wfn.org | Trip offers time of healing for Korean-American pastors

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

Oct. 20, 1999 News media contact: Linda Green·(615)742-5470·Nashville, Tenn.
10-33-71B{550}

By Kathy Gilbert*

Four United Methodist pastors who visited North Korea recently have returned
with a message of healing to share with their own congregations.

The clergy members, all Korean American, made the trip in September to
promote healing and better relations with the people of North Korea.

Many Korean Americans living in the United States are still trapped by
feelings of fear and oppression from the brutal conditions of their
homeland, said the Rev. KilSang Yoon, a director in the Division of Ordained
Ministry of the United Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry in
Nashville, Tenn. The partition of Korea, the three-year war, and the
subsequent years of hostile standoff have been the major causes of Korean
suffering in the last half century.

"They are living here, but they are still captives of their painful past,"
Yoon said.

The Board of Higher Education and Ministry is trying to reach out to
Korean-Americans by offering opportunities for healing and reconciliation,
he said.

The recent trip also proved to be a learning experience for the group.

"Finally, I had a chance to see the people of the northern part of the
divided Korea. I saw the towns and mountains and rivers I had learned about
in elementary school. Except for ideology, everything was so familiar. I
found the same language, same jokes, same food, same faces," said the Rev.
Jin Ho Kim, pastor of the Korean Evangelical United Methodist Church in
Brooklyn, Minn.

The trip was taken to promote mutual understanding and begin the groundwork
for peaceful reunification. The pastors also wanted to see firsthand the
situation of food shortages and explore ways to help the people of North
Korea, Yoon said.

The Korean United Methodist community has been involved in a food aid
program by running two noodle factories, which feed 10,000 people daily,
said the Rev. Eun Chul Cho, chairman of the Committee of Reconciliation and
Reunification and pastor of Alpha United Methodist Church in Skokie, Ill.
"This absolutely contributes to the laying of groundwork for eventual,
peaceful reunification."

"Recognition of the difference between living under communism and capitalism
was painful to me. Seeing starving people dug a hole deep in my heart," said
the Rev. Myung Ji Cho, pastor of Korean United Methodist Church in Columbus,
Ohio.

In addition to the trip to North Korea, the agency was a sponsor for the
North Central Jurisdiction's Korean Pastors' Conference on Healing and
Wholeness last February in Glenview, Ill. The Upper Room of the United
Methodist Board of Discipleship also participated in the event.

Said Yoon: "Koreans need to experience first an inner healing."

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*Gilbert is a staff member in the Office of Interpretation at the United
Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry.

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United Methodist News Service
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