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Appendix VIII
Asian
Travel Diary, 1959
By Frank Engel
After the heat of Manila, the evening on
the slopes of Mt. Makiling was cool and
refreshing. Beneath lay a vast plain stretching to the invisible sea. In its centre,
was the great expanse of a lake, both it and the plain being broken by the
outlines of sharp hills? Dusk fell quickly and the sickle moon appeared peace
and coolness at the end of a day.
But the peace was
soon shattered by the unmuffled rattle and roar of excavating machinery in the
steep valley across the road, and the darkness was partially broken by the
blaze of a camp fire and the sudden glare of pressure lamps in our midst. The
quiet mountain was under a double attack - by professional workmen building a
swimming pool and by SCM work campers building an open-air chapel - for it was
to be the site of the International Boy Scout Jamboree in July. It was now
mid-April and work on the swimming pool was going on day and night.
The work campers
sat in a circle at a respectful distance from the fire, because even the
evening air of these lower mountain slopes was not cool enough to counter much
heat; but the fire, like the moon, lent atmosphere to the scene. Songs, in
English and in dialect, witty comment, skits and laughter introduced the
campers to each other - Filipinos from various parts of the Islands, six students from
Thailand, one American, and
one German. Later a Korean joined them. This was the first international work
camp organized by the young SCM of the Philippines.
I was asked to speak about the Federation.
As I did so, I recalled that a few years before the peace of this mountain had
been shattered by gunfire and the darkness made lurid with the flames of
burning churches and houses, and I tried to speak of Japan and the great-unfinished
task of reconciliation.
From Student
World, No 4, 1959
93
YMCA Leaders' Conference
The next evening
before dusk I-was walking across the tarmac of Tokyo's great Haneda Airport to be welcomed by
a YMCA group. After a brief glimpse of the world's largest city and a
preliminary introduction to some of the activities and problems of the Student
YMCA and YWCA, I was off to Tozanso, the beautiful campsite of the Japanese
YMCA near Mt. Fuji, to represent the
Federation at the Fifth Asian YMCA Leaders' Conference. Here I met Delmar
Wedel, fraternal Student YMCA Secretary, who helped greatly with the whole of
my visit. Arriving in rain, we were told we might not see Mt. Fuji for days, but next
morning it appeared, a clear, gleaming cone of snow, dominating the landscape
yet a part of it. Above the windows in the meeting hall, there was a
beautifully written Japanese inscription: "look up and see Mt. Fuji. Bow down and
worship God." In the face of such tremendous beauty, set amidst the
delicate coloring of cherry blossoms and new green leaves, wonder and worship
were the only possible response.
The conference
revealed considerable vigor in YMCA work in Asia, a very real
concern for non-Christians, a sense of responsibility for all aspects of the
life of the nations, desire to serve, and the value of a continuing fellowship
of leaders on a continental basis. The two statements adopted on student work
and relationships with the SCM were important for the Federation. The first
assessed the work being done through YMCA student hostels and centers, and
stressed the need for vocational counseling, for relating students to a local
church, and for pioneering work in education for civic responsibility. It also
commended the Federation's project on the Life and Mission of the Church to
its programme secretaries. The second statement spelled out in terms of Asia
the meaning of "The Statement on Common Policy in Student World",
adopted by the World Alliance of YMCAs, the World's YWCA/ and the WSCF in 1956.
The future pattern of student work in Japan
Back in Tokyo, I attended a
Strategy Committee meeting of representatives of the Student YMCA and YWCA and
the student centers run by the churches. This committee has been endeavoring to
see how the various initiatives in student work in Japan might be linked in
a new overall strategy. In particular, a need is felt to create a more unified
Student Movement on the campus out of the existing YMCAs and YWCAs. Progress in
this direction has been going on steadily on the local and regional levels for
some time, and in August, there is to be the first combined summer conference/
followed by a meeting to decide on future national and local structures.
