Ⅳ. Conclusion
Donghak, which may be called the beginning of Korea's national religions, holds that its teaching came from Dangun. Suun is also called the patriarch of Later-Heaven Seondo (Taoist cultivation). Moral laxity arises from confusion of identity and a lack of logic. That the Korean Wave enjoys worldwide acclaim today has more to do with the Korean origin of the world's cultural genes than with the morality of Korean Wave stars. Rather, Korean Wave stars suffer from moral laxity, as in recent affairs.
The immersion of Korean Wave stars in moral laxity is, from the standpoint of identity confusion, a misunderstanding of the Western tradition, and, from the standpoint of a lack of logic, a deficiency in the interpretation of tradition. This paper has attempted to analyze the problem of moral laxity among modern Koreans, represented by Korean Wave stars, through a reinterpretation of the Dangun Thought tradition by way of the three-dimensional Five Phases and a tracing of the Dangun-Thought origins of the Western tradition.
The Three Bonds and Five Relations, which represent Korean morality, are a distillation of Dangun Thought that can be interpreted through the three-dimensional Five Phases. Woo Chang-su holds that, according to a morphemic analysis of Chinese characters, Hongik Ingan (benefiting all humanity) contains not so much a human-centered thought of benefiting humans as a Heaven-and-Earth-centered thought of cosmic nurturing (cheonji hwayuk). The reason humans must without fail keep the morality of the Three Bonds and Five Relations and perform the many practices that Dangun Thought presents is that Heaven-and-Earth, with infinite merit-power, bestows countless graces upon humans and nature, and one therefore requites that grace. The problem of humanity and of Korean Wave stars today arises from forgetting this grace of Heaven-and-Earth, and this forgetting stems from a lack of understanding of principle and structure. Woo Chang-su holds that the “in” of Hongik Ingan refers not to humans but to the Samsin (three gods). He says the same is true of Donghak's “Innaecheon” (the human is Heaven).
Dangun's economic thought and the Korean Wave call for reflection on the grace of Heaven-and-Earth that humanity has forgotten, and they present a method of problem-solving whereby the many difficult problems humanity now faces can be resolved through the way of requiting the grace of cosmic nurturing (cheonji hwayuk).
The three-dimensional Five Phases shows that the Dangun Thought of the Cheonbugyeong is a principle of natural science, and thereby shows that cosmic nurturing (cheonji hwayuk) is an actual reality. What made the moral laxity of the Korean Wave especially disappointing was that, because the Korean Wave had drawn attention as a moral alternative to a modern civilization grown extremely arrogant through forgetting cosmic nurturing, the extent of the disappointment was great. The Korean Wave now needs to expand from the artistic field into a more moral field. Here there is a point at which the Later-Heaven Great Opening (hucheon gaebyeok) thought that Korea's national religions have attended to is re-illuminated, because Later-Heaven Great Opening thought, like Dangun Thought, combines with morality the three-dimensional Yin-Yang and Five Phases elements grounded in natural science.