Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Geckoman]

Sides feud over 'God's land' in Seoul!

Did you guys hear about this? This episode in Seoul has gotten so big that it has made the international press. I read about it in the International Herald Tribune.

See the article at http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/10/news/korea.php
or see below.

Any thoughts?


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Sides feud over 'God's land' in Seoul
By Choe Sang-Hun

Friday, August 10, 2007
SEOUL: The Yanghwajin Foreigners Cemetery, the most sacred site for Protestants in South Korea, occupies a tree-shaded hill overlooking Seoul's Han River. Usually it presents a peaceful scene, where magpies hopscotch among the tombstones and slow-gaited visitors pause to read inscriptions.

But over the past two years, it has become the setting for a highly charged battle between Korea's oldest, and predominantly foreign, Protestant congregation and one of the country's newest.

On Aug. 5, about 2,000 members of a Korean church - established in 2005 to honor the early American missionaries buried here - took over the cemetery chapel and claimed it as their own. They locked out the congregation that was started by those same missionaries 122 years ago and had been holding services in the chapel for the past 22 years.

The young Korean congregation - called The 100th Anniversary Memorial Church - declared it a historic moment, a strike against foreign domination comparable to Hong Kong's 1997 transfer from British to Chinese rule. Its leaders said they had finally reclaimed the holy ground from "foreigners who had turned it into an extraterritorial zone."

The 100 or so locked-out members of the Seoul Union Church held their own service in a tent outside the chapel and vowed not to surrender. Said the Reverend Prince Charles Oteng-Boateng, a Ghana-born pastor: "Our church's history is tied to this place. We will keep meeting here until Jesus comes."

He warned that pushing out the expatriates could have negative consequences. "Korea is now trying to turn itself into a country that attracts a lot of foreigners and an international place for foreigners," he said. "For them to do something like this is not right."

The Korean church's move came as South Korean Christians in general are facing new scrutiny for their aggressive expansionism, at home and overseas, even in Islamic countries. In July, the Taliban kidnapped 23 South Koreans in Afghanistan on a church-sponsored aid mission and have since killed two of them.

A century ago Korea was on the receiving end of Christian evangelists, mostly from the United States. Now, more South Koreans identify with Christianity than any other religion, and South Korea has become the world's second largest exporter of Christian missionaries, after the United States.

The Yanghwajin cemetery is the 117-year-old burial ground for many of these early American missionaries and other foreigners, many of whom are revered by Koreans. Not only did these pioneers spread Christianity, they also fought for Korea's independence from Japanese colonial rule, and founded some of South Korea's oldest and best-known universities and hospitals.

But now Memorial Church argues that Christianity in South Korea has come of age and South Koreans should take the lead. And as the larger, and richer, congregation, it says it is in a better position to maintain Yanghwajin. It says the cemetery had turned into a "garbage-strewn, crime-infested urban haunt for juvenile delinquents" under Union Church's care, a charge the foreign congregation rejects as part of a "smear campaign."

"We should establish a new order at Yanghwajin by making it clear who is the owner and who is the visitor," said the Reverend Lee Jae Chul of the Memorial Church, adding that his church was claiming Yanghwajin "not because of nationalism but because this is our land."

"This is a sacred place for the Korean Protestant church," he added. "It should not be controlled by a small group of foreigners who are in this country for their own private interests and have nothing to do with those buried here."

The Union Church, which holds its services in English, ministers primarily to expatriates in Seoul. Only a few of its 150 active members today are directly related to the early missionaries buried at the cemetery. But many feel an attachment to the history represented here and feel they have fallen victim to antiforeign nationalism.

"There is that sense of nationalism or racism that I think still is in the society," said Robert Black, a Union Church member and an American private equity investor who has lived in South Korea for 12 years. "At different times, it comes up in politics, it comes up in business and, unfortunately, it comes up in religion."

Robert Neff, a Seoul-based historian who has studied the early missionaries, said, "You can't talk about Korea's modernization without talking about those buried here."

American Protestant evangelists began arriving in Korea in 1885, a full century behind Roman Catholic missionaries from Europe, who bore the brunt of Korea's early persecution of Christianity.

