Professor Kim Kyong-Dong was born in 1936 in Andong, North Gyeongsang Province. He has two daughters with Professor Lee Onjuk. He graduated from Seoul National University with a degree in sociology. He earned his doctorate from Cornell University in the United States. In 1977, he was appointed as a professor of sociology at Seoul National University and retired in 2002. What can be confirmed by shedding light on Professor Kim Kyong-Dong's life and learning is "faithfulness(誠)". Faithfulness is the "end and first" of things and phenomena on the world. Therefore, the attitude and orientation of life 'doing my best to be sincere' are the most honorable. He did his best faithfully in whatever he did throughout his life. Underlying this book, "Modern Sociology(Pakyoungsa)", which is truly epoch-making, is "humanist sociology," or humanistic philosophy and ideas. These philosophy and ideas are well revealed in the “Humanistic Sociology (Minumsa)”, which was published together in 1978. In addition to these two books published in the late 1970s, the basis of both his lifelong research and work contains the value orientation of humanistic sociology. Professor Kim Kyong-Dong's sociology can also be seen as a practical anthropology based on humanistic sociology, as it can be said to be a humanistic system of thought and practical anthropology. The task of humanistic sociology is to pursue the true self and complete the other person while 'interpretation approximation' about the existence of human beings and the essential nature of society. Since his youth as a researcher, he has explored and authored the sociological calling given to him as a "social interest" in humanistic sociology. Professor Kim Kyong-Dong published a masterpiece titled "The Light and Shadow of Seonbi Culture(선비문화)" in 2022. Through this vast station book, it discusses its philosophical ideas, the formation process and characteristics of scholar culture, and modern succession issues with scholars of the Joseon Dynasty. As an "intellectuals who read, accumulate, spread, and practice writing", a concept and analysis framework is being established focusing on scholars, their culture, the power of intellectuals, and power elites. The analysis frame addresses the following key topics. In the shock of the great transformation of civilization, the request of scholar culture, philosophical discourse of scholar culture during the Joseon Dynasty, ideal human image of scholar during the Joseon Dynasty = philosophy and practice guidelines of Sugi(修己), ideal worldview and politics of scholar. It explores and analyzes economic and social ideas and activities, the Seonbi culture of the Joseon Dynasty's power elite, and the new Seonbi culture as the spirit of the times, and further predicts the future of Seonbi culture and humanity. Furthermore, it presents a desirable social value and normative system and culture that our society should pursue in the great transformation of complex crises, risks, and century structural changes. Analysis of the Joseon Dynasty from an ambitious and socio-scientific perspective through the lens of Seonbi and Seonbi culture. It's a problem piece and a masterpiece that I'm reflecting on.

Kim Kyong-Dong is a world-famous Sociologist, establishing the foundation of academic sociology in the development of Korean sociology. This review extends the existing discussions on his sociology and appreciates his recent achievements in terms of his quest for building an East Asian theory of civilizational shift from Western modernity. In contrast to recent theories of multiple modernities, he continues to further develop modernization theory in broad terms of civilizational change from Western materialist culture to culturally matured advanced society. This review introduces and evaluates recent sociological studies provided by him in the following six chapters: (1) reconsideration of Kim’s acdemicism, (2) Kim’s humanist sociology in the era of post-humanism, (3) unfinished modernity and his theory of New Modernization, (4) foundation for East Asian theory of new civilization, and (5) succession of Kim’s theory of civilization. Kim Kyong-Dong’s quest for completing his theory of modernization in terms of new modernization has been fruitfully matured by his renewal of classic East Asian wisdoms such as the Book of Change, Buddhism, Taosim, and Confucianism and finally accomplished with his recent book, [Bright and Dark side of Seonbi Culture: Sociology of Intellectual Power Elite] as a model for new civilization based on Confucian moral values.

