Professor Howon(浩園) Lim Hun-jin was born in Sinchon, Seoul in 1949, the youngest son of three sons and one daughter of Professor Lim Geun-soo and First Lady Chung Bok-soon. After graduating from the Department of Sociology and Graduate School of Sociology at Seoul National University in 1967, he earned a doctorate from the Department of Sociology at Harvard University in the United States. He was appointed as a professor of sociology at Seoul National University, his alma mater, in 1983, and retired at the retirement age in 2014. Currently, he is an honorary professor of sociology at Seoul National University and is a member of the Korean Academy of Sciences. Three of Professor Lim Hyun-Chin's various contributions and dedication to Korean social studies and social studies will be remembered. 1) Continuous discussion and contribution to the formation of the theoretical foundation of civil society development theory, revitalization of civil society theory, and direction of development 2) The founding and development of Seoul National University's Asia Research Institute 3) The efforts to criticize and coordinate in the objective position of Professor Lim Hyun-Chin served as the president of various academic organizations, including the Korean Society of Social Sciences, the Korean Society of Social Sciences, and the Korean NGO Association, and founded the Seoul National University Asia Research Institute in 2009 and put it on the rock. Of the 96 academic books he has published so far, about 20 have received the Excellence Award from the Academy, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and Sejong Book Award. Among the hundreds of papers published in domestic and international journals, 10 have been published in world-class academic journals such as SSCI, SCOPUS, A&HCI, 25 KCI registrations, and 10 KCI candidates. Please refer to Professor Lim Hyun-jin's Curriculum Vitae for detailed activities such as his academic background and career. Please refer to the list of his books and papers as an appendix at the end of this article. It is a remarkable achievement. Professor Lim actively introduced social science discourse on neo-liberalism and globalization to Korean society in the late 1980s and discussed them in various aspects. Lim said, "What is Professor Lim Hyun-jin's discussion on the era of complex crisis and global civil society? Lim argues that the risk of globalization is a complex crisis that combines economic crisis, resource crisis, and environmental crisis. He diagnoses that three alternatives have emerged from the perception that the cause of the complex crisis stems from globalization: anti-globalization, rolling back globalization, and alternative globalization. Although the global civil society represented by the Global Justice Movement and the World Social Forum has grown rapidly since the 2000s, Professor Lim points out a number of obstacles to development. These include issues of continuity of solidarity, inequality between social movement organizations in developed countries and social movement organizations in underdeveloped countries, opacity of solidarity activities, and establishing relationships with global civil society and individual countries. Professor Lim reiterates that in order for Korean social movements to be reborn after democratization, the process of globalization of social movements must be viewed from the perspective of transnational solidarity activities. Rather than seeing international solidarity activities as a burden, it is an opportunity to actively utilize them and should be viewed as exercise resources. It is also emphasized that domestic social movement organizations are growing into quality brokers connecting transnational spaces.

This essay offers a concise synthesis of Professor Hyun-Chin Lim’s scholarly world, grounded in my experiences accompanying him both as a student and as a fellow researcher. Professor Lim leaves behind a substantial body of scholarly work, including numerous books and articles; he rightfully deserves to be regarded as a giant not only in sociology but in the broader social sciences. His intellectual trajectory was always undertaken in dialogue with his students and colleagues, thereby offering them the opportunity to “stand on the shoulders of a giant.” From the very beginning of his academic career, Professor Lim’s intellectual footing was broad and multilayered. Although his empirical focus was on Korean society, he never lapsed into methodological nationalism; instead, he consistently maintained a comparative-sociological perspective. From the vantage point of Third World comparative studies spanning Asia, Africa, and Latin America, he examined both the possibilities and the limitations of a Korean model of development. Rare among sociologists, he engaged extensively with political scientists and economists, remaining acutely attentive to global political and economic dynamics. These scholarly concerns are deeply embedded in his research themes and academic contributions. He analyzed “Korean society” within the relational nexus of the capitalist world-economy and the international state system. In studying “Korea’s social development,” he employed an analytic framework that layered the world system, the state, and civil society. He conceptualized the nature of the Korean state as that of a ‘broken nation-state,” a “developmental state,” and later a “strong-middle power state.” Professor Lim sought to articulate a third perspective capable of bridging the divide between premodernist and modernist narratives concerning the formation of the Korean nation. At the same time, he aimed to capture the distinctive dynamics of state formation in East Asia―an important subsystem of the world-system. Within the intersections of these historical and global processes, he theorized the two states that coexist on the Korean peninsula as a broken nation-state, that is, incomplete nation-states. Through this conceptualization, he proposed a dynamic approach to Korean unification, arguing that the stages of integration―from confederation, to federation, to a unitary state―are better understood through the lens of a broken nation-state rather than through the conventional Western notion of divided states. In Korea, where politics and the economy have remained only ‘imperfectly differentiated,’ Professor Lim highlighted the mechanism of the formation and consolidation of se (勢)― clusters of power and influence―to explain how an immature capitalism could persist despite democratic deficits. He proposed a model of Korea’s complex power structure that identifies three interrelated yet distinct dimensions of domination. First, a centralized bureaucratic apparatus spanning the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, functioning as the transmission belt of state power. Second, central and local elites who, while members of civil society, occupy positions of dominance. Third, factional politics shaped by enduring regional cleavages. Through the concept of se, he offered a novel analytic strategy for mediating between structure (state institutions) and agency (ruling classes and dominant groups), thereby providing a new methodological direction for studying domination in Korea. Professor Lim envisioned not only the indigenization of Western theories but also the development―and international dissemination―of original Korean theories. He worked tirelessly to articulate self-referential theoretical frameworks such as dependent development, a broken nation-state, and se. His intellectual vision ultimately took institutional form in the establishment and development of the Seoul National University Asia Center.

