergence of clerical marriage in Korean Buddhism between 1877 and 1912, challenging the conventional narrative that casts it primarily as a result of Japanese colonial rule. Drawing on pre-colonial and early colonial sources, this article argues that Korean monastics had already begun embracing clerical marriage─both ideologically and in practice─well before the 1910 annexation and decades before the 1926 revision of the Temple Ordinance regulating Korean Buddhism. The transformation was driven by three forces: sustained interactions with married Japanese Buddhist missionaries who embodied social legitimacy and political efficacy; nationalist discourses linking population growth to state strength; and mounting pressures to secure personal and institutional relevance in the face of modernization. In these pre-colonial decades, Korean monastics observed Japanese priests successfully combining family life with religious authority, fundamentally challenging assumptions about celibacy’s necessity for Buddhist legitimacy. Korean government officials and prominent monks, notably Han Yongun (1879-1944), petitioned for legal recognition of clerical marriage, framing it as essential for national prosperity and Buddhist revitalization. When the Korean State Cabinet approved the practice in May 1910, it marked the culmination of decades of discourse already established on the ground. The colonial government’s 1911 Temple Ordinance attempted to reassert celibacy requirements, but the new regulations did little to curb the already-widespread practice of clerical marriage. The 1926 revision legally allowing monastics to marry was thus reactive rather than catalytic, merely codifying changes already established socially and ideologically.