wfn.org | Consultation Addresses Ministry with Koreans

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

12-May-1997 
97194 
 
          Consultation Addresses Ministry with Koreans  
               in North Korea and Around the World 
 
                          by Alexa Smith 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky.--Sixty-seven Korean Christians from nine denominations in 
the United States, North and South Korea, Japan, Canada and Australia 
gathered here in mid-March to reaffirm their cooperative ministry in North 
Korea and among Korean communities in their countries and around the world.  
 
     Four of the denominations -- the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the 
Presbyterian Church of Korea (PCK), the Presbyterian Church in the Republic 
of Korea (PROK) and the Uniting Church in Australia (UCA) -- already have 
formal mission partnership agreements. 
 
     Other denominations represented were the (North) Korean Christian 
Federation (KCF), the Korean Presbyterian Church in America, the Korean 
Christian Church in Japan, the Reformed Church in America and the 
Presbyterian Church in Canada. 
 
     "The major difference [in this consultation] was that church leaders 
from North Korea fully participated in it," said the Rev. Syngman Rhee of 
the PC(USA)'s Worldwide Ministries Division, who has been among the 
denomination's key advocates for the peaceful reunification of Korea. 
"They were part of a full discussion on engagement in global mission ... 
and they were able to participate [in the wider conversation as 
international partners decide] how to help the Christian community in North 
Korea minister to those with critical needs right now."  
 
     While the conversations tended to focus on women's roles in church 
leadership and sharing missionary personnel, the most immediately critical 
outcome of the three-day consultation was the creation of a Sharing 
Committee to dispatch money and church supplies  -- with "no conditions' 
attached -- to the KCF and to thwart the effects of the fear-based 
"propaganda culture" that has engulfed North and South Korea since the 
country was divided in 1945. 
 
     "You don't put strings on gifts," said the Rev. Insik Kim, the 
PC(USA)'s area coordinator for East Asia, stressing how critical it is to 
reestablish trusting relationships between Christians in North and South 
Korea.   "[Fifty-two years of Cold War propaganda] is still alive on the 
Korean pennisula," he said.  "People are still enslaved by the old Cold War 
mentality -- they're not freed from the propaganda culture." 
 
     Consultation participants agreed to support the Sharing Committee's 
efforts to 
 
     * raise $1 million for humanitarian aid in the coming year to fight 
       the famine that is worsening in North Korea after several years of 
       crop failures 
     * raise $500,000 to buy televisions, video recorders and tapes for the 
       500-plus house churches in North Korea 
     * trust the KCF to disperse whatever resources it receives from this 
       initiative. 
 
     There are to be two representatives on the Sharing Committee from the 
PROK, the PCK, the UCA and the PC(USA) and one representative each from the 
KCF and the other four participating denominations. 
 
      Rhee told the Presbyterian News Service that the political climate in 
North Korea has gradually allowed the church more visibility in terms of 
social witness and that the global church now has a chance to bolster that 
role.  "Their status as a church is ... much more firmly established. 
Whereas the church had been thought of as simply a place for Christians to 
come together and worship, period, the church is in a place [now] to 
manifest Christian faith in society," he said. 
 
     That shift in the KCF's self-understanding is as much a change in its 
theological understanding as it is a change in North Korean society, Rhee 
added. 
 
     Consultation participants agreed that normalized relations between the 
churches is a first step toward peaceful reunification of North and South 
Korea -- and commited the nine denominations to advocate for those outcomes 
with  their governments and their churches. 
 
     A second committee was established to find ways for members and 
leaders of Korean communities throughout the world to develop and share 
educational resources -- such as the PC(USA)'s Korean-language Discovery 
curriculum -- and to find ways for Korean immigrants in various parts of 
the world to gather to discuss problems unique to their churches and 
communities. 
 
      Common problems listed by churches across the world: 
 
      * developing solid Korean-language resources for educational use 
      * retaining second-generation immigrants who find churches immersed 
        in Korean language and culture as not responsive to their needs 
      * addressing prejudice in church communities directed at 
        second-generation immigrants who marry interracially 
      * raising consciousness about the need to train women, both lay and 
        clergy, for church leadership. 
 
     "The issue is what it means to be living as marginalized people," said 
Kim, describing the dilemma of Koreans living outside Korea who find 
themselves divorced from their own culture and outside the culture of their 
adopted nation.  
 
     Delegates agreed to meet again by the year 2000. 

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