Page 46 - A Dissertation for Doctor of Philosophy

Materialism in Korea

One of the ideologies with which the spirit of the Capitalism is associated is Materialism.

The core idea of materialism is “to accord primacy to matter and secondary position to mind

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(spirit), if it grants any position at all.” Traditionally the Koreans are both relationship-

oriented and DaeEui MyungBun-oriented [the Cause-oriented]. This orientation ensures that

even if something benefits one materially, he or she does not take it if contributes to the erosion

of other relationships or if it is against DaeEui MyungBun. Materialism, however, along with its

kin ideologies like secularism, consumerism, and commercialism, swept away the modern

Korean society during the flood of industrialization.

Eun Joo Kim rightly depicts the changed values of Korean society when she says, “[i]n

traditional society, the relationship between human beings were more important, more highly

valued, than an emphasis on things.” Yet, the order, she continues, “is reversed in the modern

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industrialization society.” Korean historian Tae-Jin Yi even insists that materialism played a

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role in “dismantling the individuality or identity of Korean history.” The Confucian values of
frugality, self-cultivation, and honest poverty were replaced by a capitalistic consumerism and

materialistic success-ism.

81 D. S. Pacini, “Materialism,” in Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling (Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1990), 692.

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Eun Joo Kim, “The Preaching of Transfiguration: Theology and Method of
Eschatological Preaching from Paul Lehman’s Theological Perspective as an Alternative to
Contemporary Korean Preaching” (Ph.D. Diss. Princeton Theological Seminary, 1996), 24-25.

83 Tae-Jin Yi, “Korean History Study: Breaking away from Modernism,” The Review of
Korean Studies 2 (September 1999), 148.