Asian Travel Diary, 1959

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.

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From Student World, No 4, 1959

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.

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!

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 river

bank, below Date Masummune's statue, are still to be seen the stone I tables erected in memory of the seventeenth-century Christian martyrs.

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 agri-

cultural college. 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.

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.)

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

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fresh outbreak.

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

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of living. It needs the sympathetic appreciation and unceasing prayers of Christians everywhere.

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.

Co-operation

In both Japan and Korea, I was amazed at the capacity of Christians to be ignorant of what other Christian agencies are doing, or

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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

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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.

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

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voluntary effort had grown through the years.

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

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“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.

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

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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.

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.

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-

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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.