94
The United Church
of Japan and several mission boards have established student centres at several
universities. These carry on a varied programme of Bible study, doctrinal
teaching, and fellowship. Some serve up to 150 students. The question is how
to relate these centres to the Student Movement on the campus, and how to
combine evangelism of students by students and the senior leadership and
teaching provided by the churches. Signs of constructive answers are emerging,
and proposals made to meet a similar problem in Canada may be of help.
In Japan, there are over
550,000 students in universities and junior colleges, of which 450,000 are
doing four-year courses. There are 230 institutions of higher learning, and the
eighty in Tokyo contain about
one-third of the total enrollment of students.
Manazuru
This is another
lovely spot where the YMCA has a camp. It is a small building on a cliff
overlooking a bay and the coast of the Izu Peninsula south of Tokyo. Here the Student
YMCA-YWCA Staff Conference was held, under the leadership of Yasutaro Owaku,
Executive Secretary of the Student YMCA, and of Kyoko Kubota of the YWCA.
Questions of strategy and structure, of the joint national conference,
placement of staff, and so on, were discussed in a pleasant tatami
(thick straw mat) covered room. One afternoon the location was changed to
nearby Atami, so that a Federation Secretary might be initiated into the
mysteries and joys of a true Japanese inn, and fitted in body, mind, and spirit
for travel in northern and central Japan. The treatment was eminently
successful and highly delightful. It began with an onsen, a hot springs bath - and this
was followed by a delicious Japanese dinner served in a room of most satisfying
proportions. We sat on the tatami floor to eat from a long, low, wooden table,
and afterwards reclined there to carry on the business of the staff conference.
By far the best setting for such a meeting in my experience!
95
Relations with Korea
The next day, the national
student leaders meet with the staff. One fresh subject of discussion was
relations with Korea. It was decided to
invite three Korean students to the Japanese national summer conference and to
request the World Council of Churches' Work Camp Committee to invite them to
one of the two international work camps being held in Japan. In the light of
passport and visa difficulties between Korea and Japan, the possibility
of Japanese and Koreans meeting at a work camp in another country was also
suggested. The reasons for the bad relationship go back centuries and old
hatreds are kept alive by new disputes. It was very interesting that in this
kind of situation the Japanese Student Ys had no hesitation in appointing a
Korean resident in Japan as Study Secretary
for the Life and Mission of the Church
project in Japan, when it was clear
that he was the man for the job. This action made a very marked impression on
students and leaders in Korea.
Several days later,
I participated in a discussion in the YMCA dormitory at Tohoku University, Sendai, on "What can
we do about Korea?" The group
dictated the following message, which they requested me to convey to similar
groups in Korea.
1.
We young Japanese Christians really want more friendly
relationships with Korea; we do not feel
aggressive towards you in spite of the history of aggressive feelings.
2.
We send our very best greetings to Korean Christians and
express our desire to correspond with them as soon as possible. We really wish
to have their greetings or letters.
3.
We hope for the growth of better relations between our two
countries.
With this hastily
penciled message in my notebook, I departed by the overnight express for Tokyo. My mind was full
of many things - of the group I had just left, of the large audiences I had
addressed, and of the moment when we had stood in a high park looking down on Sendai and I had realized
that it had to be almost entirely rebuilt after the war. We had then turned to
look at a large stone statue of Date Masummune, a former ruler of that region
who, about 1610 AD, had sent his representative, Hasekura, to Rome to inquire about
Christianity. Before the Pilgrim Fathers had crossed the Atlantic, Hasekura had
made his way by sailing- boat to the Philippines, thence across the Pacific to
Mexico in a Spanish galleon, and so to Rome. What amazing enterprise,
initiative, and desire for truth! What shame on the West that such promising
beginnings were destroyed in a persecution of Christians in Japan because Christian
priests became political intriguers! Down on the riverbank, below Date
Masummune's statue, are still to be seen the stone I tables erected in memory
of the seventeenth-century Christian martyrs.
96
Behind the statue,
among the trees, stands a new and attractive Shinto shrine, which commemorates
as gods the men who died in the last war. Whether this represents a popular
revival of Shintoism or an attempt of Shintoism to adjust itself to a new
situation remains to be seen.
