A letter from Kurt Esslinger in South Korea
June 2014 - A new role
A thunderstorm crashes and bangs over the city of Seoul as I write this Mission Connections letter to you all. While I generally enjoy rain and I enjoy watching the lightning out of my office window, I do not look forward to walking home at the end of the day in this deluge. Yes, I am currently working in the big city of Seoul at the moment. This is part of a new development for me, and I will share more about that below. Though the storm rages outside my window, new doors of hope are opening up in ministry and cooperation.
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YAVs cleaning the organic garden they helped plant on the roof of Jajang Library
First we have some general updates. Our current YAVs have only one more month left in their year with us in Daejeon. They, of course, have no idea the degree to which this year has affected them, and they will have a hard time communicating this to their family and friends when they return. We will take them on a final retreat next week to Seorak Mountain to begin processing their YAV experience. We also finalized the selection of YAVs who will join us for the next year, arriving at the end of August. Kalyn Stevwing and Jordan Bailey will come to live and volunteer in Daejeon, learning Korean language for the first time, and diving into a year of Korean faith, culture, and history. Pray for them as they prepare for a year that will change their lives forever.
Beginning two weeks ago, I have taken on a new position in addition to my position alongside Hyeyoung as site coordinator for the YAV program. Our regional liaison has been in touch with the National Council of Churches in Korea (NCCK), and they have agreed that I will be useful working with their Reconciliation and Reunification Department. This means I will be staying in Seoul for part of the week to be present at the NCCK offices. At the beginning of my time I am actually working a bit more with the International Relations Department in order to better understand the entire NCCK organization and how the work in each department is interrelated. Eventually we hope I might focus on connecting world partner churches more intimately to the movement for peaceful reconciliation in Korea, especially the PC(USA). I hope to share the history of the peaceful reconciliation movement among churches in Korea, and I hope to coordinate reconciliation activities here in Korea with the Peacemaking Program staff in the PC(USA) like the Office of Public Witness in Washington, D.C., as well as congregations and individual Presbyterians such as yourself!
The NCCK has worked on behalf of peaceful reconciliation and reunification since the 1980s, around the time democracy finally became a reality for South Korea. To that end they send regular food aid to North Korea, they urge their member denominations to pray for reconciliation and advocate to all responsible governments for the movement, and they have declared every year the Sunday before August 15 (liberation from Japan in 1945) a Joint Sunday Prayer for Peaceful Reunification along with the Korean Christian Federation (KCF) in the North. NCCK delegates have just returned to Korea after a week in Geneva, Switzerland, meeting with the World Council of Churches (WCC) and delegates from the KCF, where they discussed ways the WCC and other world partners can coordinate more closely for the purposes of reconciliation and reunification. My job may be getting much busier in the months to come.
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Rev. Hyeon-Seop Bang tells of taking aid to Christians in North Korea while preaching at the NCCK 6/25 anniversary worship
This new position comes at a time when the Korean peninsula is about to remember the day the Korean War broke out 64 years ago on June 25. August 15, Liberation Day (1945), will follow close behind, which makes 69 years since the peninsula was divided by the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union without the consent of Korean leadership. (In an earlier letter I wrote that Korean division was set in 1948; this is a correction to the accurate date of 1945.) I step into this position aware of the checkered legacy of U.S. government and Western mission activity on this peninsula. Official policy of the PC(USA) Board of Foreign Missions was to support the Japanese occupation of Korea and take no action to condemn any of the ways they might be oppressing Koreans. Rev. Arthur Brown once wrote: “The missionaries strongly believe, with the Boards at home, that...it is better for disciples of Christ to patiently endure some injustice than to carry Christianity in antagonism to the government under which they labor.” I try to also remember the few Western missionaries who decided to speak out against imperial oppression against their denominational official policy, like Rev. Hulbert and Rev. Appenzeller. They did so even after being deported back to the U.S. by the Japanese colonial government. I hope to live into the part of their model that honored Korean liberty and take actions toward a new future connecting Korean churches to the support around the world that they need in order to move toward peaceful reconciliation and reunification.
I thank you all for the ways you have supported Hyeyoung and me through our first year of service and into our second year. You have provided me with the opportunity to step into this new role with a growing list of partners doing amazing work with God on the Korean peninsula. Please continue with your support, and if you have not yet, consider joining our work of reconciliation by contributing now to our mission co-worker account. Peace be with you all.
Peace,
Kurt Esslinger
The 2014 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 232
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