Korean Travel Diary, 1953

Appendix V

Korean Travel Diary, 1953

By Frank Engel

Arrival in Korea

At nine thousand feet we broke through the clouds that were keeping Tokyo grey and soon saw the entrancingly beautiful snow-covered cone of Mt. Fuji rising another three thousand feet into the brilliant sunshine. A couple of hours later we were out over the straits and clear of all cloud. Something on the horizon began to take form. Yes, they were mountains - the mountains of South Kyung Sang in whose shadow I had been born. I found the sight intensely moving. I had not thought I would see them again and here I was flying "home". For the next forty-eight hours, I spent every spare moment just gazing at the mountains, the harbor, the people, the houses, the mission compound in which I had grown up – gazing in wonder that I was there, gazing with happy but turbulent feelings, a stranger and yet at home; the exile returned but only as a visitor.

The plane seemed determined to spin its wheels on this hilltop or the next. Then we were down taxiing among the military aircraft of K9 airfield. The Korean customs officer held my declaration form and looked at me. Ominous? No, he was nudging his companion, pointing at the paper, and glancing at me with curiosity. He had noticed my place of birth was Pusanjin - only a few miles away. The next minute I was through and being welcomed by an Australian SCMer turned missionary, Dick Kenyon, and the fraternal Student Secretary of the YMCA, Bill Costen of the United States.

I had expected to find Pusan still full of refugee universities from Seoul, as it had been for three years; but they had all returned to Seoul soon after the truce had been signed. In Pusan was the Pusan National University with 1,600 of its own students (and 750 others who were unable to go to Seoul for financial or family reasons), a

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From Student World, Second Quarter, 1954

branch of Chosen Christian University, and the Methodist Seminary. The first and possibly the second of these will remain in Pusan. A national University is a government one. There are five in Korea – Seoul, Pusan, Kyung – puk, Chun – nam and Chun – puk. Seoul, with about 8,000 students, was originally the Japanese Imperial University and so have solid brick buildings, an air of permanence and a certain prestige. It escaped major war damage. The others were only founded after liberation in 1945. Pusan and Kyung – puk, for example, consists of bare wooden buildings, serviceable but inevitably temporary. The United Nations Korean Relief Agency provided the timber. It was in a small room of plain pine boards that I first met the Korean SCM, in Pusan University. This group was a newly formed one and its membership doubled to forty in a week. We sat in the unheated room listening to an elderly but lively Korean pastor who had suffered much, as the fading light of a winter’s afternoon wrapped us in the intimacy of twilight. A few days later, I spoke in the broad light of midday to a full assembly hall of 400 or so students – unlined walls and ceiling again, but this time a tape recorder also! Question: Is it polite to stop speaking when the recorder runs out of tape? Answer: I still don’t know; but I didn’t because the interpreter had used half the time. Incidentally, he was Min – ha Cho whom I had known as a student in Melbourne.

Korea and Japan

In the grounds of the university, I saw a tall wooden post inscribed with characters. It had just been given to the history department by the Korean navy, who had removed it from a disputed island when the Japanese had erected it there after removing a stone, which claimed the island for Korea! Later I learned that as many as 600 Japanese fishermen were in Korean prisons for infringement of fishing grounds claimed by Korea. Negotiations over this and Japanese claims to their former property in Korea had been "Token off. In this and other ways, Japanese tyranny has left its legacy of fear and suspicion, which is not easily removed. "Other Jays" include the disruption and recrimination within the church between those who stood firm against Japanese persecution and those who wavered or submitted. When I had passed through Tokyo, Kiyo Takeda had spoken of the legacy of hate left by thirty-five years' occupation and asked me to say to Korean students, “Japanese Christian students are very sorry for the past bad relationship between our two countries and hope for a better one in the

future. We should like to do something to help you at the present time. Would you please tell us in what ways we might help?” When I mentioned this message to a student leader, I received the reply, "I don't know that Korean students are ready yet to receive help from Japan." I was not surprised - one could hardly expect anything else. I suddenly remembered what I had seen one morning as a small boy before I had been snatched back from the window - three pairs of police boots sinking into the prostrate form of a Korean, who had only gathered with other unarmed people to shout independence slogans. I had to agree that eight years of independence is not long in which to distill the hurts in the accumulated memories of thirty-five years of Japanese rule.

