Migrants in Korea (World Day for Migrants)

On the 26th of April the Catholic Church in Korea is celebrating the 95th World Day for Migrants. There are over 1 million foreigners living in the country. Of that number there are many who have entered into marriage with Koreans. Some are happy but some are faced with many problems. Both Catholic papers had editorials on the migrants this past week.

The migrants in Korea especially those that come from poorer countries and are workers are still finding it difficult. The head of the Bishop’s committee on immigration said there has been improvement but still they are not treated equally. The problems are not just limited to the individual but to the families and the children of these families.

The percentage of marriages of those living in farming areas with foreigners will increase. At present one of ten marriages in Korea are international marriages. On the bus that I take to return to my mission station you have advertisements for foreign brides. The price is listed and all is taken care of by the brokers. The young Korean girls, for the most part, are not interested in spending their life on the farm.

The Catholic Paper had for its lead article the problem of divorce in the migrant woman’s life. When the marriage breaks up they have no place to turn. Since many of the migrant workers come from the Philippines and are Catholic, it is a most pressing problem for the Church. The number of divorces is on the rise. It is not easy to adapt to the Korean Culture. The stress of living in Korea, the need to support the family take a toll on these frail marriages. There is a lot of depression, stress and many woman end up in the world of prostitution. There are also problems with the children of these unions for must of them fail to learn the language well and at times remain outside the culture. The Church sees the need, and although it has been active in this area for sometime, there is more effort and interest necessary in alleviating the many problems that face the whole society.

THOSE YOU KNOW AND DON'T KNOW

A professor at a university in Seoul wrote in our Diocesan bulletin that recently he was giving out leaflets at the entrance to a subway station in Seoul. It was busy with people going to work and he wondered why they all seemed to have a rigid look about them. He would smile at them, giving out the leaflets, and greet them but they would remain with their very stiff facial expression. It was rare he said to find anyone with a kind and gentle expression. Nobody is planning to harm them or threaten them he thought, so why the somber facial looks? He quoted a foreigner as saying all the Koreans look as if they are angry. He agreed with this assessment.

He mentioned that the Japanese, the Americans and other foreigners do smile and look you in the eye and greet you with a short greeting such as “Hi” and the like but with Koreans that is not the case. I am not sure that his evaluation of the situation of the Koreans was correct and so different from the rest of the world . He did go on to say the reason for this is the education that they are given as children.. Koreans are told to be kind to people they know but people you do not know you don't act as if you know them. Consequently when those we do not know smile at us, according to our culture he said we tend to misunderstand it and it causes anxiety. “Is that person kindly disposed to me? “Does that person know me from somewhere?” We are left with a feeling of anxiety.

For the Korean it seems that they are much more at peace when they do not greet the ones they do not know for there is no anxiety. He concludes the article that we should not have a double standard for those we know and those we don’t . He mentioned that in another culture a refined person would even be gentle and kind to the person who he or she had divorced. He concluded that we are still discriminating between those we know and those we don’t and he feels this should change.

I read the article with a feeling that I as an American am not much different from the Koreans. I also have a double standard and would not find it easy to treat those I know and those I do not in the same way. I would like to be less self-conscious but I would not find it easy to smile and greet those I passed on the street. Would that not be considered strange? That possibility he did not mention.

WESTERN CONFUCIAN IN KOREA

I have been following many of the most popular Catholic English blogs for sometime and some years ago was happy to see that there was one right here in our own Country of Korea. I have gone often to The Western Confucian and have rarely been disappointed. I am surprised to see how he keeps it updated and with many Catholic issues taken from around the world.

Webmaster Joshua Snyder lives in Pohang with his family. He lectures English at a science and technology university. He has a link to this blog for which I am thankful and embarrassed. Since we are a baby in blogland we have no links to other blogs. We haven't earned the right yet to be considered a stable blog. It is not an easy task to keep a blog updated and current with the news that it has selected to share. Hopefully we will be a blog with a future but only time will tell. . The Western Confucian has been around since July, 2006 and may it continue for many years. A blog that is updated daily and is interesting to read and has a message to give is a work of great perseverance and vitality. Joshua's blog is catholic and Catholic. I invite you to go see:



My Experience as English Teacher for Grammar School Children

Up until a few months ago I was teaching English at the neighboring grammar school. It was an “After Class English Program”. I started 3 year ago with two days a week, changed to one day the following year. I found it very difficult but continued because it was seen as a help to the children.

