Professor Chai-sik Chung (GRS’64, STH’64)
A Celebration in Memory of the Life of
CHAI-SIK CHUNG
1930—2022
“A deeply beloved professor at STH, Dr. Chung was known for his work as a social ethicist and a sociologist of religion providing scholarship focused on comparative religious ethics that particularly explored the intersections of East Asian religious traditions, society, and Christian theology. Please keep Dr. Chai-Sik Chung’s family in your thoughts and prayers.”
— STH Dean G. Sujin Pak
CHAI-SIK CHUNG
In loving memory
Chai Sik Chung passed away peacefully in Boston in April 2022 at the age of 91. He was predeceased by his beloved wife, Soon Ria Chung, and is survived by his sons Eugene and Warren and grandchildren Caleb Hansu, Chloe, Isabelle and Euan.
Chai-Sik Chung was an American social ethicist and sociologist of religion. After the Korean conflict, he came to Boston at the age of 27 and studied under the late Robert N. Bellah at Harvard Divinity School with whom he had been long associated.
He studied under Walter G. Muelder at the Boston University School of Theology, where he served as the Walter G. Muelder Professor of Social Ethics from 1990 to 2011. As a scholar of comparative religious ethics, he has been a pioneer in the study of social and ethical problems arising from East Asia’s modern transformation. He has published widely in both Korean and English, on social and ethical issues involving globalization and encounters between civilizations, particularly those between Korea, East Asian religious traditions and Christianity. His publications include A Korean Confucian Encounter with the Modern World; Korea, Religious Tradition, and Globalization; Consciousness and History: Korean Cultural Tradition and Social Change; Korean Religion and Society Under Challenge: Continuity and Change; The Clash between Korean Confucianism and Modern Western Civilization; and his culminating work The Korean Tradition of Religion, Society, and Ethics: A Comparative Historical
Interpretation and Looking Beyond (2016).
Dr. Chung taught at Boston University’s College of General Studies, Emory University—Oxford College, Heidelberg College as the Chairman of the Sociology Department, and as the Chairman of Sociology and the Graduate School of International Studies at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. From 1983 to 1987 he served as Director of the Institute of Humanities at Yonsei. In 1986, he served as the Koret Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2003, he was the Luce Distinguished Professor of Korean Christianity at the University of California, Los Angeles and in the following year he served as the Yongjae George L. Paik Distinguished Professor at Yonsei University. In 2011, he retired from the Boston University School of Theology where he is an Emeritus Professor, completing a 50-year teaching career.
Chai-Sik Chung Memorial at Marsh Chapel
Dr. Chung’s son Eugene Chung has generously established a scholarship in his father’s name. Gifts to the Dr. Chai-sik Chung Endowed Scholarship in Social Ethics can be made online here or by check payable to “Trustees of Boston University”. Please add “Dr. Chung Scholarship” to the memo field. Mail to Boston University, Gift Processing, c/o JPMorgan Chase & Co.. PO Box 22605 New York, NY 10087-2605. On behalf of the Chung family, thank you for your thoughtful donation.