However, I had been given a message and it must be delivered, whatever the repercussions. Soon the opportunity came with a representative group of student Christian office-bearers. Without hesitation and without equivocation there came the reply, "If Japanese students feel sorry about the past that is enough. We would like to correspond with them. Please ask them to pray for us in this great distress." The group then went on to give details of other help they would like to receive - Japanese textbooks, periodicals and religious books. Later, I was given the names and addresses of twelve students in another group who desired to correspond with Japanese students. Later still, when back in Tokyo, I was able to give the reply, not only to Kiyo Takeda, but also to a group of thirty-six men and women student representatives of the YMCA and YWCA in all the Tokyo universities. That also was a thrilling moment. As I handed over the twelve names and addresses, there was a sense that here, under God, was the beginning of reconciliation.

Another message for abroad was from the YM-YW groups in Taegu whom I had been giving some news of various Movements in the Federation. When I finished, they said, "We are moved to hear news of students in East Germany and would send them our greetings and assurance of our prayers." This message I passed on to Kyaw Than, who delivered it personally. So the links of personal concern and Christian love are welded, and the fellowship which is the Federation takes on flesh for South Koreans and East Germans – and an Australian.

The state of the nation

Pusan and Taegu were both within the small area, which was

never overrun by the northern armies; but both have been overrun with refugees. In Pusan, they have built their six by eight foot or six by twelve foot matchwood shacks on every spare spot - up the hillsides, over drains, even on top of one another. Roofs are of light timber, cardboard, a discarded canvas camp-stretcher, or flattened-out army beer cans. I wandered over a hillside that was covered with these hakabangs, which are joined end to end almost endlessly. In between them are narrow, twisting footpaths. One of them seemed a dead-end. I turned back, but looked again. That woman had shut her door and I saw that the path ran on. Following it, I stumbled on a primary school, housed in wooden huts and tents. A teacher told me there were 2,000 children. Perhaps he meant 200 - numbers are tricky things to translate. Yet there must have been many more that 200. How industrious they appeared. How bleak and cold (or hot and wet) on this hilltop. Then there was a hakabang with a door open - a glimpse of a tiny, spotless room, covered with a fresh looking straw mat, the family's bedding stowed neatly away in a corner. Apart from this little room, there was just enough space for the wife to squat and prepare the food, which is cooked outside, on the edge of the path, on a brazier. Three weeks later, a brazier like that was kicked over accidentally on a very windy night. In a few hours, 25,000 people were homeless. A large part of the city, including the post office and railway station, was destroyed.

In spite of such wartime conditions and the general poverty, poverty is not the caste-ridden, deep-rooted, desperate, beggar-breeding thing it is in some of the cities of India. Surprising also is the fact that refugees from North Korea have built themselves refugee churches - some of them big, well-placed buildings. One of them still stands high above the centre of Pusan, although singed by the fire.

Seoul, on the other hand, is a war-smashed city. The train moved slowly across the long Han River Bridge. We looked out in the early morning light at the shattered pylons of another bridge - one of them split to the bottom. We passed through damaged railway yards, past disabled locomotives and drew into the battered remains of what was once a large, modern concrete station. Great areas, especially of the southern and western sections of the city, are laid waste - about eighty-five percent they say. Casualties include the Bible House (no sign of it), YMCA (only walls). Severance Union Medical College and Hospital (eighty-five percent destroyed),

Chung Dong Methodist Church (where Syngman Rhee worships -only sixty percent in use), Ewha Women's University minus a top storey, and Chosen Christian University minus several, while the Russian consulate lifts gaunt white walls from a shambles on a hilltop. Most of the damage occurred during the retaking of Seoul by United Nations Forces and the communist retreat.

Taejon, where I spent a most interesting day at the triennial YMCA conference, was almost totally destroyed except for a handful of buildings; but this is not at first obvious, because the area has been covered again with timber shacks and mud-walled houses. So also, many other places; but these southern towns were damaged three years ago. My mind reeled at the effort of trying to picture Pyongyang, and other places I know in the north, after three years of almost continuous bombing. It reeled also at such figures about the south as - 125,000 orphans and unaccompanied children; 280 orphanages cannot cope with more than a quarter of the orphans; 50,000 school classrooms are required; one million of the three million children of elementary school age are not in school; 267 churches are completely destroyed, 706 "half-destroyed" but still used; "half a nation on relief, a whole nation in dire poverty". "If forty-five percent of the population of the United States were on relief, we would still be better off, for the United States has vastly more in resources and services." Very true. Remember that forty-five percent means over ten million people who are refugees, or have lost the breadwinner of the family, or their bread-winning hands or feet, as a result of the war, or are destitute. There are 294,000 widows with 517,000 children.

