This new book by Remco Breuker (currently a researcher at Leiden University) is a welcome addition to the growing body of Anglophone literature on Koryŏ Dynasty's (918–1392) ideology, which was recently enriched, among others, by a seminal work by Sem Vermeersch (Seoul National University), The Power of the Buddhas: The Politics of Buddhism during the Koryŏ Dynasty (918–1392) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008). While Vermeersch attempts to deconstruct the popular concept of “state-protecting Buddhism” and shows the full complexity of the relationship between bureaucratic state and Buddhist community it quite successfully attempted to control, Breuker refutes the dichotomizing approach to Koryŏ ideological history, which became a commonplace in the Korean nationalist historiography from the days of its founding father Sin Ch'aeho (1880–1936) onwards. This approach dissects Koryŏ ideology into competing “religions”—Buddhism, Confucianism and “nativism” (supposedly an “originally Korean” line of religious thought and cult, purportedly traceable down to the religious practices of Silla's aristocratic youth organization, hwarang, during the sixth to tenth centuries). However, the notion of “religion” as an exclusive site of belonging that makes other spiritual or ideological affiliations impossible or irrelevant is, as persuasively shown by Don Baker in Korean Spirituality (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008), a very modern invention in Korea's case. It essentially came to Korea together with Christianity in the nineteenth century: missionaries used to view conversion to Christianity as incompatible with Buddhist or shamanist “idolatry.” Before this turning point, however, the religious affiliations used to be ambiguous and overlapping. In this way, Breuker's view of early to middle Koryŏ (918–1170) society and its values as pluralist undoubtedly holds water. It hardly makes sense to talk about “competition of different religions” in relation to an epoch when the very notion of exclusive religious belonging did not exist.

The question, however, is whether the pluralist society Breuker describes on Koryŏ materials is something peculiar to the Koryŏ period, or represents a more universal pattern of Korea's religious and ideological history. In a separate chapter devoted to the origins of Koryŏ's pluralistic worldview (pp. 289–317), Breuker names plural narratives of descent (in cases of the royal house and main aristocratic lineages), plural character of Koryŏ diplomacy (in the situation when historical “China” was divided between several competing dynasties), and the pragmatic political habitus which put historical precedents above any ideology as the main sources of early Koryŏ's pluralist Weltanschauung. He also identifies the attempt by Wŏn'gwang (542–640), a famed Silla Buddhist leader, to recognize the inherent contradictions between the requirements of the state and the demands of the faith, and acknowledge both worldviews as equally valid (for different people in different situations) as one possible precursor to Koryŏ's pluralism (pp. 294–301). Breuker's argument is fully plausible, but it has to be added that pluralistic tendencies in Silla ideology were not limited to Wŏn'gwang only, although his Five Lay Commandments which Breuker so convincingly analyzed might be characterized as one of the first attempts to acknowledge the axiological validity of the non-Buddhist worldviews by a leader of Silla Buddhist community.

Much closer to the period Breuker studies, Ch'oe Ch'iwŏn (857–?), a Silla literatus known for his brilliant career in Tang China in 874–84, was adhering to a comparable view, holding that since the ultimate truth is inexpressible, both the differences between the verbalized truths of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, and the potential for their ultimate convergence should be recognized (see Chang Ilgyu, Ch'oe Ch'iwŏn ŭi sahoe sasang yŏn'gu [Research on Ch'oe Ch'iwŏn's social ideas], [Seoul: Sinsŏwŏn, 2008]). Given the prodigious number of articles and books on Ch'oe Ch'iwŏn's ideas and their significance for the future development of Korean ideology published in South Korea in the last decades, it is surprising that Breuker did not pay closer attention to this seminal figure. To be sure, Ch'oe Ch'iwŏn is mentioned for his role in forming the concept of Three Han (pp. 130–31), which Breuker convincingly describes as Koryŏ's “charter policy” (see also pp. 59–62)—but not for his role in shaping the worldview which Breuker rightly deems central for early Koryŏ society. Another plausible theoretical source of the pluralism of the sort Breuker finds in Koryŏ might be the attempts by some renowned Silla Buddhist exegetes, such as Wŏnhyo (617–86), to reconcile doctrinal differences between various Buddhist schools from the viewpoint of transcendent and inexpressible ultimate truth (see Kim Jong-in, Philosophical Contexts for Wŏnhyo's Interpretation of Buddhism [Seoul: Jimoondang, 2004]). However, Wŏnhyo is not even mentioned in Breuker's book, despite his significance for such key players on middle Koryŏ's ideological field as famous royal monk Ŭich'ŏn (1055–1101).

All in all, despite certain shortcomings, Breuker's book offers well-systemized and highly reliable accounts of such important topics as Koryŏ's historical and geographical consciousness and legitimacy construction of its ruling Wang dynasty (pp. 29–147), religious and ideological implications of the monarchical rule (pp. 147–95), Koryŏ diplomacy (pp. 195–257), interplay of different ideologies in Koryŏ cultural life (pp. 257–89), historiography (pp. 317–51), the purported political testament (Ten Injunctions) of Koryŏ's dynastic founder (pp. 351–407), and the 1135 Myoch'ŏng rebellion (pp. 407–47). Breuker's narrative is highly instructive, and opens for us a new perspective for holistic, all-inclusive understanding of early Koryŏ's ideological realities. It certainly will become a must-read for anybody interested in medieval Korean history.