Back in the hills,
in an adjoining park, we had come across two large pieces of unhewn rock,
commemorating the defeat of the navy of Genghis Khan in the twelfth century. He
who conquered as far west as Dresden and south to Java
had not entered here. Once again, as I gazed at these stones, I marveled at the
tremendous mobility of man through the centuries. In the West, it is assumed
that the Westerner has always been the explorer, the traveler, and that Asia has forever
slumbered. It is, then, something of a revelation for a Westerner to stand in
front of the great chart in the National Museum in Djakarta which records the
five or six great movements of men over the centuries from China through Malaya
to Indonesia, the Philippines and Japan; or to climb the steps of the
eighth-century Borobadur in Central Java and contemplate how Buddhists found
their way there from India; or to leam that Malays had sailed all the way to
Madagascar, more than 4,000 miles distant, across an Indian Ocean that is
almost empty of landfalls.
Hokkaido
The afternoon flight
at the beginning of May from Tokyo to Sapporo, the capital of Japan's northernmost
island, was like a flight backwards in time from the heat of an unusually warm
spring day to the subdued grey tones of late winter and the first green shoots
on the silver birch trees. In Sapporo Dr. Nakagawa
(known to many from Tutzing and Rangoon) and the Rev.
William Eddy, who is in charge of the Hokkaido University Centre of the
Anglican Church, met me. Here, for a crowded twenty-four hours, I met students,
professors, ministers, and the President of the university, saw the Kyodan (United Church) centre, the YMCA
dormitory, and the university's new student union. Here I also encountered the
living tradition, which stems from the days of Mr. Dark. In the 1880, he
answered the pressing invitation of the Japanese government to journey from Massachusetts to Hokkaido to establish an
agricultural college.
97
He made one
condition, which the government eventually accepted with reluctance: that he
should be free to hold a Bible class. That class became the first Christian
student group in Japan, and out of it
came one of the country's great and influential Christians, Uchimura Kanzo.
However, Mr. dark's influence extended beyond this class. The agricultural
college has become a great university, which is today completing a fine student
union bearing dark's name, a symbol of the continuing influence of one strong
dedicated life. I was amazed to learn that dark was in Hokkaido for only nine
months. How much use do we make of one academic year?
As the train raced
down the coast to the inter-island ferry, I looked across the sea in the
direction of Russian Siberia. And as at midnight the ferry steamer slipped her
moorings and moved out of Hakodate harbor for Aomori, sliding though a still
sea, I remembered how Dean Leeper, American fraternal secretary to the Student
YMCA, and hundreds of Japanese had perished there some years ago in a typhoon
which had overturned their ship. I looked, I thought, I doubted. But I could
not forget the relentless advance of the green hosts of spring against the
mountains of Hokkaido, nor the fact that
there is a Christian Church and a Student Christian Association in Hokkaido because once on
the other side of the world God's power had broken though the cast-iron bonds
of death.
Kyoto
Three crowded days
of much speaking (six times in one day) and some sight-seeing in this lovely
city of palaces, trees, temples, and universities, brought me into close
contact with Newton Thurber, formerly General Secretary of the SVM in the
United States, now a missionary who is giving much time and energy to student
work and particularly to developing new patterns of work. It was also a
pleasure to meet again Akiji Takatsuki, one of the Japanese student delegates to
Tutzing, and to be initiated by him not only into SCM mysteries but also into
the beauties of different types of Japanese gardens.
Even a short period
of quiet contemplation amid the beauty and peace of a seventeenth-century
garden established by a Confucian scholar revealed a source of restorative
power that is largely neglected by both East and West.
I ended my visit to
Kyoto by listening to an interesting
paper by Professor Matsumura on the uniqueness or Christianity and present day
Buddhism and Shintoism in Japan, read to a group
of professors, ministers, and students who are engaged in discovering the
meaning of the Federation's Life and Mission of the Church
project for Japan today.
98
On May 13, I left Tokyo for Seoul. The plane flew
past Mt. Fuji, with its
snow-covered cone glistening in the morning sunlight, and on over Central Japan, Kyoto, and out to sea.
