Attempts to link religious experience to mental illness have a long history. It varies from the concept of "divine madness" of Plato, to the view that the experience of medieval Catholic female mystics as mental illness.
This paper deals with the Korean psychiatric system, which was introduced by the Japanese colonial government and established as an independent branch since the 1960s, how to understand the phenomenon of religion. More specifically, the subject of the paper is religious experience and the social influence of the study of Choi Jae-woo(1824-1864).
Psychiatric efforts to understand our culture from the psychological point of view, rather than the physical perspective of mental illness, have been conducted by Rhi Bou-young and Kim Gwang-il as the with the humanistic academics trying to find our identity.
In contrast to Freud, who regarded religious experience as a regression to infancy, Rhi Bou-young regarded the experience of Choi as a manifestation of the collective unconscious beyond personal dimensions. Although personal and social pain including psychological conflict was an important motive of experience, the experience was the meaningful implementation of collective unconsciousness and the impetus to complete psychological development. In that respect, the religious experience of Choi was the event that evoked the ultimate meaning of life for himself and the contemporaries.
Although Kim Gwang-il took a Freudian viewpoint, Kim's paper has much in common with Rhi's research in his approach and analysis. Kim also searched for the cause of the experience of Choi in an unfortunate life and concludes that Choi relieves personal pain in a meaningful way through pre-oedipal temporary regression. The conflict and suffering were "sublimated" by religious experience. Despite some differences, both of them put emphasis on the adaptability enhancement function of the Choi's religious experience. This reflects the fact that the two are psychiatrists who healed mental illnesses like Freud and Jung.
The researches of Rhi and Kim on Choi were attempts to understand the universality and specificity of human psychology, including human religiosity, in the Korean context. In addition, it was an endeavor to discover identity of Korean by analyzing the religious experience of Choi and his religious thoughts Donghak by the help of Western psychiatric theory.
Moreover, the study of the two has become a watershed that triggered the dynamic trends in our society to understand the interrelationship between religious experience, mental illness, and mental health from a medical point of view. Their research has clearly shown how the healing of individuals with religious experience has been amplified to collective and social healing.
In conclusion, the study of Choi in Korean psychiatry is very crucial for both medical history and religious history of Korea. It is more so in order to fully understand the multi-layered reality of human mind and religion.

It is worth noting that a large number of Buddha's relics of Southeast Asian countries are brought into Korean society under the names of 'gift-giving' or 'donation.' So, the main issue of this article is why the groups/individuals who provide as well as receive Buddha's relics make use of the term 'gift-giving,' which designates a specific mode of exchange. Firstly, some local and international factors are mentioned which make Korean temples keener to acquire Buddha's relics. Secondly, related theories on 'gift' or 'gift-giving' are introduced, and multiple meanings/mechanisms of gift-giving or gift-exchanging were discussed by giving specific examples. Thirdly, focusing on Buddha's relics themselves, the following issues are addressed; which relics are movable/alienable and which are not, and whether the status or value of a certain Buddha's relic is intrinsic. For that, this author set up a value-hierarchy/level of Buddha's relics hypothetically. Lastly, it is stressed that every sacred object could be a 'commodity' in the course of its transfer, depending on the specific socio-cultural context the object meets.

In a letter sent from Korea in 1850, Ch'oe Yangop (1821-1861), one of Korea's first native Catholic priests, writes about Barbara, a young Catholic woman whose vocation of celibacy is tested by both Korean society and the Church, and whose wished-for death solves the conundrum of having to choose between her vocation and continued excommunication. This essay highlights the strange narrative as a multilayered text that offers insight into Ch'oe's cultural, psychological, and spiritual identity. Current historiography on Ch'oe tends to focus on facts surrounding his life or on aspects of his spirituality that are readily apparent in his writings. This essay supplements such scholarship by deducing the subtexts from a specific instance of Ch'oe's discourse in its relation to his role and his ideals, and by highlighting Ch'oe's unique subjective and cultural situation as one of Korea's first priests, with further implications for understanding the culturally and psychologically layered context of early Korean Catholicism. Through a close reading that draws also on Ch'oe's background, his other letters, and the situation of the Korean Church, this study argues that the Barbara narrative functions as a special appeal for the suffering Korean Church, as an indicator of Ch'oe's culturally intermediary position, and as a testimony of spiritual inspiration through contact with a holy woman.

This research empirically analysed relationship between adolescents' participation in religious and cultural activities and their shaping self-identity and community sense, using data available from the Korean Children and Youth Panel Survey in 2016, conducted by the National Youth Policy Institute. The samples are 1,981 number of middle school students in the first year, 1,787 number of high school student in the first year, and 1,689 number of University students in the freshman year. Concerning research methods, four types of participation are classified based on both adolescents' stage of school and their participating in either religious or cultural activities; and the ANOVA(analysis of variance) was conducted to find out whether those participation types are affecting adolescents' shaping self-identity and community sense. Findings of this research show that the types of participation in religious and cultural activities in the first grade of middle school and high school is significantly affecting adolescents' shaping self-identity; whereas not in the case with the first grade of university. Gender difference does not change the result. A significant affect in shaping community sense was also found in all the stage of school according to religious and cultural participation types. In sum, adolescents who participated in both religious and cultural activities are found to have strong self-identity and community sense. This research suggests that religious and cultural activities can positively work for those adolescents' shaping self-identity and community sense, who get through problems in school lives and negative emotions.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the aspect of communication that volunteers of religious social welfare organizats experience while participating in community through volunteer activities. For this purpose, 21 volunteers were interviewed at religious social welfare institutions in Gyeongsangnam - do, and Giorgi 's phenomenological descriptive research method was used. As a result, the volunteers are not receiving much attention from their religion and social welfare institutions, yet they volunteer themselves in a voluntary and independent manner to network various resources of the community. Here, the active communication of volunteers and religious sympathy are mediated. I have derived a core theme for volunteers of religious social welfare organizations as follows: “Der Einzelne” who seeks the meaning of a relationship through religious sympathy despite poor communication.