An American teaching English to Koreans always gets a good response for they think that it will be an easy way to pick up English. They are quickly disabused of this after a few months of study. Children in grammar school would probably have greater hopes and bigger disappointments.

I tried to do a good job and took the time with the children as a serious commitment. I started off the first year with close to 20 students, went to 14 and this final year I had 7. The interest did not seem to be there and the time the students spent looking at the clock annoyed me but I also waited for the class to end. The students wanted games and expected to be entertained besides learning English. At my age trying to teach English and do it in an entertaining way was just beyond my ability.

I worked very hard on my last class, at that time not knowing it was to be my last class, to prepare a song for them. To learn and to teach the meaning of the words, I selected the song, "Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)".
It took me many hours to prepare the song and I memorized the two verses of the song so that I would have the confidence to teach the words and music since we had no piano or keyboard in the class. I thought that I had a good class prepared. Well it was not to be. The children kept on looking at the clock and I finally lost my patience and told them this class was torture for me and hoped the end would come soon. At the end of class we all left with not much spirit. The following week when I came to the class no one showed up.The students decided that they were going to end the torture and give me a break. I was disappointed that it had to end the way it did but they were telling me that I was not the teacher that they needed. It was also good for me for my efforts were of little use and a retired old man trying to deal with 5th and 6th graders was just too much.

I have a different admiration now for the teachers who can handle the children in their classes. With all the stimulation that the children are getting these days, to keep children interested for 40 minutes is a tremendously difficult task. In Korea as well in the other parts of the world children are children of the 21st century and it takes a teacher of this century to deal with them.

The Korean World Day 2010

The Catholic paper had an article reporting on the trip to Rome of Bishop Jo,
who is the head of the Bishops' committee for youth. The article mentioned the proceedings of the meeting of the international youth leaders. The Bishop said there was a positive change in the Australian Society towards the Church and the youth in consequence of the WYD.

The leaders of the youth movement in the different countries met in Rome for 3 days to discuss the 23rd World Youth Day that was held in Sydney in 2008 and the 2011 WYD to be held in Madrid. This will be the second WYD to be held in Spain, the first was 20 years ago in Compostela, the famous Pilgrimage Site in Spain.

. The WYD are held every three years, during the in-between years there are small
international youth group meetings in Vatican Square.

The Holy Father has designated themes to be considered during the years leading up to the WYD.

This year:(Timothy 4:10 “Our hopes are fixed on the living God.")

In 2010 the theme will be: (Mark: 10:17 “Good Teacher what must I do to share in everlasting life?”)

In the WYD of 2011: (Colossians 2:7 “ Be rooted in him and built up in him, growing ever stronger in faith.”

Next year the second Korean World Youth Day will be held in Ui Jeong Bu. The Bishop said that we are not having a KWD just to have a KWD but a time to relate with the youth of other dioceses and to exchange ideas. The Bishop hopes that the youth will take these themes that the Pope has given and use them to prepare our own
KWD. He hopes that someday they will be able to host the WYD.


The Bishop mentioned that the early disciples of
Christ were in their age bracket and asked that they be missionaries in giving the Church to the world and carrying this out in their lives.

The First Non-matyred Korean Saint?

One of the editorials in the Catholic Paper this past week was about the second Korean priest, Choe Yang Eop (Thomas). April 15 was the 160^th year of his ordination. He is being proposed for beatification with 124 Korean martyrs. He will be the first non-martyred Saint. His cause is separated from those of the martyrs. He worked for 12 years in pastoral work among his Korean Christians. Kim Andrew was the first Korean Priest but died a martyr’s death shortly after ordination. Fr. Choe was actually the one who helped the Church to grow. He can be considered a Korean Church Father. He was born in 1821 and died in 1861 overworked and dying of typhoid fever.

The editorial went on to say It is sad that the spirituality of Fr. Choe is so unknown among the Christians. They all know he was the second Korean Priest but they are not familiar with his spirituality.