What a strange tumult of emotions I felt, for I was leaving with real
reluctance this land, which I had approached with much questioning and even
trepidation. At the moment when I expected to feel only the excitement of
returning to Korea, the land of my
birth, I was conscious of great regret at having to leave a land and people I
had grown to love.
The Republic of Korea
And then we were
over Korea: a spectacular
glimpse of the great Han River forcing its way
through a mountain gorge and then wandering in a vast sandy bed; the sharp
outlines of the mountains that circle Seoul; the roofs, roads,
and churches of the capital city in warm sunlight. As I walked from the plane
to the customs, I heard a voice from the waiting crowd, "Welcome to Korea, Mr. Engel".
It was Yung Suk Park, who had been at
the Australian SCM's National Conference in 1957 while training with the YWCA
in Australia. This greeting was
soon followed by warm welcomes from a dozen representatives of the Student
YMCA and YWCA and the Korean Student Christian Movement, and that evening I had
the further pleasure of attending a reunion dinner with the members of the
Korean delegation to the Rangoon conference who
live in Seoul.
The growth in the
number of universities, buildings, and students since the end of the fighting
in Korea (July 1953) has
been phenomenal. In November 1953, there were about 40,000 students. Five years
later, there were nearly 100,000. Where, in 1953, I had walked through
unpainted wooden buildings, now stood magnificent new stone and concrete
structures. Pusan and Kyung Puk National Universities are striking
examples of this dramatic change. In addition, there are several quite new
universities. The Ministry of Education lists 18 accredited colleges and
universities with a student population restricted to a ceiling figure of
89,000, whereas in fact about 100,000 are admitted. There are five Christian
colleges with about 12,000 students - a high proportion of the total. The best
known and largest are Yonsei and Ewha Universities in Seoul with 4,200 and
6,600 respectively. In one national state university as many as ten per cent of
the students are Christian, as compared with an average in the community of
about five per cent. (There are now nearly twenty-two million people in South Korea, including more
than one million Christians, three-quarters of them Presbyterians.)
99
The tremendous demand
for higher education is both an asset and a liability. The thirst for education
stems from the long period of Japanese rule when there was only the Seoul Imperial University, for Japanese and
a handful of Koreans, and three Christian colleges for Koreans. This also
explains in part the tremendous interest in political science. Another factor
is the influence of the long Confucian tradition of respect for the scholastic
life. It is good that education is now so widely available, but considerable
anxiety is developing as to its nature and purpose. Some are uneasy about the
proportion of students studying political science, English, and music in
relation to opportunities for employment and the needs of the country. The
number of students who study abroad for long periods is also a cause of
anxiety; about 4,000 are supposed to be studying overseas, mostly in the USA,
and some of these have been away for several years. In other words, a
reassessment of the enthusiasm for education is beginning. In this, Christian
professors and universities could give an important lead.
The continuing
tragedy of Korea is that a land
that is a single unit has been divided arbitrarily by foreign powers, and that
this division has been deepened by war and by differing political ideologies.
Twenty-two million people live in the less richly endowed south and only about
five million in the north. Between the two are parallel lines of strongly held,
fortified positions separated by a de-militarized zone. At one point, the line
is only twenty-five miles north of Seoul - a negligible
distance in terms of modem war. And yet life in Seoul goes on as if this
were not so, in spite of the fact that the truce agreement was not re-signed
when it was due for renewal early in 1959. But underneath the necessary daily
air of normality runs the constant influence of this basic division and
uncertainty as to the future. The two incompatibles of the need for unification
and the apparent impossibility of achieving it war within the soul of the nation,
challenging hope, even delaying works of national development, which would
duplicate what, exists in the north. Occasionally, as in the days before June
25, the anniversary of the outbreak of the War, there are signs of tension
arising from fear that there may be a fresh outbreak.
100
Seoul, which was
eighty-five percent destroyed during the war, has been largely rebuilt.
Progress has been made with industrialization - textile, motorbus and jeep
manufacture - but tremendous economic problems remain. These are now
accentuated by South Korea's severing of
trade relations with Japan, in retaliation
for the plan to repatriate Koreans living in Japan to North Korea. South Korea claims the Koreans
in Japan as her citizens.