And yet there is another side. There are the calm, dignified, serene faces of people who make no display of their poverty. There are large numbers of remarkably healthy-looking children. I am told that the amazing healthiness is probably due to the relief feeding which has come in from overseas - a statement borne out by the fact that children in country villages do not look as well as those in cities. The agencies that are making important contributions to immediate need are Korean Civil Assistance Command of the UN, the Ministry of Social Welfare of the Republic of Korea and the Christian missions. All the missions handle large quantities of clothing, food, medicines and money. The money alone amounted to about three-quarters of a million U.S. dollars in 1952. UNKRA is concerned with long-term reconstruction and is still largely involved in planning

and negotiation, but its Educational Section, for example, has given 39,000 volumes to libraries of nine universities and 2,000 tons of paper to the Ministry of Education for printing text-books. Then army units have given substantial help to orphanages and others -some remarkable generosity, but liable to disappear with the transfer of a unit. During the truce, the Eighth Army launched a big program of assistance of projects which Korean towns or institutions will be able to carry on themselves. World University Service is also making a contribution. I attended a meeting of the Committee at the YWCA called to consider the use of $15,000 of an eventual $100,000 promised by the American Committee of World University Service. The committee is well set up with four representatives each from the YMCA, YWCA, Korean Student Christian Federation, the Roman Catholic student organization, and one representative each from UNKRA, Church World Service, CARE and the Ministry of Education. It reaffirmed its earlier decision that the order of priority of student need is housing, health and scholarships, and decided on immediate steps towards establishing a hostel on the strength of encouraging news from Bill Kitchen, WUS Secretary in the United States.

After speaking at Chung Ang University in Seoul, I had lunch with its remarkable owner and president. Miss Louise Im (or Yim), who is a member of the National Assembly. I asked, "What is the most urgent need in Korea?" Her one word reply was, "Employment." A sound economic structure is a desperate need. It is also extremely difficult to achieve, for Korea is an economic unit, and most of the mineral resources and electricity are in the north. It is said, however, that there are similar resources awaiting development in the south. On the other hand, the Korean economy needs a relationship to China or Japan, neither of which is desired politically at present. In the meantime, soldiers, railway-men and other government employees are grossly underpaid. Hence, there is a lively black market in train tickets and a vast range of commodities. This economic chaos inevitably means that the political and administrative institutions are subject to great strains. When the overriding necessities of war or the unifying political power of Syngman Rhee is no longer there, what will happen? Will Korea then become another Persia, trying desperately to cope with threats of anarchy, playing with democracy, because she lacks "a more or less honest, more or less reliable and more or less capable administration"?¹

The university world

Statistics are not particularly easy things to collect in Korea and they usually come in round numbers. I was given various figures, for the total number of university and college students, ranging from 30/000 to 40,000, plus 7,000 who would be students if they were not in the army. As far as I could ascertain there are about 35,000. (In November, 1952, there were about 32,000.) These consist of about 20,000 university students and 15,000 college students. In addition, there are about 1,500 junior college students and several seminaries with about 750 students. There are eight major universities which are made up of five national (that is, state) and three private universities.

The private universities, all of which are in Seoul, consist of Chosen Christian University (now known as Yonsei), Ewha Women's University and Korea University. The last of these is secular, while the first two were originally mission foundations, which are now under self-governing boards but still closely related to missionary societies. CCU has about 1,600 students, the great majority of which are men, but it has recently become co-educational. Ewha has over 2/000,300 of them in residence, which means that it has more that half the total enrollment of women students in Korea. CCU and Ewha are names to be conjured with in Korea. They have real standing and their graduates are making a considerable impression in national life. They both have good, modem, stone buildings and beautiful campuses. The buildings have been damaged by military action, but it has been possible to restore them. I was impressed by the contribution of these two Christian institutions (along with the now non-existent Union Christian College in Pyongyang) have made through their graduates.

