The Yongsan Tragedy Visited Again

The Yongsan redevelopment project and the aftermath are still very much a part of the news in Korea. Six persons were killed, five were protesters and one a policeman. The government and the construction companies went ahead with the removal of the tenants but not all agreed with the compensation that was offered; the refusal to move started the confrontation with the police, ending with a fire and the tragic death of six.

Urban renewal is an important part of any city's development but the problem comes when sufficient negotiation does not precede the removal of the tenants. Some of those who were living or had stores in the area were asking for more in compensation, enough to start again. The force that was shown by the government and the contractors was according to those who sympathize with the protesters returned in kind by the protesters. The protesters are reported to have used thinner to make Molotov cocktails which started the fire and caused the deaths.

In this week's Catholic paper it mentioned that the bishop in charge of pastoral ministry in Seoul made a visit to the site, extending condolences to the families of those who died. He expressed his surprise to see that the incident took place in a building facing the main street. He did not want to get sidetracked by the issue on who was right or wrong ( between the government and the families). There are people that are hurting and the Church should be there. It is difficult to decide who is in the right with both sides saying something different but he did say that we should be on the side of the poor and this was an issue where the poor are hurting.

The families of deceased are asking the government:

1) for the truth concerning the deaths,

2) an official apology from the government,

3) restoring the reputation of those who died.

If these conditions are fulfilled they will stop the demonstration and proceed with the burial of the dead who have been in the hospital mortuary for 5 months.

From the end of March there has been the office of the dead and Masses celebrated at the site of the tragedy. Let us pray that this will end soon with the Government taking steps to solve the impasse.

LOVING THE IDEA OF LOVE

The late rector of the Suwon Seminary is quoted as saying that "we became priests to love many and probably end up loving no one?"

A priest from the diocese reflecting on this found it to be very true in his regard.
There were two very small children who came to the Church to play after school and were a problem for the sisters, the office man and those working around the
Church. The problem could have been the lack of control in the family and the poverty of their up bringing. The Church community tried in many ways to improve their behavior with little change.

One day going over to the Church the priest met the smaller of the two and tried in his best possible manner to treat the child with kindness. "Hi, you have come to the Church!" He made for the door of the Church and the child ran up to him and said: "Father why is it that every time you see me you have a frown on your face?"

That child who was in the first grade, "was able to read my heart". The priest froze at the question of the child. He talked about love, human rights, busy with the pastoral work, communicated with his fellow priests and trying to be all things to everybody but this children was able to see into his heart.

The priest ended his reflection with the Russian writer Tolstoy. He talked a great deal about love for human kind and tried to live this but his wife Sophia said after his death that he was more in love with his idea of love than loving itself. He did not take care of his family. Instead of loving he loved liberty and the equality of love for humanity.

He continued with a quote from the Talmud: "a person who saves one person also saves the world." If we look at the life of Our Lord it is not difficult to see how he related with the individuals that he met. Yes, at times we can be more in love with love than with the actual practice of it in our lives.

The Gift of Mission

In the East Asian Pastoral Review vol. 44 Fr. James H. Kroeger M.M. had an article The Gift of Mission in which he asks , why mission? What ends does mission really serve? The bishops of Asia have grappled with these questions for years. There are over 4 billion people in Asia and only 3 percent Christian. It is an important question. The bishops have collectively asserted: "We evangelize , first of all, from a deep sense of gratitude to God the Father who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing (Eph 1:3). Mission is above all else an overflow of this life from grateful hearts transformed by the grace of God."


He mentioned that it is probably the experience of giving and receiving gifts in Asia that prompted this response on the part of the bishops. He then presents in the "Asian" reflection
three interrelated moments of what might be termed "gift of missiology." Three "R" words capture mission as gift. Recognise, Receive, and Reciprocate. We have to recognize the uniqueness of God's gift. Receive it by personally appropriating God's gift. Reciprocate by sharing God's gift with others.

Mathew 10:8 succinctly captured this in: "What you have received as a gift, give as a gift"
"Without a personal experience of this life received as gift and mercy, no sense of mission can flourish."

It is possibly the lack of this personal experience of having received a gift that makes for the poor showing of our many Catholics at the Sunday Mass and the absence of desire for fellowship with Jesus and our fellow disciples.

My Present Theology of Ministry

This is a section of Fr.Theisen's dissertation written in July,1989 for the Master's Degree in Applied Spirituality. It's titled, "My Present Theology of Ministry." It received a grade of "A++ Superb!" which made me think I may not be as dumb as I thought.