It is for this reason, plus the deep-rooted antagonism to communism and the
regime in the north, that South Korea has opposed so
strongly the repatriation plan. The Japanese government has been impressed by
the medical and social services provided by North Korea and the offer to
take settlers and provide them with work. This contrasts with the absence of
such help and offers from the south. We can imagine the strength of the feeling
aroused by this if we remember that sixty per cent of South Korea's imports are from
Japan and twenty-five
per cent of its exports go there. But all this was cut off in one week-end. So
the antagonism within Korea and between South Korea and Japan feed on fresh
events, and old misunderstandings and hatreds are kept alive on both sides.
And yet among the
student generation in Korea there are many
signs of a desire for closer relationships with Japan. The message from Sendai, the invitation to
the summer conference, the news of the Rev. In-ha Lee's appointment to the
Japanese Student Y staff – all these met with keen interest and a welcoming
response. But years of bitterness are not dissolved in a moment or with a word.
Some groups apparently did not feel able to make any very concrete response.
One group, on being
told of the Sendai message, responded
by asking: "Why don't Japanese Christians protest to the government
against the whole repatriation plan?" I replied that, in Japan, I had been asked:
"Why don't Korean Christian students protest to the Korean government
against the continued imprisonment of Japanese fishermen after the completion
of their sentences for violation of Korean fishing waters?" A national
frontier is like a wall made of strips of clear glass, magnifying glass, and
distorting mirrors. As we look across it we see some things clearly, others are
greatly magnified, and some things in our own land take on a different shape
as we see them reflected in this national mirror. Some become so thin that we
hardly notice them at all.
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So we talked,
trying to discover how to use the clear glass only. It was difficult, for
whenever communism and nationalism enter in, there rarely seems to be clear
glass anywhere, and I wondered whether any ray of hope or truth could break
through However, about ten hours later, at the close of a public meeting at
which I had spoken, representatives of this group came forward to say good-bye,
and to give me a sheet of paper filled with Chinese characters. "We
thought it best to write in Chinese, for the Japanese in Sendai will be able to
read Chinese characters." The sheet contained the name and address of the
SCA of that university and the names of all the members of the group, with an
indication of which one would act as correspondent.
A week or so later,
in an academy in another city, members of an SCM committee expressed a desire
to correspond with students overseas. When I asked, with a twinkle, "What
about Japan?” the answer was
an unhesitating "Yes".
Lest it be thought
that Korean students wear especially large blinkers, it should be added that
there is real criticism of the government, such as was unknown in 1953. It
centres particularly on the suppression of a newspaper and of a magazine
article - and it is not always spoken in private.
It is feared that
there will be increasing tension and conflict between government and
opposition parties until the election next May. It is easy for the foreigner to
speak scornfully of the workings of democracy in Korea and of the violent
note that runs through much of political life. But he does well to remember
that Korea's rulers have themselves known nothing except a corrupt monarchy,
followed by efficient and harsh Japanese rule, followed by a period of United
States military government during which, if democracy did not always yield the
desired results, more direct action was resorted to. Then came a short trial
period of democracy before the war in Korea again brought
military rule, and military necessity has continued to be an essential (if
sometimes abused) factor in the situation. It is impossible to compress four
hundred years of Western democratic development into four or even fourteen
turbulent years in a land with a history of centuries under authoritarian rule.
The foreigner must season impatience and irritation with history and
understanding. This is a country with a proud, yet sad, history and culture,
living in an impossible present of political division and cultural collision,
seeking the way to just, stable, and free patterns of living. It needs the
sympathetic appreciation and unceasing prayers of Christians everywhere.
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In this situation, the
Student YMCA, Student YWCA, and the Korean Student Christian Movement carry on
Christian work in the universities. The YMCA and YWCA have been the affiliated
Movements of the WSCF for over sixty yeas. The SCM came into being after the
liberation of Korea and has passed
through a number of changes and difficulties. At times, there have been tensions,
criticisms, and uncertainties between the Ys and the SCM, and I was glad to
find a greatly improved atmosphere and relationship.
