Abstract

The Seokjeon ceremony (Confucian Memorial Rite), a major Confucian ritual since the Joseon period, has long carried significant symbolic and socio-political weight. Its form changed considerably across Sungkyunkwan and local hyanggyo under modernization, colonial rule, and postwar political change. Under colonial rule, Confucianism was deliberately removed from the category of religion and its functions reduced to that of education, thus turning it into an instrument for promoting imperial ideology. Although Sungkyunkwan regained its formal status after liberation, disputes over officiating the Seokjeon ceremony became a key arena for competing Confucian factions. Even amid this turbulence, Confucian groups actively sought to preserve the ritual’s religious character, most notably through prolonged debates over shifting its date between the lunar and solar calendars—an effort to reaffirm its spiritual legitimacy in the face of Christianity’s growing influence. In recent decades, however, the ceremony has come increasingly to reflect broader East Asian trends that reframe Confucian rituals as cultural rather than religious practices. Achieving heritage designation in 1986, the Seokjeon ceremony today exemplifies the transformation of Confucianism from a lived moral-religious system into cultural tradition and national heritage.