The Yanghwajin Foreigners Cemetery was created in 1890, when one of the early American missionaries, John Heron, died of dysentery at age 34 and the Korean government provided a burial plot at what was then a military outpost.

The graveyard now contains the remains of 550 people from more than a dozen countries. About a third are missionaries and their relatives. Others include Western diplomats, soldiers, educators, musicians and gold miners. Some tombs remain unidentified.

The roster includes names every Korean reads about in school: the American Underwood missionary family, who founded Yonsei University in Seoul; the British journalist Ernest Bethell; and the American author Homer Hulbert. Bethell and Hulbert are honored today for their campaign against the Japanese occupation in the early 20th century.

"My family has been in Seoul since 1885," said Peter Underwood, who has seven family members buried at Yanghwajin, including his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, and has reserved a plot for himself. "I knew from the time I knew what death was that this is where I would be buried," he said.

On a recent sultry summer day, schoolchildren were taking notes as their teacher pointed out the inscription on Hulbert's grave: "I would rather be buried in Korea than in Westminster Abbey."

The graveyard was managed first by foreign diplomats and then by a "European and American Cemetery Association," made up of Union Church members. But it had never been clear who owned the land.

Still, in 1985 the cemetery association "donated" the land to the newly formed Council for the 100th Anniversary of the Korean Church, an interdenominational organization of major Korean church groups set up to celebrate the centennial. The council registered the land under its own name.

In 1986, the council built the chapel at Yanghwajin and let the Union Church, which had never had a permanent home, hold services there and manage the cemetery. In 2005, the council created the Memorial Church, which began sharing the chapel with the foreign congregation.

Before long, the two began accusing each other of mismanagement. They bickered over ownership, parking places, trees cut and signs and monuments removed. Union Church considers the place an active cemetery for foreigners; 37 plots have been reserved and paid for by foreigners who want to be buried here. Memorial Church opposes new interments, insisting that the site be preserved as a historical "missionary park."

Memorial Church's takeover of the chapel on Aug. 5 and declaration that it, not Union Church, would hold the Sunday morning services, was the latest move to assert ownership. Union Church and the cemetery association say they will take the dispute to court.

The feud worries some members of both congregations.

"It's shameful, humans squabbling over a piece of God's land," said Lee Kang Pil, 70, a Union Church member who spent most of his life as cemetery caretaker, like his uncle before him.

Kim Seong Kil, a Memorial Church member, said: "This is embarrassing at a time when non-Christians are criticizing churches for what happened in Afghanistan. I hope the two churches can pray together."

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[caniff]

That is depressing on many different levels. I was getting ready to go out and have fun. Now I just want to shut my eyes and try to close out the stupidity prevalent in the world.




















Naaw, I'm going out.

[mindmetoo]

Christians behaving in an unChristian manner. Golly! I'm shocked. Shocked I say.

[Geckoman]

[caniff]

Anyone here ever been there?

[Ya-ta Boy]

I have, or at least I think I have. It's in your neighborhood. When I lived in Hongdae I took a walk one day with a friend, down past Hapcheong Subway Station. If I remember correctly, we angled off just a little to the left of the big street. There's a grove of trees on a bluff over the river. The graves were not very well maintained, at least not as well as in cemetaries back home. There were bunches of gravestones with the same date of death...I guessed there must have been epidemics in the old days.

[caniff]

Yeah, that area is right down the street from where I live. Something for me to do next weekend - go find where it's at.

Maybe I'll even see some Korean Christian secular animosity if I'm lucky.

(I suppose that it's is not far from the river, right?)

[Ya-ta Boy]

It's right on the bluff over the river. I think the bridge is just to the right of it, so aim for the left side of the bridge and you should find it with no problem.

I was there in 2000, so if I remember right, there was a dirt road just to the left of the bridge and we walked along that a short way, then found the cemetary.

[caniff]

Thanks, Ya-ta. My wife claims she knows about it and roughly where it is, but she says she's never been. I highly doubt she would be able to find it on her own as she is terrible with directions (typical male chauvinist thing to say, but in this case it happens to be true. Spatial analysis is seriously lacking).

[CentralCali]

[Ilsanman]