Perhaps most
notable was the cooperation of the three organizations in the Joint Leadership
Training Conference held at the Pusan College of Yonsei University on the steep
slopes of Yong Daw Island across the water
from Pusan City. There for a short
time seventy students and ten leaders worked very hard on the subject of the
Life and Mission of the Church and
the task of an SCM. The keenness and persistence of the students was
impressive. Six colleges from southeast Korea were represented:
two national universities - Pusan and Kyung Puk, two
Christian colleges - Yonsei and Keimyung, and two government-training centres -
the Fishery College and the Marine Academy. So we had a great
variety of background, but a uniform desire to leam and to serve, and a
cooperative spirit. Later, a similar conference was held in Hankook Seminary,
near Seoul. It too was
worthwhile, but suffered from being still shorter and less representative.
It was good to see
these united efforts of leadership training, for leadership and unity seem to
be the two outstanding needs of Christian student work in Korea today. Without the
first, programs on the campus will be poor, sporadic, or stereotyped. Without
the second, Christian witness will be hampered by the absorption of Christians
in their own differences and prejudices. In Korea, as elsewhere,
there is need for much more genuine and sustained Bible study, for the
framework of an ordered devotional life, and the acceptance of a life of
disciplined Christian living. There is need for out-reaching evangelism to the
whole university. To meet these needs, students and student committees require
training every year.
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Cooperation
In both Japan and Korea, I was amazed at
the capacity of Christians to be ignorant of what other Christian agencies are
doing, or to misunderstand or
misrepresent them and their purpose. For example, the Student YMCA is sometimes
accused of being ineffective, concerned only with superficial matters, and
working only with Christians. In fact in both countries, I found the Ys doing
strong work, and promoting good Bible study, and not only in Christian
universities. The same is true of the KSCM, which is sometimes misrepresented
as a denominational movement when it is in reality an ecumenical one.
In the light of
this, it was very encouraging to find the three organizations in Korea prepared to come
together in the Korean Student Christian Council, which was formed on July 2.
This Council will be the means of cooperation in relation to national conferences,
leadership training, publications, and staff travel. This plan was first
suggested several years ago, and now, by the grace of God, it has been
achieved, and there must be much prayer and work that through it there will
develop a more united Christian witness among students in Korea.
Glimpses of some student groups
At Chung Ang University, I met the leaders
of KSCM and spoke at a packed chapel service of several hundred students of the
Liberal Arts College. The KSCM arranges such chapel services each week for
members of the different colleges (faculties or departments). This is a glimpse
of what can be done in a private university with a sympathetic president and
good student leaders. It also indicates something of the response to Christian
truth and worship.
At Yonsei University, I was present for
the Student Christian Association's (SCA's) fortieth anniversary celebrations,
and learned of its well-organized programme of study, worship, and service. In
addition to campus activities, four women students take it in turns to go every
night to teach in school for orphans. During the 1957 vacation, a team of
students founded a church in San Hyun, a rural area about thirty miles to the
northeast. The SCA continues to provide half the salary of an evangelist who
cares for this community. This effort was undertaken after a church, which had
been started earlier in; a similar way had become well established. In the
summer of 1958, a team of six conducted evangelistic meetings in the San Hyun
Church for a week. Another team of six, including two medical students,
undertook a service project. Just before I visited Yonsei, there had been a
Religious Emphasis Week (or University Mission) as a result of which twenty-six
students had become believers. In the Pusan College of Yonsei, I met a girl,
one of many, who had recently become a Christian through the fellowship of the
Student YWCA.
104
At Ewha Women's
University, a lively YWCA made $600 from the sale of Christmas cards last year.
The money was used to provide scholarships for needy students, to finance a
programme of visits to villages, and to help under-privileged patients. Each
Saturday morning, a medical caravan staffed by doctors and nurses from a
Christian hospital and assisted by Ewha YWCA members, goes out of Seoul to give medical
aid in a refugee village.