This is also a time it said to look into the life of his mother, Ri Seong Rye. She temporarily denied her Faith because of her bond with her breast feeding son. She was able to overcome her maternal instincts,separating herself from her son and entering jail on her own to face beheading. This example of his mother was instrumental in making Fr.Thomas Choe the heroic figure that he was.

The editorial finishes on hope that he will soon enter the ranks of the Saints and be a new model of spirituality for the Catholics.

The Biggest Church in the World

According to 2005 statistics compiled by the South Korean government, approximately 46.5% of the South Korean population expresses no religious preference. Of the population, 29.3% are Christian (of which 18.3% profess to be Protestants and 10.9% to be Catholics), 22.8% are Buddhist, and the rest belong to various other religions.

South Korea has the largest mega church in the world. The Yoido Full Gospel Church has over 250,000 in attendance on an average Sunday. The membership is well over 800,000. It is reported that the 10 largest mega churches are in Seoul.

The Protestant Church demands a great deal of the Christians. The common understanding would be: no alcoholic beverages, no smoking, no work on Sunday,not to participate in the Korean Confucian Rites and to tithe, besides taking all the teachings of Jesus seriously. The Korean Protestant Church, for the most part would be evangelical and puritan in tradition.

It is difficult to make general statement about the Protestant Churches since they do differ much among themselves. The Yoido Full Gospel Church’s website says that “Full Gospel” means taking literally the Bible and accepting fully and totally all that is in the Bible. They list the Seven Theological Foundations of the Full Gospel as:

Faith in the Cross on Calvary

Faith in the Fullness of the Holy Spirit

Faith in the Spreading of the Gospel to All the World

Faith in the Good God

Faith in Christ Who Carries Our Diseases

Faith in Christ Who Will Return

Faith in Sharing (blessing through tithing)

We as Catholics would have little difficulty with most of this but the emphasis on the Gospel of Prosperity would have to be qualified a great deal.

The following report below was taken from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea.

2008 Annual Report on Religious Freedom in North Korea

“This report is based on a survey of 2047 North Korean defectors who entered in South Korea between 2007 and 2008 and on the data of 345 cases of religious persecutions in North Korea with 252 related persons.

According to the report, 99.7 percent of respondents said they cannot freely practice their religious belief in North Korea. When a North Korean practices or proclaims his/her religious belief in public, possesses religious things, or comes in contact with religious people, he/she is persecuted in North Korea.

Mr. John Yun Yeo-sang, who as an expert member of the CRKP took a charge of the survey and prepared the report, gave suggestions for solution to relieve and prevent the North Koreans from the religious persecutions: a regular monitoring of the reality of religious freedom and persecution in North Korea; working on a method to prevent North Koreans from the religious persecution and help its victims; inter-Korean religious exchanges and examination of a connection between humanitarian aid of the religious world to North Korea and the extension of religious freedom; strengthening official and unofficial religious approaches to North Koreans; organizing an interreligious federation to extend the religious freedom in North Korea; strengthening assistance to North Korean defectors in South Korea in practicing their religious belief; developing a long-term strategy for evangelizing North Korea.”

The Korean Church and Cyberspace

There are a few difficulties for the foreigner living in Korea and one of the least trying is the inability to register on the internet when it is required. We all have a 13 digit registration number. When it is used to access Korean websites most of them do not accept the alien registration. The government keeps on saying this will change and it probably has changed but the websites have not.

Even if this is true Korea has a wonderful internet system. In my understanding they have the world's fastest internet connection speed which will be getting even faster. It is a pleasure to work with the internet in Korea and the after service is just exceptional. All one has to to do is call KT and within a few hours he is at the house and no charge.

The Catholic Church in Korea has a great technical tie up with all the other dioceses for exchange of data but they are not in the forefront of using the internet for communication within the diocese between the Christians and the Diocese.

The Suwon Diocese has taken a lead with the starting of an internet newspaper. It will facilitate the mutual communication of the Christians and the Diocese. Since they are limited by the funds they have: a lot of people involved are volunteering their time and know how. Congratulations are deserved. Hopefully this will be a priming of the pump for the other Dioceses to follow.