Are Koreans Stingy in their Greetings?

Often we hear that Koreans are stingy in their greetings to one another, unless they are dealing with persons they know well. They are not as quick with their thanks as we are in the West.
In an article in the Korean newspaper the writer did critique his compatriots as slow in greeting people for the first time, such as taxi drivers, people at toll booths, in department stores and restaurants. He mentioned how free we are in the States to great those we meet, even if we don't know them with the
"Howdy" salutation. Koreans would not be as free and he feels it may be due to the formality of the culture.

Koreans are rather effusive he says to an extreme with those they know or want to please and quite the opposite to those they are not on familiar terms. Many years ago I entered a small store and was never even greeted by the owner, even though I was the only one in the store. Things have changed a great deal, the marketing world has made it clear what is necessary to stay in business. "A man without a smiling face must not open a shop" says an old Chinese proverb, understood by all these days. The customer is king.

Many years ago one of my fellow priests gave his altar boys a jacket for Christmas and not a word of thanks from any of them. He found this very hard to understand and mentioned it to the Korean Sister. She told him, "Father, the boys from the day you gave them the jacket they have been wearing it and if you could have looked into their eyes you would have know how thankful they were." The Koreans are not as quick with the words 'thank you' as we would be but they have their own way of thanking and sometimes we miss it.

Koreans often thank you with a gift; more often in this culture than in our American one. The Korean culture does influence them much more than the American culture does us. Their culture is the same for all, we in America have a multiplicity of cultures that have influenced us, giving us much more freedom than the Koreans have.

The writer mentioned that all those who come to Korea and study the language learn very quickly three Korean words: 'hello', 'thank you' and 'I am sorry'. He would like all his compatriots to learn to use these same words. The more we use them the more those who hear them will give answer and we will see change.

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Just to keep you informed on trips to North Korea.

The North Korea Ministries of Foreign Affaires and Public Health have fixed the dates for the two Humanitarian Aid trips to North Korea.

1. November 11 – 14, 2009

2. November 23 – December 8, 2009

The first trip is a U.S. Aid Project for 3 General Hospitals in South Pyong An Province. The Generator Project is designed to insure local hospitals an adequate supply of electricity for critical care sectors such as surgery, diagnostics and lab work.

The second trip is to bring medical supplies for T.B. drug resistant patients and medical equipment for 20 People’s Hospitals in North and South Pyong An Provinces also Nampo City which is the port city for Pyong Yang. The multi-drug resistant tuberculosis medications have given much hope that even difficult cases of tuberculosis can be cured. As a result, chronic tuberculosis patients are beginning to seek out Care Centers where we collect specimens to test for MDR TB.

Asking for a remembrance in your prayers.

Jerry Hammond

Catholic Korean Church's Labor Position

Last week the Korean Catholic Church had a group discussion sponsored by the Bishops' Justice and Peace Committee on temporary workers in the labor force. One of the participants a Columban Father with many years experience in labor work, said that the role of the Church in finances and labor is important and arises from the moral law of the human person.


He goes on to mention that the Church from 1960 to 1980 was involved in these societal problems. But in recent years the Church has entrusted this work to the labor unions and other groups in Society and seems to feel uncomfortable in getting involved.


The Church is now part of the business world in competition with others with hospitals and colleges . The Church's influence in society has increased and labor problems have become more difficult and complicated. When the Church starts talking about the Church's teaching on temporary labor and shows solidarity with labor there is not only a conflict with the government but with persons within the Church who have power and influence. But despite these facts the Bishops' Committee in 2008 did give us a statement on temporary workers. In the following we have a summary of the teaching:


1) When we discriminate in the treatment of the regular and temporary worker, we are not following the Church's teaching.


2) When there is a difference in the pay for the regular and temporary worker doing the same work, even if this is legal it is not just.


3) All the material wealth is for all and when the businesses create new jobs the companies have the duty to use the wealth they have.


4) The Government has to get involved when it is for the common good.


5) The Church should not only be concerned about the migrant workers but also the nation's workers and should get involved in the pastoral care of the workers, especially the temporary workers.


6) The Church's actions in this area should speak louder than the words. The Church in all its institutions and with all its workers should work for the improvement of their condition.

10 years of Ecumenical Cooperation

Back in the beginning of the 70s, in the country area in which I was a pastor the ecumenical relationship with the Protestants seemed very healthy. We got together on the big feast days of Easter and Christmas for some type of ecumenical service. We would parade together singing hymns, carols, and meet in some school yard for a joint service. The relationship with the Protestant Pastor was friendly, we would meet occasionally and I recall him talking to our Catholics and I to his congregation. This changed when I went to the city for pastoral work.