There are about twenty-four colleges of various kinds. These include some medical colleges not affiliated with a university, colleges with several faculties, which are not yet fully recognized as universities, and some liberal arts colleges. Many of these are privately owned institutions. They include the well-known Severance Union Medical College in Seoul - a leading missionary foundation - and Chung Ang, already mentioned, which has a Christian “bias”, and real standing in the community.

In this field, there are three Christian organizations at work – the Student YMCA, the Student YWCA, and the Korean Student Chris-

tian Federation. There is no radical or essential difference between them. The Federation came into existence in the period of rapid changes and development from 1945-48, when the YMCA had not vet been able to resume its full work in the student field. Now some universities have KSCF and some the YM or YWCA. There is a ^go-inning towards greater cooperation and coordination between the three bodies to promote the maximum evangelistic effort. This is very important, because there is a very real religious opportunity among the Korean students today.

India has to be secular because it has several lively religions. Korea is secular because it has little living religion. Buddhism has been the chief religion for many centuries, but is now very much merely a part of the traditional background of life. Confucian teaching had a great influence once, but seems to have very little now. Ancestor worship, however, is still practiced, especially in the country. There is, in other words, a considerable spiritual vacuum in Korea, as also in Japan. The aspirants for the job of filling the vacuum are Christianity, nationalism and communism. I have put them in that order because communism is not an immediate live option in South Korea, except by military conquest. Nationalism has no religious form as it has in Japan in Shintoism, but it is a real force and a rather narrow and bitter one. Christianity is definitely a force in the life of Korea. Christian missions made remarkable progress there in the first fifty years of their work. There is a considerably higher percentage of the population, which is Christian, than is the case in Japan. Also a number of Christians are in positions of real leadership in public life. On the other hand, there are some definite weaknesses.

These weaknesses within Christianity consist partly of a too-ready identification of the Christian way and hope with the national way and hope. There is also some danger in the fact that Christianity has come to Korea largely from the United States. There have been small Canadian, Australian and English missions, but obviously the general pattern of church life, worship and institutions comes from ^e United States. In view of what happened in China, and in view of the growing anti-American feeling in Asia, this is unfortunate. Saying this does not, of course, reflect in any way adversely on tremendous good, which American missions and missionaries have done, but simply on the element of danger residing in the state of unbalance.

Sundry impressions and memories

Syngman Rhee, disliked and feared in Australia as a "dictator" or a firebrand who might ignite the third world war, has tremendous popular prestige and support in Korea. He is seen as the grand old man who devoted a lifetime to winning the thing dearest to a Korean heart - national independence - and united the majority in the south against the minority in the north, and fights for the rights of Korea against the foreign helpers when necessary. Albeit, ruthless at times. "We don't approve of all he does, but he's a good man," said several.

The Republic of Korea (ROK) armed forces are the only ones in Asia with chaplaincy service – a strategic field for the church in which there is a considerable response.

Three thousand people worship in the great stone Yong Nak church in Seoul every Sunday morning. They do so in two shifts. This church survived an attempt to burn it down. It was here that I had the pleasure of being present at Hyun Ja Kirn's marriage to Mr. Oh. Hyun Ja, the only Korean delegate at Nasrapur, is Student Secretary of the YWCA.

One Sunday morning I worshipped with a small (200) congregation, which meets in a cold classroom that looks out over the ruins of part of Seoul. The windows had only recently been reglazed. It announced that owing to the winter weather the early Morning Prayer meeting during the week would not be until 5.30 a.m.! However, the congregation was urged to come earlier for silent meditation beforehand. They take their religion seriously in Korea.

UNKRA is doing good work in face of great obstacles; but there is a need for its relationship to the Korean people to be rethought thoroughly. It tends to be an impersonal foreign agency doing well without any real interest in, or understanding of, the people concerned. Its staff lives on a scale that separates them even more than is necessary from the people. It seems high even by Western standards. Its programs need to be ones in which Koreans are participants at all levels, and not simply recipients.

I shall not soon forget the enthusiastic welcome I received from an audience of 500 organized by the KSCF at Seoul University; no^ the few snowflakes drifting across the open-air amphitheatre as spoke at CCU, nor the girls there holding their cold noses in mittened hands. At Chung Ang, I was told the audience would be a general one, and therefore it would be well to speak on a subject of

general interest. So I tried not to be "too Christian"! Then to my complete surprise, I was asked to give the benediction before I left. It has rarely had more meaning for me.

