Venerable Myeongjin

At about 9:38 a.m. on 22 August 2026 Venerable Myeongjin was found floating in the water near Haye Port in Haye-dong, Seogwipo, Jeju. He was taken to hospital and pronounced dead at about 10:28 a.m. He was 75, reported in Korea as 76 by traditional reckoning, with 52 years since ordination.

He was wearing a mask, snorkel, wetsuit and fins, and the coast guard initially believed the accident happened during freediving practice. His funeral committee and family disputed that, saying he had been swimming and making shallow dives inside the calm harbour, and a lay disciple suggested he suffered cardiac arrest. No injuries or signs of crime were found and no autopsy was carried out.

His body lay in state at Seonbuldang hall at Bongeunsa, where mourners included government and party figures. President Lee Jae-myung said the nation shared the grief of losing an elder of Korean Buddhism, and former president Moon Jae-in recalled his role in democracy, peace and reunification movements. A funeral organised jointly by the Jogye Order, Beopjusa and civic groups was held at Bongeunsa at 10 a.m. on 25 August, followed by cremation at Beopjusa that afternoon.

Venerable Myeongjin was born in 1950 in Dangjin, South Chungcheong Province, South Korea. Korean Wikipedia gives his birth date as 9 December 1950 and his secular name as Han Ki-jung.

In 1969 he entered Baengnyeonam Hermitage at Haeinsa to begin life as a postulant. During his military service he fought in the Vietnam War, and on his return he received the novice precepts at Beopjusa in 1974 under his teacher, Venerable Tanseong, followed by the full precepts in 1975. Beopjusa, the head temple of the Jogye Order's fifth diocese, remained his home temple for the rest of his life.

For more than two decades he devoted himself to meditation in the Seon halls of Songgwangsa, Haeinsa, Bongamsa, Yonghwasa and Sangwonsa, completing forty retreat seasons.

According to the biography prepared for his funeral, his move into public life began in 1985, when students in hiding at Haeinsa showed him footage of the Gwangju Uprising. In 1986 he joined the national monks' assembly at Haeinsa that called for Buddhism to be independent of political power. In the late 1980s he chaired a committee against the persecution of Buddhism and led the Mahayana Buddhist Sangha association.

In 1994 he was a standing member of the reform council that opposed a third term for the order's executive head, Seo Ui-hyeon, in what became known as the Jogye Order reform. He then sat on the 11th Central Council and served as its vice chair from 1998 to 2002, and later headed the order's national community promotion body, working on inter-Korean peace.

He was abbot of Bongeunsa in Gangnam, Seoul, from 2006 to 2010. Taking up the post under the motto that a temple should be a temple, he began in December 2006 a thousand day prayer, bowing a thousand times three times a day without leaving the temple grounds. In 2007 he published the temple's budget and finances and brought lay members into its administrative meetings. He left the grounds only once during the prayer, for the funeral of former president Roh Moo-hyun in 2009, and after completing it he went first to the site of the Yongsan disaster.

In 2010 he clashed with the order's headquarters over making Bongeunsa a directly managed temple, alleged political pressure behind the move, and left when his term ended that November. He went on criticising the order's leadership and the government in interviews and Dharma talks. In 2017 a review by the National Intelligence Service's reform committee confirmed that the Lee Myung-bak administration had ordered the agency to track him and that it had stirred up criticism of him online.

The order expelled him in April 2017. He filed suit in 2023; a first instance court ruled the expulsion void in 2025 and the Seoul High Court upheld that in January 2026. Both sides then chose not to appeal to the Supreme Court, the order expressed regret for the hardship he had suffered, he expressed regret for his harsh past criticism, and his monastic status was restored.

As an ordained monk of the Jogye Order he lived a celibate monastic life. In 2011 he became spiritual leader of Danjibulhoe, a practice community formed around him, and he served as a co-chair of supporters for the Baek Ki-wan Nonameki Foundation. In his later years he stayed at Namsansa in Jeju and had taken up sea swimming and freediving there some years before his death.

Myeongjin is remembered as a monk who joined deep meditation practice with outspoken social engagement: a leader of the 1994 reform of the Jogye Order, an abbot who opened a major Seoul temple's finances to scrutiny, and a critic of both his order's leadership and the government who stood alongside people affected by the Yongsan disaster and other causes.

He died only months after his long dispute with the order was settled. On 6 October 2026 the Jogye Order's dharma rank committee decided to confer on him posthumously the rank of Daejongsa, the highest for a fully ordained monk, citing his long practice and social commitment. The certificate, the 25 panel robe and insignia were to be presented at his forty-ninth day memorial rite at Bongeunsa on 9 October 2026, attended by the order's executive head, Venerable Jinwoo.