The Peace Newspaper had an editorial with the happy news that the Buddhists , Protestants and Catholics in an area of Seoul have been getting together for the last 10 years sponsoring a Bazaar to help children with incurable diseases.

In Korea we do not have the strife between religions that we often seen in other countries. This is a great blessing. On the "Day of Buddha's Coming" we often see congratulatory messages at entrance to Churches and the same at the temples of Buddhist on our big feast days. Each one showing respect for the other.

However, getting together with other religious groups to sponsor a bazaar is going another step and this has been going on for 10 years. There are three communities getting together and it seems this may be spreading to other areas of the city and the country.

The group has helped 159 children to deal with their diseases and given hope to some for a cure. Over the years they raised close to half a million dollars. The hope is that this will continue to spread and break down some of the walls between different groups in Korean Society.

Korean Anglican Reply to Rome's Initiative

Checking some of the blogs here in Korea to see the response to the recent proposal from Rome was an interesting experience. An Anglican Priest in Seoul had a very fair an honest appraisal of what it will mean to the Anglicans in Korea. I have sumarized some of the points he makes in the paragraphs below.

He feels that a great deal of the problem is that the Church of England has been stalling in their response to woman priests and bishops, which brought this whole thing to a head. Anglicanism in Hong Kong has had women priests from 1944 and the Church has still not made an official decision.

It is true that many Anglican clergymen move over to Catholicism but there are many more Catholic Priests going over to Anglicanism because of celibacy and the whole idea of woman priests which they favor; many Catholic woman have entered Anglicanism precisely because of Catholicism's stand on woman priests.

This proposal from Rome has been in the works for a long time. TAC (Traditional Anglican Communion) have been asking Rome for many years to be accepted. The head of the TAC who was a Catholic Priest became Anglican and is now leaving for Rome: Archbishop John Hepworth, the twice-married and divorced Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, what will be his future ?

The Anglican Priest makes very clear that this is not something new in Catholicism but there is a history of this way of dealing with other religious groups. This happened with the Eastern Churches that wanted to enter Roman Catholicism. There are groups who follow the Anglican Rite and have accepted Catholic teaching,who are following the Anglican Use Rite in their parishes.

The Anglican Church in England is the Established Church; the only one in the whole world that has that relationship with the country it is in. The Church in England has tried to be the Church of all the citizens and this has been one of the problems: lack of any identity.

This Roman initiative is in a way good coming out of evil. Those who have been dissenting about woman priests, bishops and homosexual marriages will now have the chance to leave and that should enable the Anglican Community throughout the world to go on with its way.

"We should not try to hold on to those that are leaving . It is sad to see them go. We have been scarred but they are doing what they think they should and we can go on doing what we think we should. We are thankful that they have found a home in the bosom of Catholicism."

He finishes the blog with a statement in which he says Anglicanism is clearly a gift of God. Anglicanism has accepted women priests and acknowledges homosexual marriages. The Anglican Church should continue doing things in the Anglican way, have respect and patience for other ways of seeing things; this is the message given to other religious groups with their traditional ways of looking at things This is the Anglican way.

He finishes saying this is his own private opinion and is open to any corrections. I thought it was a very fair appraisal, looked at from an Anglican perspective. It is hard for me to understand the reasoning behind all of this and that is precisely why I am a Catholic and he remains an Anglican.

The Cross is the Center of Our Faith

The Cross has been a very important symbol to Catholics from the earliest centuries. It is a sign of God's love and the paradox of life: the instrument used in capital punishment for the worst criminals in Roman society, sign of humiliation and ignominy becomes for us a sign of love and glory.

We sign ourselves with the sign of the cross before prayer, it makes known to us that we belong to Jesus, it reminds us of our baptism where we are signed many times with the cross. There are some differences in the understanding of the cross according to the cultures but for the most part, a profession of faith and a prayer for blessing.

Tertulian who died in A.D.220, is quoted saying: " In all our actions, when we wash, at our meals, before sleep, we make on our forehead the Sign of the Cross.These practices are not commended to us by a formal law of Scripture, but tradition teaches them, custom confirms them, and faith observes them. "

In the Eastern Church they cross themselves from right to left, the way the Western Church did until the 14 th century when we in the West went from left to right. A very small matter but considered important at the time of the Schism.