...The next period of my life is one which gave me great satisfaction, contentment, and sense of fulfillment. These are the nine years spent in a town called Bu Pyeong. The experience of Bu Pyeong still greatly influences me. I was a zealous pastor, perfecting my method of conducting the catechumenate by using only the Bible as a text book and developing a First Communion Preparation book for children. It was during this time I was asked to found the Church's Tribunal system in Korea.

The presence of a large U.S, Army camp on one side of Bu Pyeong brought me a great deal of work processing G.I-Korean girl marriages. With 2000 young American soldiers and 6,000 prostitutes in the camp area of the mission, "Front Street" kept me busy. I became defender and priest of the prostitutes, most of whom took up this profession out of dire destitution and sacrificial love of their parents or family. I hasten to add, however, that not all the girls who came to marry G.Is were prostitutes. We had every class of society in Bu Pyeong but from the beginning I had a special love for the prostitutes of Bu Pyeong, those young girls who sacrificed their body and soul to survive themselves, and to save their families from starvation.

The procedure was for a young country girl whose family is starving or who's father or brother needed medical care to tell her family, "I am going to look for work in the city" she approaches the Madam of a house for a loan which she sends back for her father to receive medical treatment, or for an elder brother to go to school. Then she works as a prostitute till her loan is paid back. In effect giving her life to save her brother. I can understand why Jesus said the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of heaven before the Pharisees. These Korean girls are humble, with no pretense, generous, charitable to anyone who needs help and just plain good. beautiful people.

For about nine years, in cooperation with the US Army Chaplains I ran a weekly instruction class for the girls who were marrying Catholic American soldiers. I ran classes teaching these girls how to use American cosmetics, to avoid G.I. barroom English and how to adjust to American living. In all I counselled some 700 such couples. These girls came feeling rejected, guilty, and anxious because everyone despises them for what they are. The U.S. officials particularly placed every possible obstacle in the way of their marriage. I started by assuming they would marry their soldier boy and gave them what help I could to make their marriage a success. Once a girl realized I was on her side, we became close friends. That Army camp is closed now and my girls have grown up but I love them still. Those I am still in contact with are now middle aged matrons with children in high school or college, who have successfully adjusted to life in the U.S. with their husbands. How proud I feel when one or other searches me out to show off their children!

The question sometimes comes to my mind. Why do I feel so close to these prostitutes? All I know is that I still feel proud of that period in my life when I could walk from one end to the other of Front Street in Bu Pyeong without being accosted by any of the 6,000 girls who walked the streets there. If a new girl in town did try to spear me she would be pulled back by the other girls with the indignant explanation, You don't call out to him. That's Father Tai . He's Our Priest.O




ur Priest. I am still proud to be Their Priest!

A Catholic Priest Visiting Nagasaki

A priest with his fellow seminary professors made a trip to Nagasaki and these are some of his impressions.


The Church in Nagasaki has the largest number of Christians in the Country with about 5% of the population Catholic. The Catholic population of the country is insignificant with this one exception. He was impressed with the ardor and zeal of this small group of Japanese Christians. Today there are more foreign Catholics living in Japan than there are native Japanese Catholics.

The second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and a very large number of Catholics were
killed. He mentioned Dr. Nagai Takashi who tried to understand how a loving God could allow such a tragedy to happen. He was injured in the blast, his wife was killed; he lived in a hovel that he had made, with his two children. (For an introduction to Dr. Nagai go here: During the years before his death he helped many who were injured, with a team that he had formed and worked to exhaustion. He wrote much in the few years before his death- the Bell of Nagasaki is his best known work. )

He had many question that he asked. Is there a connection between the end of the war and the destruction of Nagasaki? His conclusion was that Nagasaki was the table of sacrifice for the sins of humankind for the second world war ; the blood and sacrifice of the holy city of Nagasaki was part of the atonement, the sacrificial lamb. (I noticed in a comment to a blog that mentioned that in Hiroshima the feeling was : "look what you foreigners have done" in Nagasaki it was, "Never Again". I would like to think that is the Christian influence of Nagasaki. )


The priest spent some time with the Korean missionaries working in Japan and was impressed on how close they were with the Christians. On a visit to the bishop they were told that he hopes that they can remain in Japan for at least ten years and would like more.

The priest ends the reflection with a comment that it would be better to have the missioners come from Korea than from west: they have much more in common being both Asian. There are many problems between Japan and Korea but working with the Japanese in this spiritual setting can only be for the good of the relationship.

The Korean Potters

A blog taken from the booklet People I Love, written by Fr. Roman Theisen some years ago,
while working in the diocese of Inchon.

