In 1987, the Venerable Sŏngch’ŏl, Patriarch of the Chogye Order, by far the most powerful monastic organization of South Korean Buddhism, published the first Korean translation of the Dunhuang manuscript of the Platform Sūtra. This event shortly preceded the Seoul Olympic Games and the transition of the country from a dictatorship to a democratic regime; it has caused the production of several other translations of the same manuscript, the content of which varies from the quasi-plagiarism of Sŏngch’ŏl to the complete challenging of his doctrinal options. This phenomenon is part of a context formed by a constellation of historical, socio-political, economic, religious data etc, the study of which provides a multidimensional picture of the state of Korean Buddhism and the situation it is in as the republic of South Korea has just celebrated, in 2008, the sixtieth anniversary of its foundation.