One afternoon I sat
in on a committee meeting which was planning the Severance Medical College
Caravans for the summer of 1959. This is a remarkable effort in voluntary
service. Begun by the SCA, which continues to take a large share of
responsibility, the Caravan is now run jointly with the Students' Council and
the UN Youth fellowship. In 1958, ten teams made up of ten doctors and
seventy-one students treated 12,088 cases in twenty days, and would have
treated 20,000 if there had been sufficient medical supplies. An evangelistic
programme, help with the local Sunday school and church activities, and
distribution of literature are allied activities. The students themselves raise
the money required, which is largely for transportation and medical supplies.
The month before the project starts they call on drug houses, the Ministry of
Public Health, the America-Korea Foundation, etc. The Fishermen's Union provided traveling
and accommodation costs for four teams going to fishing villages, and the
government gave free transport for three teams. It was planned to have eight
teams in 1959, consisting of fifty-nine doctors and students, with the towns
and villages to be selected after consultation with the Ministry of Health and
the Fishermen's Union. It was hoped some veterinary and
agriculture. Students could be included in the teams.
In Taegu, I saw again a
night school, which has been run for ten years by the staff and students of the
Teachers' College. It is a junior high school for newspaper boys, shoeshine
boys, and other boy' and girls who cannot afford an education. From the small,
candle-lit stage at which I saw it in 1953, it has grown to an enrollment of
about 150 and has electric light. I had been amazed at the sacrifice of time
and energy involved in this under the extremely difficult conditions of 1953; I
was amazed this time to find how such a voluntary effort had grown through the
years.
105
I had to visit Ewha University twice because the
auditorium can only hold 3,500. So one day I preached to that number, and
another day to the remaining 3,000. Yet another day, a similar number gathered
in the attractive open-air amphitheatre of Yonsei University. These were in a
sense "captive", if chiefly non- Christian, audiences. In national
and private universities, it was not uncommon to have 400 to 500 at general
meetings.
The visit to the
KSCM at the Air Force Academy was a different kind of experience. After a
briefing on the history and nature of the Academy by the commanding colonel, a
tour of the establishment, and lunch, we met with the SCM Committee, which
consisted of some of the leading cadets in the Academy. Here was a live, keen
group carrying on a programme and witness in the midst of a highly organized
daily timetable of work and training.
Different again was
the KSCM at the Seoul Agricultural College. A very well
planned welcome and meeting was carried through smoothly in a room, which had
been attractively decorated with small flower arrangements. After the sermon
and talk on impressions of Korea, which were
required of me, there were questions. Very soon, I found myself forced into the
role of expert on Australian agriculture and agricultural colleges! I gave
thanks that the Australian SCM had caused me to visit such places in days gone
by, and that the Australian Broadcasting Commission's Country Hour broadcast
had sometimes coincided with dishwashing sessions at home! These and other
equally august sources of knowledge saved the answers from complete aridity and
error. I came away very conscious of having been with a group of students who
had a clear sense of their calling to serve in the development of their
primarily rural country and in the up- building of the rural church.
Christian
professors
In both Seoul and Pusan, a group of
Christian professors has been meeting regularly. Discussion subjects cover a
wide range, but centre chiefly around the role of the Christian professor. They
have included "The relevance of the Christian faith to academic
work", "Christian witness in the non-Christian university",
"The Christian approach to the problem of the moral situation in
Korea", study of an outline prepared by the Ministry of Education on moral
criteria for Korea, "Philosophy and Christianity", "Student
health", and “Freedom of speech and the role of Christian faculty". I
was present at the last of these/ a lively meeting, which left no doubt those
thirty Christian university teachers, were in disagreement with the government
spokesman himself trained as a Christian minister, about the restrictive
measurers taken against a newspaper and a magazine.
106
History as revelation
Towards the end of
my visit, I attended an SCA study group in Seoul National University. They were a keen
group of six men and three women under the leadership of Chong Ho Rho, one of
the delegates to the Rangoon conference. They
were studying C.H. Dodd's The Bible Today, using both the English
edition and a Korean translation, and they had reached Chapter V, "History
as Revelation". I watched them wrestling together with the subject; I
read what C.H. Dodd had to say about biblical history as revelation,
about God revealing himself in the events of men and of nations. As the
discussion went on in Korean with Moon-Kyu Kang, the Student YMCA Secretary,
helping them through difficulties, my mind turned over the question, "What
is the revelation in history today -this history in this room and outside the
window, the present history of this ancient people and their modem tragedy and
church?"