Sister David was on the verge of tears with frustration, "And now the old man won't let the children go to school" she wailed.She had just returned from visiting a small village of pot makers. She herself had grown up in a potters' village and understood them.

The potters of Korea are unique. Catholicity was brought to Korea in the late 1700s by scholars who accompanied diplomatic missions to Peking, China, where they met Jesuit missionaries. The 1800s saw virulent persecution of the Catholics in Korea. Many Catholic scholars fled to the isolation of the mountains where they made a living by manufacturing large clay pots, used to store the Korean national dish kimchi, a sort of sauerkraut. Isolated from Korean society, the potters lost their scholarly status and became an uneducated clannish group, a people disdained as low class by other Koreans. Today( this has changed a great deal in the present with the introduction of plastics and other materials) one sees their kilns built into the side of hills throughout Korea. Almost 100% Catholic, they cling tenaciously to their faith, but are slow to spread it to others... after all their ancestors had their heads chopped off for this! They make their pots in the spring and summer, borrowing money to live from the Patriarch of the village who usually owns the kilns. They pay him back when they sell their pots in the fall. Tragically, many spend the winter hibernating, overindulging in drink until work resumes in the spring.

The village of potters from which Sister David had just returned was close to the Church. Sister David had gone to the village every day to teach the children catechism, and to teach reading and writing . We arranged to have them enter school at the level appropriate for their age. The children received the news with joy, clapping their hands with glee. The Patriarch's little son, Peter proudly told me, " I'am going to school just like the city children . I'll be in the Fourth Grade."

But... the Patriarch of the village refused permission for the children to go to school, "it's bad enough for the boys to learn to read," he told me with great sincerity, "But for a girl to learn to read...," he shook his head dubiously. " Have you seen those pagan magazines about romance on the news stands? If our girls learn to read they'll be corrupted by those magazines." I couldn't budge him and left, asking him to reconsider.

A week later I sent Sister David again, "Tell the Patriarch this time that the Pastor feels he has a moral obligation to send the children to school, and I don't see how I can give him the sacraments if he refuses permission. Don't actually threaten that I will refuse him communion, only the Bishop can do that, but make it sound as if I might."

Sister David returned ecstatic. "it worked!" she said. "He's allowing the children to go to school and is sending two of the mothers tomorrow to make arrangements with the school." Twenty children began school that term, walking three miles to and from school.

Some years later I received a letter from two of those boys , one of them Peter, the Patriarch's son. It was an invitation for me to act as honorary Assistant Priest at their First Mass, which they were concelebrating together. Three of the girls from Sister David's reading class who had entered the convent would also be home for the occasion. After the Mass I stood with the two new priests, the three young Sisters, and their families for a family picture. The Patriarch, who was now old and feeble, supported by his daughters as he walked, took my hand. "You were right, Father Tai," he said, " It did no harm to send these children to school." As he spoke I couldn't help but recall the day years before when little Peter, now Father Peter told me so proudly, " I'am going to school just like the city children."

On His 49th Year as Priest

June 11, 2009 4:31 am According to the Korean way of calculating I was 32 when I came here I’m 81, now, What’s the same? And what’s changed? Nothing’s the same And nothing’s changed. The really ‘me’ inside, that Essence – the consciousness inside that mud from Eden that we now know as star dust. A star dies, explodes, its dust gives shape and form to us. Out of space and silence Comes --- us…. The shapes we have at age two, thirty-two, eighty-one. But those shapes and concretions added to us since our first appearance here, whether healthy body, active mind, bad decisions, good works, unhappy failures, joyous accomplishments – none of these things are us. The “I” that is “me” – The conscious awareness – is separate from all these things – it can’t be labeled anymore than what we label “God” can be labeled nor can it pass away any more than “where-it-comes-from” can pass away. Philosophers, theologians, Hindu holy men, sibyls, oracles, holy women, thinkers of all shapes and sizes And often very varying opinions, all are consciousnesses! (There’s a word to tell you how difficult it is to try to place a name on it - ) The Buddhists say God has nine billion names; Saint John said it better: ‘God is love,’ Which is as easily graspable as how many billion stars are in the sky. Love: you and I, he and she, we and they all related, interconnected (hooray for DNA) not only to each other, but to apes and peacocks, taro roots and lily pads, dirt, mud, ice, water, steam – every-thing that is part of us, from exploding stars big bang, before, after, Space, Silence, Two, thirty-two, eighty-one ‘Past’ and ‘future’ are mere mental constructions. The joy is now – this moment now – forever all inter-connected, God is love. Thoughts early on a June morning 49th anniversary of ordination. James Sinnott, MM To learn more about Father Sinnott and his years in Korea click here.