Eastern Learning and the Heavenly Way: The Tonghak and Chondogyo Movements and the Twilight of Korean Independence

Carl Young is a historian of modern Korea, and this book was published by an independent university press with no tie to Cheondoism or to the Chondoist Chongu Party in North Korea. It is treated in Korean studies as a standard English-language academic history of the Donghak movement Choe Je-u founded in 1860, its transformation into Cheondogyo under Son Byong-hui in 1905, and the movement's part in Korea's late colonial and independence-era politics, including the March First 1919 movement. The book draws on Korean and Japanese language primary and secondary material rather than on the movement's own devotional literature alone. This record has not independently traced a documented history of scholarly rebuttal to Young's specific historical claims. Use it for the documented history of Donghak and Cheondogyo, its scriptures and its founders; a claim about the present day movement in North Korea needs a source that has independently verified conditions there, which this book does not claim to have done.