This article is a review paper that summarizes Professor Kim Kyong-Dong’s research achievements and academic activities from the perspective of future sociology. It reviews the formation process of sociology and futuristics to show the path how Professor Kim’s research as a sociologist led to future studies. Next, it summarizes the characteristics of futuristics, the principles of future forecasting, and the importance and significance of future research. After clearly showing Professor Kim’s academic achievements list related to future research, this paper analyzes the main contents into five pillars: development, humanism, unique culture of Korea, information society, and the ideal type of future society. Professor Kim struggled to come up with countermeasures, forecasting that the development of science and technology could create a new civilization and enrich human life, but could cause problems such as side effects and maladjustment in the process of institutionalization and individual adaptation. Based on these studies, he recently advocated a new theory that an advanced cultural society should be achieved through the development of "culturally refined" with the touch of oriental culture as the ideal type of a future society that Korean society should pursue. And this paper shows how much Professor Kim contributed to cultivating the soil for future studies in Korea and fostering younger generations through his academic activities. Finally, it introduces what Professor Kim since retirement has actually actively participated in and practiced voluntary community service activities and community movements in relation to future creation which he claimed academically.

This article discusses the fact that event has several uses as an original concept of the human- and social sciences. The concept of event suggests alternatives to the point that the neutrality of observation cannot be secures by permitting pre-theoretic privileges to subject, and that theories draw the present directly from the reality. Since events are carriers of all behaviors and actions, they can enable universal and neutral observation. This new concept consistently hold on the principle of “conditioned co-production”, with two making two. The input of events into the world creates ‘reale reality-horizon-emergent reality’, and at the same time constructs emergent reality in the form of “space-boundary-space”. Also, in terms of time theory, it enables a complex concept of time in terms of memory/oscillation/adjustment re-entry which construct past/present/future together and respectively. Events also generate background/object/observer at the same time. As a result, environment and system are equally, i.e. conditioned by each other, in form of foreign and self reference. This article reconstructs in its own way original discoveries of the calculus of indication by the British mathematician George Spencer-Brown, which Luhmann referred to when constructing the theory of autopoietic systems. Events creat world and systems, environment (foreign reference) and system (self reference), past/future and present, excluded space and included space, in an instant: through a compressed event of entry/reentry, and memory/oscillation/adjustment re-entry as three types of reentry.

This article discusses the modernity of East Asia and presents the reasons why we hould go beyond the modern nation-state to a global citizen community. Modernity usually refers to the era that developed after the industrial revolution in the West in the 18th century. The modern era is a contradictory era in which humans and society are separated from nature and cut off from the past. Modern people divide things and signs, facts and values into dichotomy. The nation-state and the market economy socially represent these characteristics of modernity. East Asia achieved the fastest and most dramatic economic growth in the modern world, but it is also a region that has fallen into the contradiction of modernity. Since the 1990s, the discourse of ‘East Asian community’ has arisen, but it is merely imagining regional bloc, and has failed to create a community based on higher-order solidarity such as tolerance, consideration, forgiveness, and trust. As de-globalization has progressed in recent years, East Asian countries are turning to nationalism and emphasizing the ‘ethnicity’. East Asia modernized under the influence of Western imperialism and internalized imperialism while resisting colonialism. Japan plagiarized and transformed Western imperialism and went down the path of militarism, and China plagiarized it again to establish “neo Sino-Centralism”. For the past hundred years or so, there has been a widespread belief that many problems in East Asia stem from a lack of modernity, and each country in East Asia has put all their efforts into building a strong modern community. Thus, East Asia is obsessed with wealth and power, clinging to identity politics that puts the nation first, believing that humans can mobilize the earth and nature as masters, and fell into the dichotomy of dividing and excluding others. However, this modernity is only an illusion from a philosophical point of view. Also, from a psychological point of view, modern East Asians suffer from the pathology of excessive self-consciousness resulting from internalized colonialism. They act in a complex way, putting East Asia at risk. To get out of this danger, we need to overcome the harmful effects of excessive nationalism and identity politics, heal the excess of self-consciousness, break free from the illusion that modernity is cut off from the past and nature, and overcome the dichotomy that divides this from the other. In today’s reality where climate crises, pandemics, and war risks have become commonplace, it is important to conserve humanity and the planet beyond nations. Therefore, we must not limit the values of freedom, democracy, equality, and peace to nations, pursue the spirit of global citizenship, break away from science and technologyism that represents nature and all things as mere ‘objects’, and establish a philosophy of life. Above all, we need the courage to go beyond the modern community and solve the common problems facing mankind together.