One of the Korean Priests from Taegu, collects crosses from all over the world as a hobby and has a collection of over 340. The Catholic Times has a brief article on the exhibition he recently had in his parish, a display of about 200 hundred of the crosses that he has collected over his priestly life. They come from all parts of the world. He says: " in his priestly life the Cross is everything, a profession of faith, and his future. I feel that God has not given this interest that I have as some thing private but wants it to be used, so that many will relish the meaning of the cross."

The priest feels that the Eastern Church with its iconography has developed a deeper spiritually surrounding the Cross. The Protestant Churches as a rule do not have the figure of Jesus on the Cross but some words of Scripture which give another quite different meaning to the Cross.

Foreign Brides for our Korean Men.

My pastor mentioned the difficulty he has with a Vietnamese bride of one of his Catholics. She can't speak Korean and he has to prepare the necessary paper work for the marriage. This is not an uncommon occurrence in Korea these days. One of the newsletters mentioned a priest who went visiting one of his parishioners who is Vietnamese with a Vietnamese Religious. They seemed like a happily married couple, poor, the daughter in law faithfully studying her Korean. He left with a prayer that this happiness he saw would continue.

There are over 127,000 foreign wives in Korea.They come from ethnic Koreans in China (48,888), China (30,845), Vietnam (20,942), Philippines (7,601), Japan (5,949), Taiwan (2,043), Russia (877), the other countries (6,806). Taken from Ministry of Public Administration and Security for 2008.

Some of these are happy but many of them are limping along. There is often age difference, language, culture, the mother-in-law problem, poverty, the desire for the homeland. A priest who has the responsibility for social issues in his diocese was very upset by the part the brokers have in recruiting brides for the farmers. He maintains international marriage brokers are responsible for much of the unhappiness experienced by migrant wives. A considerable number of Korean men pay large sums of money to brokers: their foreign wives are considered possessions they have bought and demand obedience from them. Many of these brokers consider themselves saviors of the farm youth and the foreign girls who want a better life. The girls are sacrificing themselves for the family to get a dowry but most of the time it is a pittance. The brokers are in it for the money and many times our Christians are in this trade. There is not sufficient time to get acquainted; they want the money and rush matters which is not good for the union. The farmer has a debt to pay back and the young woman does not know what she is getting into. This does not foretell a happy life.

The priest's dream is that the farmers get a good price for their products, the Korean young girls stay on the farm to marry and the brokers find other work. Males outnumber the females in Korea: in 1998 for each 100 females at birth there was 110.2 males. This ratio has been reduced but the men will be dealing with these figures for some time to come. The government knows the problems that this is having on the country and family life and doesn't know what to do. They have taken some steps to regulate the brokers, and to educate the brides and even programs for the husbands but it will take a great deal more. The government has tried hard to help the farmers but it seems like a losing battle. The Korean farmers do not have the land under cultivation to be competitive and when free trade comes it will be an impossible situation.

Anyone Not Against Us Is With Us

A meditation by a priest in a recent newsletter on the words of Jesus in Mark 9:40 : "Anyone who is not against us is with us."

We live , are brought up and die in a society that considers our affiliations very important. The writer loves to travel with his backpack and visit the different villages. When he meets some one at the entrance of a village he spends some time in small talk and goes on his way. In conversation an older person will often ask for his surname. When he responds and the person who asks has the same name, often there is rapport that wasn't there before; when the name is not the same there is a distancing in the relationship that he can almost feel. (The most common Korean surnames are Kim, Lee and Park and these are the names of almost half of the ethic Koreans in South Korea. )

Why should that be? he asks. The same name, hometown, school, same military bind us together. If we do not have these common elements there is a wall that can intervene and separate us. They can also separate priests from one another. When we begin to separate into factions we are far from wise: if he belongs to my team I am interested if not, I am not.

When this becomes a way of life it doesn't matter what a person does but to what group he belongs. It doesn't just stop here but those who are on the side lines are made to join. Are you with me or against me? And even worse forced to either be on the team or get lost.

This is an ailment of our society. There is no effort to embrace the other: are you with the flow or against it? There is a polarization that makes the wall even higher and makes us less wise .

It is necessary to have a vision. With a vision we want to embrace, work for unity, move peoples' hearts, work for solidarity: we begin to walk in the same direction.

We as Catholics know well that Jesus wanted us to be one. It was his last words. We are Catholic, a very beautiful word, beginning with a small letter: magnanimous open, universal, broad, comprehensive, global. With the capital letter it should mean all of these and more. If we consider this our vision as Catholics then it will overflow into our relations to others who are not Catholic: a community that is open, understanding and loving even when we do not agree. This is possible.