Temple Management

Financial Disclosure Will Enhance Transparency

Hwagyesa Temple Thursday said it would publicize its financial statements from next year. Lay members will be in charge of temple management while monks will solely engage in religious activities, the temple said. Hwagyesa has been running various education programs with the objective of enabling non-ordained members to handle the management of the temple.

The temple's decision comes on the heels of Bongeunsa Temple's disclosing of their financial details Wednesday. Earlier in August, the Seoul Archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church took the lead by opening its financial books for the first time in Korea's Catholic history. The cathedral's move was all the more noteworthy since it has 215 churches in Seoul.

We welcome the recent campaign by religious organizations as it marks a U-turn from the hitherto outdated and corruptive management practices of the past. Faithful implementation of the new system will help them regain the people's trust and contribute to enhancing transparency across the board as well as in religious circles.

Bongeunsa is the largest temple in the prospering Gangnam area in southern Seoul with some 200,000 believers. It said the temple's income reached 9.62 billion won ($10.5 million) while its spending amounted to 8.55 billion won from January to November this year. The temple plans to refer its financial deliberation to outside accountants from next year. ``We have decided to disclose the financial statement in an attempt to show our strong willingness to be reborn as a clean temple,'' the temple said. The temple's head monk confessed the fundamental problem has been the fact that monks possess too much money and power.

As a matter of fact, the nation's Buddhist sector has been the target of a public outcry as it has been tainted by various corruption scandals. Some temples have been in conflict with Dongguk University over the so-called ``sugar daddy'' scandal involving former presidential policy secretary Byun Yang-kyun and former university professor Shin Jeong-ah. The head monk of Magoksa Temple was arrested for having received bribes in return for offering personnel favors.

Major temples have been mired by in-house disputes amid power struggles. Such conflicts have originated from a lack of transparency in their financial management. In the process, many monks were criticized for the alleged embezzlement of money that should have gone to the temple.

In the wake of the series of scandalous incidents, some 1,000 monks and 9,000 believers gathered at the Bongamsa Temple in October in repentance for the wrongdoings. They also pledged to live in accordance with Buddha's teaching. We hope that such a purge will spread to all religious organizations including Protestant churches, which have become extremely secularized with little managerial transparency. We urge all religious organizations to participate in the move to strengthen financial transparency, as it is the only way for them to attain the people's trust and cast off the yoke of corruption.