from the Supreme God Sangje (Shang-ti in Chinese) and attained enlightenment. Choe Je-u became the founder of the Donghak (Eastern Learning) movement, the prototype of many subsequent Korean syncretistic new religions. Donghak culminated in the unsuccessful Donghak Rebellion of 1894, which was fueled by a combination of religious fervor centering on the millennial visions of a coming messiah and anger regarding Seoul's high taxes. Central to Choe Je-u’s teachings was a belief in Hu-Cheon Gaebyeok(後天開闢), the Great Opening (Gaebyeok) of the Later World (Hu-Cheon), the new age paradise of Donghak, which also later characterized Gang Il-sun’s millenarian vision. Gang Il-sun, in fact, insisted that he was Sangje himself who, prior to incarnating on earth, had bestowed that revelation upon Choe Je-u. Gang "had considerable connections with the Donghak movement, not only ideologically but also geographically," as the village where Gang lived was only four kilometers away from the location where the first uprising of the Donghak revolution began. Later, Gang gathered a number of followers in the North Jeolla province, where he lived, and among them where some members of Donghak. Although he was interested in the religious ideas of Donghak, Gang Il-sun predicted, quite correctly, the defeat of Donghak's peasant militia, and advised his followers not to join it. He believed that the problems of Korea, and human society in general, would be solved through spiritual awakening rather than armed rebellion. Messianic claims After the bloody defeat of Donghak, Gang Il-sun wandered around Korea for three years, surveying public sentiment. In 1900, he returned home and, starting in the years that followed, gathered a sizable number of followers. According to these followers, during the Summer of 1901 he achieved enlightenment on the Moaksan mountain, after forty-nine days of ascetic practices and fasting. In fact, the followers claimed for their spiritual leader much more than enlightenment, as they accepted his claim that he was Sangje, the Supreme Lord, who had bestowed a revelation upon Choe Je-u and had than incarnated in this world to initiate a New Age. According to Daesoon Jinrihoe, the largest movement recognizing Gang as Sangje, his ascetic practices in the Moaksan mountain were performed to open the Great Dao of Heaven and Earth and to exercise judgement on the divine beings and were, thus, more than ascetic practices. The followers also claimed that he judged all deities in charge of the Former World, opened the way