The Formation of the Korean Yang-ming-hsueh and the Orientation of Yang-Ming-hsueh of Three Eastern Asian Countries
朝鲜阳明学派的形成与东亚三国阳明学的定位

The Korean Yang-ming-hsueh School came into being in the Chosun Dynasty (1392-1910). The formation of this school is the process of being selectively Koreanized through animadverting under the leadership of T'oegye Hsueh. It is this type of school that has been different from the Chinese and the Japanese Yang-ming-hsueh. In terms of its academic characteristics, Yang-mign-hsueh accepted by Korea is comparatively close to the northern Yang-ming-hsueh in China, while Yang-ming-hsueh accepted by Japan is close to the southern Yang-ming-hsueh in China. The reason why the Korean Yang-ming School has remained undeveloped since its introduction is that the Yang Ming School in north China and its theoretical characteristics have not very well developed. Comparatively speaking, the Chinese Yang Ming School has gone into the folk society from the political layer in its late period, integrating with the folk education. The way taken by the Chinese Yang Ming School was of political and mundane universalism. The Japanese Yang-ming-hsueh was pure knowledge in the control of Confucian teachers or scholars at the beginning, and later, gradually became the ideological weapon by the samurai, who took the course of a cultural nationalism characterized by being both academic and utilitarian. However, Yang-ming-hsueh was introduced into Korea just as a kind of heterodoxy interblended with Chan Buddhism. It was received and spread by the government and the common people in difficult conditions in which the dominant ideology monopolized the whole country. Therefore, the Korean Yang-ming-hsueh couldn't have survived without adapting itself into Neo-Confucianism, which was worshipped as the absolute authority-omething like fundamentalism.