This small room in
which we sat was built as part of what was then an Imperial University of
Japan; it was now a part of the Seoul National University. We were sitting,
in other words, in a place, which had been not only a symbol but also a fact of
alien tyranny and domination, and which a symbol was now and fact of national
freedom and destiny. Through the window, I looked out on a bare, rocky hillside
on which there was hakabangs - small, fragile, refugee shacks - silent
witnesses to the power in this people, as in the Jews before them, to suffer,
to endure deprivation of home and kindred, and to persevere - a sad, suffering,
but enduring people. May it not be that in this room and on that hillside, God
has revealed the patience and power of his providence in the face of the almost
unremitting opposition of man?
And then I thought
of the refugee village of 5,000 people which I had visited a couple of days
before. Here again was the amazing capacity to take hold of life again, to find
a shelter and some scrap material out of which to make something to sell. But
there also was another factor - the feeding services, the re- housing
programme, and the occupational help of Church World Service. Here, incarnate in
great barrels of cooked yellow meal, in neat cement-brick houses, and the
ceaseless service of staff was the expression of the love of Christians in many
lands, entering into this particular piece'-of history to redeem it in the name
of Christ.
107
My eyes fell back
on C.H. Dodd's book and the Latin New Testament in front of the Korean student
next to me. How came these things here from the other side of the world,
bringing meaning, understanding, and a sense of fellowship, except through men
and women who had taken seriously particular historical opportunities and
answered the call of God in and through them? How else came these very students
to study these things in this room, except by the power of God's spirit in
their lives and through the more-or-less faithful, the very fumbling and
controversy-ridden life of the historic Christian Church? How came they here
except by the blood of ancient martyrs, the death from typhoid of early
missionaries to Korea, and the martyrdom of Korean Christians at the hands of
either communist or Japanese militarist? How came they here but by the
providence and the mercy of God, acting without end to create and renew, to
bring to judgment and redemption, to break down and to build up, to reveal
himself and his purpose in history?
Some jets whined
overhead. It was nearing June 25. How long does it take jets to travel thirty
or one hundred miles? How does one tell, in a room like this, which way they
are going, and why, and whose they are? How secure is life? Does security matter?
What did God think about security when thunder crashed above the Cross?
Kang is quoting
Cullman on "Christ and Time. Christ and Time! The Cross pinning the
eternal to the temporal, planting the love of God in history, blossoming and
bearing fruit in all times and all places. And man can behold, give thanks and
respond in acts of love and obedience in history, knowing and believing that if
a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abides not alone, but bears
much fruit. The promise of the Lord is sure: the desert shall rejoice and
blossom as the rose.
108
An ending and a beginning
Life is full of
surprises, and Korea is the land of the
unexpected. So it was not to be wondered at that, after the warm and sad
farewells to many good friends and companions of the YMCA, YWCA, SCM and the
National Christian Council, I should find myself sitting in the aircraft beside
the sweetest twenty-three- months-old
Korean orphan girl. A Norwegian nurse in Kwangju had taken responsibility for the baby at
birth. Eventually she had found a childless couple in Norway keen to adopt her.
If someone would 'escort' the baby before she was two years old, the travel
would be free. My timely appearance in Kwangju was hailed as a
'miraculous' last chance. "Would you take her with you?"
"Yes", was the only possible answer. We accompanied each other to Tokyo, and then over the
North Pole for twenty-seven hours to Copenhagen. She was a great
joy, and it was with a sad heart that I placed her in the arms of her new
Scandinavian mother. But she, heartless female, had forgotten me before I had
passed through even the speedy Danish customs.
So I proceeded on
my way to beautiful, refreshing Geneva, to wonder by the
lakeside in the summer evening about the meaning of our warfare.
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