This article conceptualizes the current crisis of Korean democracy as a multi-level structural crisis in which institutions, political culture, civil society, the public sphere, the lifeworld, and the East Asian regional order are simultaneously eroding. Drawing on and reconstructing LIM Hyun-Chin’s theory of multilevel democracy, it analyzes how winner-take-all electoral institutions and fandom politics, algocracy-distorted public sphere, bureaucratized and professionalized civil society, the disintegration of care, trust, and reciprocity in everyday life, and the regression of democracy in East Asia interact and reinforce one another. On the basis of a close reading of LIM’s major writings and his long-term policy engagement, the article synthesizes his discussions of life world democracy, social economy and local self-governance, global framing, and transnational civil society into a multilevel transformation model of democracy. This model identifies as core tasks the reconstruction of care and social reproduction in the life world, the strengthening of local democratic infrastructures, the restoration of civil society’s autonomy and movement capacity, the reform of majoritarian political institutions, and the renewal of normative circulation and solidarity between Korean, East Asian, and global civil societies. Paying particular attention to the notion of “rooted cosmopolitan citizenship,” the article argues that Korea’s democratic future depends on citizens who are simultaneously grounded in local life worlds and capable of engaging with transnational norms and networks. In doing so, it reassesses the theoretical and practical significance of LIM Hyun-Chin’s democratic thought and contends that creatively inheriting this multilevel perspective is a crucial task for future research and reform debates on Korean democracy.

This study reexamines the relationship between the theory of mind and human nature (simseongron) and statecraft discourse (gyeongseron) in late Joseon Confucianism through the lens of Seongho Yi Ik’s theory of desire. While the mainstream Confucian tradition of Joseon emphasized self- cultivation as the primary means of regulating human desire, Seongho extended this concern to encompass social institutions and the ethical obligations of public officials. Through his interpretation of the Four Beginnings and Seven Emotions theory, he analyzed the mechanism by which desire degenerates into greed and argued that its proper regulation requires both personal moral cultivation and institutional safeguards. In particular, he advocated strengthening legal systems of reward and punishment―bestowing commendations on upright officials and imposing strict penalties on corrupt ones. Seongho’s conception reflects both his confidence in the innate goodness of human nature and his sober recognition of the practical limits of human desire. He maintained that preventing corruption among public officials necessitates the concurrent enhancement of the scholar-officials’ moral character and the sustained operation of institutional mechanisms. By integrating the theory of desire with practical statecraft, Seongho developed a distinctive form of pragmatic Confucianism that, while grounded in Zhu Xi’s li-qi metaphysics, simultaneously sought concrete reforms in governance and administration. His insights retain relevance in contemporary society, offering implications for anti-corruption efforts and the cultivation of public-sector integrity. In particular, his conviction that both institutional effectiveness and moral education must be reinforced to eradicate corruption remains a meaningful proposition today. Accordingly, Seongho’s theory of desire should be reappraised as an intellectual legacy that not only addresses individual self-cultivation but also articulates fundamental directions for social ethics and administrative institutions.

This study aims to redefine the crisis of religion facing 21st-century modern society not merely as a quantitative decline, but from the perspective of structural changes resulting from a civilizational Great Transition. It further seeks to identify autonomous innovation tasks for Korean Buddhism in response to this. Today, the three massive waves of digital/post-social transition, socio-cultural transition, and demographic/ecological transition possess a paradoxical duality: they are threats dismantling the traditional authority of religion while simultaneously being opportunities demanding new spiritual roles. Within this macroscopic context, this paper multidimensionally analyzes the changes Korean Buddhism is undergoing across three levels: agents, organizations, and institutions. First, the analysis at the level of agents reveals that Korean Buddhism faces crises of absence of intellectual leadership and drifting of religious practice. The path dependence that relied on the past model of passive donors is colliding with the emergence of current autonomous spiritual consumers striving for individual survival, causing severe cultural lag. It was confirmed that because the sangha’s education system fails to cultivate modern intellect and communication skills, believers are degenerating into consumers floating in the spiritual market without doctrinal roots. Second, at the organizational level, rigidity and alienation were diagnosed as key problems. The exclusive hierarchical structure centered on the sangha and factionalism, formed through the historical experiences of colonization and division, run counter to the openness and flexibility required by the period of Great Transition. In particular, even in the face of the demographic crisis of a sharp decline in monastics, the closed nature of excluding abundant human resources ― such as bhikkhunis (nuns) and lay experts ― from decision-making structures results in self-limiting the organization's survival capabilities. Third, at the institutional level, cultural lag and lack of publicness were observed. The legacy of Zen-centrism and outdated State-protection Buddhism has deepened the privatization of practice, which focuses solely on individual inner peace. This has become the cause of Buddhism's social isolation, as it fails to provide a meaningful ethical compass for public agendas of modern society, such as the climate crisis or AI ethics. Based on this multidimensional diagnosis, this study proposes three innovation tasks as an active response to the Great Transition. The first is innovation of intellect. Fossilized doctrines must be reinterpreted into modern language, and a wisdom infrastructure suitable for the AI era must be built to lead believers into becoming reflective seekers. The second is innovation of organization. Democratic governance where the fourfold community participates equally must be established, and temples must be transformed into open practice platforms to restore social trust. The third is innovation of ethics. By establishing Buddhist social doctrines and engaging in public practice that answers civilizational challenges, Buddhism must be reborn as a community that embodies the values of compassion and coexistence as public wisdom. In conclusion, the crisis is not a sign of the end, but a solemn calling urging a rebirth as a guiding light of the times by breaking through the old shell.