Nor shall I soon forget the journey to CCU, which is on the other side of a hill from the city. An Englishman told the Korean taxi driver where to take me. It soon became clear that the driver had not listened or the Englishman's Korean could have been better. It also rapidly became clear that neither the Korean civil nor military police in the area could help us - nor the bookshops. I struggled to remember the Korean name of CCU, but none of my guesses hit the mark. Then we cruised aimlessly past the Russian Orthodox Church. I dashed in desperately and found a Greek army chaplain who spoke little English but seemed to know where CCU was. We bundled into the taxi, but he directed it to the headquarters of an American military unit. It soon transpired that we were looking for an American-Greek who could act as an interpreter! Eventually we found him sick and in bed. He hadn't heard of CCU. Frantic inquiries of other Americans and Koreans in the building yielded nothing. By this time, it was very late. At last, a Korean sergeant was found who spoke English and knew the answer. After all these international involvements, I arrived late to speak on forgiveness!

Reconciliation is one of the major tasks that confront Christians in Korea – as in Australia. Reconciliation with Japan, with the north, with those who collaborated with the Japanese and those who collaborated with the Chinese communists. Reconciliation between fundamentalist" and "modernist", between this political or religious group and that. And the key to all this is forgiveness. There is no hope without it – acceptance of God's forgiveness of us and the forgiving of one another. Christianity is terribly and uncomfortably relevant in Korea – and wherever we allow ourselves to see ourselves and our situation as it actually is.

In Pusan, I used a map one night when telling students of the Federation. Afterwards one who had to struggle with his English said, “You made a gracious meeting at the map, but now we must go to our own living ground and there is disappointment”. There's the rub. And there's the glory – to be a part of the forgiven and forgiving community, the beloved community, in a world of faction, tension and violence. ”Let your light so shine...,” sounds nice when read in a comfortable and well-lit church; but it hurts to shine in darkness, trying to push back the great blackness. Yet that is the only

place light is of use. Nor is it a vain struggle, if our flickering light is in fact a reflection of that life which is the light of men, which shines in darkness and which the darkness has not extinguished.

Departure

All too quickly, there came the day of farewell. Dick Kenyon drove me out to K9, or as far as the jeep deigned to go. An American air force jeep then kindly obliged, leaving Dick to await help by the roadside. I had been welcomed at this airport by foreigners. Now I was fare-welled by Koreans. President Yun of Pusan University, a fine Christian and a notable resister of Japanese oppression had graciously come out all that distance. Min-ha Cho and "John" Yang student president of KSCF were among those there. It was good to have them all there as my final minutes in the land of mountains and rivers and among a great and lovable people ticked away. It was good to take with me photos they had so hurriedly developed of yesterday's meeting at the university, and Pictorial Korea with their best wishes.

Then, so suddenly, it was all over. The plane headed east over the water. The mountains, which I had found so intensely moving a month before, grew dim. I stained to see the last ridge and peak, and then sat back in my seat overwhelmed with sadness. But it was profound thankfulness that I had been privileged to be with a people who have in such a remarkable way accepted the incredible sufferings of the last three years and remained uncrushed, who go calmly ahead as if life were normal, who hold high a proud head with a twinkling eye, who laugh and are resolute. I thought of their past and their destiny. Beneath me, the ships of Hideyoshi had sailed in 1952 to ravage Korea. And in their wake, 300 years later, had sailed other ships of war from Japan to drive first the Chinese and then the Russians out of Korea. Now there had come from afar, ships of the sea and the air to do the same thing again but in the name of many nations. Korea – bridge, crossroads, cockpit. Fought over, but never subdued. Strategically significant to others yet always herself. A geographical position akin to ancient Israel's. And the same destiny? A suffering servant till the knowledge of God covers the earth as the waters of the sea? A bridge for the Church as for the nations? What is the meaning of such great suffering, in the providence of God? Is there a light to illumine it other than the radiance from a tomb?

The answers can only be given in Korean; but the faithful prayers, consecrated insights, sacrificial gifts, and humble student volunteers of that sustaining and sharing fellowship, which is the WSCF, can help in the formulation of answers that are lively and true, and which declare and set forward God's holy and loving purpose.