This paper raises an objection, from the perspective of Luhmann’s systems theory, to the idea that we should aim for a new form of Communism through the realization of global solidarity in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. First, the paper examines the concept of solidarity as a value. Despite the problem of double contingency, values are used in ongoing communication as an ‘inviolate level’ and provide a shared basis for communication. However, values are too abstract to select actions. It is interests that motivate actions. Since not everyone can have the same interests, it is impossible to deduce the whole society through solidarity. Solidarity emerges through acts against others within society. Second, the paper explains that the point of view for grasping social problems should be directed not to ‘Wirklichkeit’, but to what one does not see when one sees it, i.e., the underlying ‘Realität’, taking Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’ as an example. Third, the thinking of society as something that can be observed from the outside rests on the distinction between recognition/object, thought/being, and subject/object. These epistemological obstacles are overcome by self-referential autopoietic systems theory. Also, the paper points out that Systems theory introduces functional analysis so that Realität generated through first-order observation is grasped as the result of selection and the contingent emergence that could be otherwise. In order to observe Realität that emerges through first-order observation, We have to shift to a level of second-order observation. Lastly, the paper shows that protests that occur as ‘resistance of communication against communication’ within society test the Realität and enable society to self-correct, and emphasizes that enhancing the ability to reduce complexity by accepting ‘the resistance of communication to communication’ can be a countermeasure against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the life movement in Korea from the perspective of Niklas Luhmann’s sociological systemic theory. In recent years, due to pandemics and climate disasters, the discourse on life has been revived. In particular, since the death of Kim Ji-ha, a representative poet of Korea in the 1970s and widely known as a life thinker since the 1980s, in May, the movement to shed light on the idea of life and the life movement is growing little by little. This study was conceived for the ‘re-illumination’ of the Korean life movement, that is, for re-viewing and re-writing. The lens of re-observation and re-description is Niklas Luhmann’s sociological systems theory. From Luhmann’s point of view, I will look at how the life movement was established and developed. To this end, after briefly reviewing Luhmann’s sociological system theory and the social movement theory based on it, the formation process of the life movement in the 1980s is described from the point of view of autoproduction of ‘another distinction’, and then the semantics of the life movement is described. I want to analyze it from the viewpoint of self-description of ‘another meaning’. In addition, I will try to summarize the significance, limitations, and tasks of the study of ‘Korean Life Movement from Luman’s Perspective’. This study has the characteristics of an introductory study that applies Luhmann’s sociological systemic theory to the study of life movement. It is hoped that the re-technology of life movement through Luhmann will be another stimulus for the evolution of life movement.

PURPOSE The purpose of this study is to discuss the purpose of education, educational content, and educational method of the Buddhist Mass based on the understanding of hidden curriculum and the formal curriculum. CONTENTS In this study, first, the meaning of hidden curriculum and the formal curriculum is reviewed. Hidden curriculum is an unintended curriculum and means an informal curriculum. The formal curriculum is a deliberate and planned curriculum. There are three things to know from the origin of the Buddhist Mass. First, the composition of the Buddhist Mass consists of presenting an offering to Buddha and preaching. Second, the appearance of the Buddha alone triggered learning motivation. This is a characteristic of hidden curriculum. Third, education is provided according to the needs and desires of the believer. The educational purpose of the Buddhist Mass are two. First, it is to realize realistic needs and desires, and to be born in paradise after death. Second, it is for enlightenment. The contents of the Buddhist Mass ‘s education are to clean up the spirit of the temple, to presenting an offering to Buddha, to practice religious precepts, and to listening to Buddha’s teachings. Cleanliness and presenting an offering to Buddha are hidden curriculums and have educational meaning implicitly. Preaching is the formal curriculum. The method of education of the Buddhist Mass is making a deep bow, volunteer activities, perusing(reading Cheon-cu Sutra), listenning to Buddha’s teachings. Making a deep bow and volunteer activities are hidden curriculum. Perusing and listenning to Buddha’s teachings is the formal curriculum. RESULTS The conclusion of this study is as follows. Educational purposes of the Buddhist Mass is enlightenment and to realize realistic needs and desires and to be born in paradise after death. In order to realize the Educational purposes of the Buddhist Mass consists of hidden curriculum and the formal curriculum.