This banner, seen at Gangjeong village on the southern coast of Jeju Island, where a naval base was built over the opposition of the people and their supporters, provides a reminder of the challenge to work for justice and peace and wholeness in all things.
Traci Smith, author of Faithful Families: Creating Sacred Moments at Home has provided a gift of the November 2018 Gratitude Every Day calendar. I am using it as an opportuity to revisit photos and post them as they speak to gratitude.
Act for peace on the Korean Peninsula – sign the petition asking the U.S. government to enter negotiations for a peace treaty. 
On July 27, 1953, the guns fell silent on the Korean peninsula. An armistice brought three years of war to an end. However, a peace treaty has never replaced this cease fire.
Tensions remain between the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. At times tensions heighten. Periodically they boil over into violent clashes. The continuing conflict diverts precious resources from the welfare of the people on both sides of the Demilitarized Zone.
The United States holds a special responsibility for a peaceful resolution of the conflict as it occupied the southern part of the peninsula in 1945 and signed the armistice in 1953. The United States maintains a military presence in the Republic of Korea. Joint military exercises fuel the tension with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Churches in the Republic of Korea, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korean, the United States, and around the world have joined a campaign to call President Obama and Congress to enter negotiations now for a Korean peace treaty, without conditions, to replace the armistice agreement.
The Korean Peninsula has known separation and conflict since 1945. It is time, it is past time, for peace for Korea.
Sign the petition asking the U.S. government to enter negotiations for a peace treaty. Invite your friends to join you. Let’s give peace a chance.
Filed under Current Events, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
From my friends Kurt Esslinger and Hyeyoung Lee comes an opportunity to pray and witness for peace on the Korean Peninsula.
This coming August 15th, 2015 will mark 70 years since Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial control as well as Korea’s division into two zones based on the decision of US and Soviet Union officials (with Koreans conspicuously absent). Thus began a cycle of conflict and violence that Korea has yet to escape. Christians in South Korea first learned that Christians still lived in the open North despite severe restrictions on the practice of their faith. South and North Christians met face to face for the first time in 1988, despite it being illegal with participants risking arrest upon return to the South. Since then, South Koreans and Christians of the world helped convince the North to give Christians some breathing room to worship and practice in public, although full freedom to practice is still restricted. Since 1988, the National Council of Churches in Korea (NCCK – South) and the Korean…
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Filed under Friends, Uncategorized, Worship
Way behind on this – but here is a reflection on the visit of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Young Adult Volunteer program in South Korea to Jeju Island, a place of beauty, pain, and courage.
We take the YAVs on four big study trips/retreats during the one year they live with us in Daejeon. Our first trip was to Busan for the World Council of Churches Assembly. This time we went to Jeju Island. It is Korea’s largest island, and it hangs off the southern tip of the peninsula. It is known these days as a vacation/resort location, particularly for honeymoon couples. However, we went to learn about some of its darker history and some of the ways the islanders continue to deal with sufferings of the past. We spent 6 nights and 7 days there learning about the history of the island, it’s connection to the history of the mainland, and it’s unique culture that differs a bit from the mainland. I’ll cover different parts of our week there over the course of several posts.
Jeju April 3rd Peace Park (4/3 “Sah Sahm”)
This…
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Filed under Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
Resistance.
Persistence.
Hope.
Life.
28 March 2013
Eunhaesa Buddhist Temple
Youngcheon, Republic of Korea
Purple in white,
flowers point to the royal presence.
28 March 2013
Tomb of King Suro
Gimhae, Republic of Korea
Royal colors
surround the resting place
of the king.
28 March 2013
Tomb of King Suro
Gimhae, Republic of Korea
Perhaps
potential purple flowers
would be a better title.
26 March 2013
Gimhae, Republic of Korea
A stew of purple beauty
greets visitors to the
Traditional Korean House Gimhae.
26 March 2013
Gimhae, Republic of Korea
Purple flowers, unplanted, mark
the site of the
Seotal Oreum Massacre:
In 1950, after the Korean war broke out,
the Korean government issued orders
of “preventative detention”
of suspected communists and communist sympathizers.
Of the 344 people the Moseulpo Police detained,
210 were illegally massacred in two mass killings at the base of Seotal Oreum.
The people
and the flowers
remember.
23 March 2013
Seotal Oreum, Jeju Island, Republic of Korea
Filed under Human Rights, Photo
