Richard D. McBride, faculty member in BYU–Hawaii's the History Department (pictured at right with student), is one of a few in the Unites States who can read both ancient Chinese and ancient Korean. McBride came to BYU–Hawaii last year, and he specializes in Asian, Chinese, and early Korean history.
Additionally, McBride is a member of an organization called the Early Korea Project, which operates under the jurisdiction of the Korea Institute at Harvard University. The purpose of this group is to promote the study and awareness of early Korea in America—because Korean studies is a very small field.
In June, he organized a workshop at the University of Hawaii at Manoa called “State and Society in the Mature Silla Period,” which dealt with the early Korean state of Silla during the Unified Silla period, 668-935 CE. The workshop was held at the Center for Korean Studies at UH Manoa. McBride had arranged for five Korean scholars to give presentations on various aspects of Silla history in Korean. Later this year, on Aug. 5, the same group of scholars will present their research at Harvard University.
McBride was born and raised in West Los Angeles, Calif. He is the second of seven children. During his high school years, he played football and baseball. He also began to develop a profound interest in history and religion in the pre-modern world and enjoyed reading Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology.
His love for history grew while he was on an LDS Church mission for two years in the Korea Pusan Mission. McBride served in the mountains of Korea, and the Buddhist temples and monasteries caught his attention and fed his curiosity. Striving to become an outstanding missionary, McBride said, “I soon realized that, in order to [fully] understand the Korean people and spread the gospel among them, I needed to understand more about their religion and cultural traditions.”
He is married to Younghee. Although they served in the same mission, they met ten years later when introduced through mutual friends. They are now the proud parents of two sons, David, who turned 4 in July, and Sean, who was born this May. (Pictured left: Younghee, Richard, and David McBride)
Originally an unhappy business major at BYU in Provo, McBride said, "My father gave me some advice. He said, 'Son, you have to wake up each morning and go to work. Doing something you enjoy doing is more important than finding a career that makes a lot of money. Because if you are not happy, it will not matter how much money you make.' "
Taking his father's advice to heart, McBride went into academics and studied the history and culture of early Korea and China. In 2001, he earned his doctorate in East Asian languages and cultures at UCLA where he became a specialist in Korean and Chinese Buddhism, and early Korean history.
When asked how he was able to combine studying Chinese religion, Buddhism, and being a member of the LDS Church, McBride said, “If you pay close attention to the teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith and other modern prophets, they have affirmed that truth is everywhere in the world. We need to have the Spirit to know what is true.” McBride believes most world religions teach similar moral principles. He gave an example by using Buddhism, stating, “In the bodhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism, one who puts off enlightenment to assist and save other beings is similar in many superficial respects to how Latter-day Saints understand being a 'saint': service to others, work for the dead, missionary work, and so forth."
Another interest he has is in how people in early and medieval Korea and China practiced religion and understood religious teachings. With this interest, he has written a book, "Domesticating the Dharma: Buddhist Cults and the Hwaom Synthesis in Silla Korea" (pictured right). McBride said of his book: "In a nutshell, my book is about how Buddhism became the dominant religious tradition in early Korea … and deals with how most Koreans came to accept Buddhism and recognize the power of the religion - through the worship and veneration of buddhas and bodhisattvas. In other words, it is about how Buddhism was practiced on the ground in the early Korean state of Silla (ca. 300-935)."
Michael G. Murdock, associate professor of history and political science here at BYU–Hawaii, said of McBride, “He is extremely good at the things I am not good at. He is very good in his knowledge of culture and religion.” Murdock further added that students who learned Asian history from McBride would also receive a good recommendation because of his connection with well-known scholars around the world, including Harvard. He is one of the top two scholars on Asia in the Church. "He is a fun guy and extremely smart. BYU–Hawaii is lucky to have him," said Murdock.
McBride has written more than 16 articles on different topics about Korea and Buddhist culture. The article he is working on now, the "Pak Ch'anghwa and the Hwarang segi Manuscripts," deals with a controversy that scholars and students of early Korea were facing in 1989 and 1995. During that time handwritten manuscripts surfaced that some scholars purported were handwritten copies of early Korean historical texts, lost since the 13th century. Early Korea scholars are divided on the issue. McBride's article, building on the work of several Korean colleagues, argues that these manuscripts are not genuine documents. Instead, they really amount to historical fiction by the man in whose calligraphy the manuscripts are written, he said. So far, McBride said, he is the only scholar in the United States to have written on these manuscripts.
McBride describes his experience thus far at BYU–Hawaii as enlightening and challenging: "I enjoy working with students and seeing them take their own education by the horns, excel, and succeed. I enjoy seeing students develop analytical skills."
--(Top) photo courtesy of Monique Saenz--Photos courtesy of Richard McBride