Chai-sik Chung

Walter G. Muelder Professor of Social Ethics

Th.M.  Yonsei University
B.D.  Harvard University Divinity School
Ph.D.  Boston University

Dr. Chung's publications

Dr. Chung joined Boston University as the Walter G. Muelder Professor of Social Ethics in 1990, bringing international teaching experience to the Muelder Chair. He has taught at a number of institutions, including Boston University’s College of General Studies and in the Department of Sociology and the Graduate School of International Studies at Yonsei University in Seoul. From 1983 to 1987, he served as Director of the Institute of Humanities at Yonsei. In 1986, Dr. Chung served as the Koret Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. In the spring of 2003, he lectured on Korean Christianity as the Luce Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2004, he was invited to serve as the Yongjae George L. Paik Distinguished Professor at Yonsei University lecturing on Korean religion, ethics, and society in the context of cultural globalization. He has published widely in both Korean and English, on social and ethical problems arising from East Asia’s modern transformation. His publications include A Korean Confucian Encounter with the Modern World; Korea, Religious Tradition, and Globalization; Consciousness and History; Korean Religion and Society Under Challenge: Continuity and Change; The Clash between Korean Confucianism and Modern Western Civilization. Dr. Chung has incorporated into his teaching and research the religious and social ethical problems involving globalization and encounters between civilizations with particular attention to Korea, East Asian religious traditions, and Christianity. Professor Chung received his BD degree from Harvard Divinity School in 1959 and his Ph.D. in social ethics and sociology of religion from Boston University in 1964. He served as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Japanese and Korean Studies, University of California, Berkeley, in 1974. He is also affiliated as Associate in Research at Korea Institute, Harvard University.