Travels to Korea: Observing South and North

I'm just back from a ten-day trip to Seoul, South Korea. The trip was a part of a city-to-city exchange between Anabaptist leaders in Philadelphia and Seoul, sponsored by Mennonite Central Committee. MCC East Coast and MCC International Programs/Asia were involved in putting this event together. I served as an outside consultant/trainer/facilitator/urban missiologist for this event. It afforded me the chance to meet new friends in both Philly and Seoul, and to work again with my best good friend, Dr. Joe Manickam. Joe is director of MCC International Programs in Asia. We worked together at the Center for Anabaptist Leadership for nine years (1996-2005).

It was an amazing trip. The adventure of travel with new friends, the learning about new cultures, the enjoyment of new foods, and the experience of a different perspective on life, all make for a quite a journey.

The picture above symbolizes something of the core of this trip. Taken on the first full day of the trip, we are standing at the observation deck overlooking the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) dividing North and South Korea into separate, hostile nations. The DMZ is the essential fact and basic contradiction of contemporary Korean society. This line, which roughly runs along the 38 parallel of north latitude, both divides and defines Korea. To the North, perhaps the last Stalinist state - regimented, rural, and poor. North Korea may be feared as a potential nuclear power, but on a good day, it can barely feed its people, and it can't keep the lights on at night. To the South, a prosperous, urbanizing nation with plenty to eat and busy lives doing business -- Western-style corporate capitalism on steroids, reinforced and challenged by Confucian values, Buddhist religion and Christian faith in an ongoing, dynamic, and not always comfortable conversation.

North and South are officially enemies. The Korean nation was annexed by Imperial Japan in 1910, separated by three years of brutal civil war (1950-1953), and currently living in the twilight zone of a cold war now fifty-six years long. In a world where the Soviet Union no longer exists, the place where Communism and Capitalism fought their nastiest proxy war still remains divided. Technically, a state of war still exists in Korea. The 1953 agreement was only a cease-fire and armistice. Peace in Northeast Asia has not yet been settled.

In spite of this geopolitical reality, the people of Korea see themselves as a one people. In fact, in ways that can sound troubling to an American set of ears, the Korean people take great pride on being a pure race, a "tanil minjok" (i.e., unitary nation), based on Han ethnicity. When coupled with the perspective of a 5,000 year long Korean history on the Peninsula, one has the impression that the DMZ, and a divided Korea, is a hiccup of history, soon to be mended by the unification of the Koreas. In fact, the one comment I heard again and again is that Korean unification is not a matter of "if" - it is a question of "when."

Of course, the work needed to execute such a unification will make the German experience of the 1990s look like a Sunday School picnic by comparison. The two Koreas have different economies to say the least, and their integration will be, to put it bluntly, hard.

The prospect of such integration is compounded by the challenges faced by North Koreans who do make it to the South. The young woman in the photograph is an immigrant from North Korea. Her mother sent her into China, where a "broker" arranged for her to travel the length of China, into Vietnam, and ultimately back to South Korea. Alone. Now 20 years old, and in the 11th grade, she faces hardship and discrimination in the land of promise. She has lost all contact with her biological family. Living with a foster parent (a remarkable woman who has been a single mom to 10 such young women over the years), she goes to school and dreams of a good life, yet faces economic and social discrimination in a land that celebrates the common ethnic purity of all Koreans. I confess, as an American, I don't understand why this young lady and the hundreds like her are not welcomed in the South with flowers and joy. But they aren't. They are teased by peers for their differently accented Korean, and they scrape by, three girls and a single mom in a tiny apartment (even by Korean standards), in a rough area of Seoul.

But this young woman is, to use a term, plucky. Determined to do well in school, she impressed us with her knowledge of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Japanese. A remarkable young woman who is an immigrant in her own land, she is also a symbol to me of my Korean experience.

More about the trip in future posts, including reflections on urban Seoul and why city-to-city exchanges are important for the global Anabaptist movement...