This paper argues that Korean pungsu (風水) represents the most thoroughly religionized form of East Asian geomancy: a case where sacred cosmology achieved maximum social force not by remaining separate from secular institutions, but by being absorbed into them. Drawing on a fieldwork interview with Professor Park Jeong-hae (Hanyang University ERICA), supplemented by interviews with Professor EnYu Huang (National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan) and Professor Aso Shinichi (University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa), the paper identifies three amplifying forces that made Korea distinctive: the classical geomantic vocabulary arrived through elite Buddhist monastic networks, giving it doctrinal depth from the outset; it was re-articulated through Neo-Confucian filial piety, transforming cosmological preference into moral obligation; and the specialist who interpreted it was absorbed into the Joseon state examination system, giving the jigwan (地官) legal authority that translated cosmological claims into property rights adjudicated in court. Rather than merely coexisting, these three forces amplified each other. The result was sansong (山訟, mountain litigation), a centuries-long institution in which sacred claims about the flow of qi through mountain veins were treated as grounds for property rights, and in which rival aristocratic clans litigated over the same grave sites for four hundred years. Taiwan and Okinawa serve as comparative mirrors: Taiwan shows what the cosmology looks like when the state is absent from its mediation, producing communal maintenance rather than legal contest; Okinawa shows what remains when all institutional carriers are destroyed, leaving the cosmology to survive in household objects. Korea serves as the anchor case in which all three forces operate simultaneously, with Taiwan and Okinawa functioning as controlled comparisons: Taiwan isolating the absence of state institutionalization, Okinawa the absence of any institutional foundation at all. Together, the three cases demonstrate that the intensity of a cosmology’s religious life depends not on the strength of individual belief but on the institutional architecture that carries, amplifies, or destroys it.

Ethan Lee, "What Qi Does: Pungsu as Living Religion in Korea, with Comparative Perspectives from Taiwan and Okinawa" International Journal of Scientific Research and Engineering Development, V9(5): Page(955-967) September - October 2026. ISSN: 2581-7175. www.ijsred.com. Published by Scientific and Academic Research Publishing.