For the first time in sixty years on October 26th, 2013, an international peace conference was held at the recently constructed DMZ Peace Conference Center and Plaza within the restricted zone and but fifty metres from the southern line of the demilitarized area within sight of the North Korean and South Korean observation points.

From an Australian perspective, the Korean War of 1950 – 1953 is almost the forgotten war even though over 300 Australian soldiers died in the conflict. Yet, it is a war that still remains in living memory. For the first time in sixty years on October 26th. 2013, an international peace conference was held at the recently constructed DMZ Peace Conference Center and Plaza within the restricted zone and but fifty metres from the southern line of the demilitarized area within sight of the North Korean and South Korean observation points. It is now the site of the Border Peace School which trains peace makers to heal the wounds of division and conflict if and when unification takes place.

The following day on Sunday, 27th October, 2013, an interfaith peace ceremony, almost certainly the first ever held on the site, was held in the presence of the Governor of Gangwon province together with representatives of ten Asian and Pacific nations as well as many Koreans. It was held on Baekma Hill where in one of the most bitterest and bloodiest battles of the Korean War 8,500 soldiers died over a ten day period (October 6th – 15th, 1952).

The DMZ Peace Conference

Opening the conference at the Peace Conference Center after all participants had passed through the military checkpoint, Rev. Kim Youngju, the Methodist president of the Korean Council of Churches, observed that the two Koreas are still officially at war, albeit with a crossfire armistice that has lasted uneasily for 60 years. “It has been a painful experience for us all. We are leading a life of survival as we are always under threat. We live in this divided land; we are products of a divided life. This is why we want to terminate the state of war and restore peace to this peninsula”. He added, “The 38th parallel used to be known as the Korean line but actually it was drawn up by the Big Powers. The world needs to recognize that it is also the world’s problem”.

Religion and War

In an illuminating opening address, Professor Johnston McMaster of the Belfast School of Peace and Reconciliation focused on the role of religions in the healing of community divisions, drawing on his own experience of growing up as part of the Protestant community in Northern Ireland. Gradually he came to see that his view of the conflict had to be enlarged to take account of the Irish Catholic perspective. Religious people must themselves face the twin realities: religion as a cause of conflict and violence and, secondly, religion as a source of healing and peace.

He reflected, “One of the strong religiously motivated dimensions of religious and political sectarianism is that God is on our side, always on our side, and that we have ultimate moral right on our side, leading us to victory”. Both Osama bin Laden and George Bush invoked God in their war and terrorist activities. Professor McMaster commented, “The problem is that people can turn to sacred texts and believe they are reading them faithfully to justify violent actions …. in all likelihood the sacred texts are being read literally.” He added, “When religion colludes with political power and aligns itself absolutely with political and nationalistic power, then a war god is invoked and religion becomes toxic and dangerous”.

Religion can never be the only cause of violence and war since the strands of historical, political, cultural, economic and religious strands always enter into the conflict equation. Of course, much of the 20th century slaughter was carried out by secularist regimes. “Stalin and Pol Pot made no pretence of piety and religious devotion”.

Now, in a globalizing world, “encountering the presence, power and richness of respective religious traditions has brought us face to face with the diversity of approaches to meaning and to ultimacy”, adding “we can no longer speak of world religions, but of neighbour religions”. The question then becomes, “Are absolute truth claims possible or desirable in today’s world?”, commenting that “there is nothing unique about uniqueness!” In history, one God has been used to assert not only One Faith but also One Empire. And now religious fundamentalism has become antithetical to dialogue and to the creation of relationships, eventually imperilling the peace of the planet.

The word, “dialogue”, means “the word between us”, and implies the willingness to listen to different faith stories “acknowledging and seeking commonalities”. And dialogue of the word must also become the dialogue of action. The result must be ‘a community of communities’ for isolationism is no longer possible. “For Christians, the 20th century was the ecumenical century; the 21st century must become the interreligious century”.

At the core of all neighbour religions are six core values:

1. compassion
2. love
3. justice
4. love for life
5. tolerance and
6. peace.

These are the values religious traditions bring to the public square, to state craft and to peace building. These transformative values “can help to heal wounded and broken pasts, grow a culture of peace that is interreligious”.

The second major speaker was Professor David Kwang-sun Suh, Emeritus Professor of Theology at Ewha Women’s University. Born in North Korea, he poignantly related the story of the day in Pyongyang (now the North Korean capital) when the South Korean and American troops entered the city in victory. He went looking for his pastor father, only to find his bullet-ridden body – he was killed by the retreating North Vietnamese troops who eventually would return. He buried his father who had been anti-Japanese during WWII as well as anti-Communist, in the graveyard of his church overlooking the city. He fell weeping on the bloodied body of his dead father, crying out, “I will have to revenge. I will follow your way. I will keep your faith and hope for liberation and peace. No more war, no more shooting. Father, give me courage. I love you and I respect you forever”.

With the appearance of a wise sage, Professor Suh reflected that not only had mass murder taken place against civilians, including many Christians, in the north. In the south those who had been forced to co-operate with the North’s occupation forces were brutally murdered by their fellow South Koreans as traitors while the North Koreans were retreating. Out of then Korean population of 30 million, 5.1 million died.

In subsequent South Korean history, the various military governments had argued to the people that with the ominous North Korean threat, democracy and human rights observance were unaffordable. He himself became caught up in the May 18th, 1980 democratic revolution of Kwang-ju where a terrible massacre was to take place. He had preached against military rule in his role as university chaplain. In prison he was forced to write his own biography for his interrogator. It was a useful exercise – his interrogator was an excellent editor!

As he reflected about exacting revenge on the South Korean military and the North Korean regime, he came to two soul-searching insights. The first was that the only solution to division is through dialogue, reconciliation and co-operation. He resolved to join ecumenical Christians in the struggle, “revenge will not do; revenge in peace by forgiveness and love of Jesus Christ is required”. He especially reflected on Romans 12:17–21 which begins,”Do not repay e
vil with evil…”

The second insight was that he should follow in his father’s footsteps to fight against militarism and dictator rule and work for human rights and democracy. Hence, he joined the Korean National Council of Churches and helped in a WCC initiative to open up dialogue with the North Korean Christian Federation, which eventually in 1988 adopted a historical declaration on Peace and Reconciliation in Korea.

Thirty years later, the military impasse remains unresolved. His dream of returning to visit his father’s grave has never been fulfilled. He ended his presentation, “And I cannot go back to pay a visit to my father’s grave on another October morning in my lifetime, let my children and grandchildren make a journey across the DMZ to pay respect to my father’s graveyard.”

In response to questions, he remarked that the six-nation talks on North Korean nuclear disarmament have become “an old story”. He feared for a new cold war between China and the USA for “enemies need each other for the military build-up”. He reflected that prior to the Korean War the north had been much less educated than the south, and this had been a factor in the very fundamentalist Communism that has reigned for so long in Pyongyang.

Dr. Jeongsoo Kim from the Women Making Peace Collective, adding a Korean woman’s perspective, began by speaking about her divided family. Her uncle on her mother’s side had escaped to the north at the beginning of the War to follow his socialist dream. Her mother was to keep her silence about him for the rest of her life despite the adumbrations of her husband who had served with great distinction in the South Korean army winning two bravery medals. He was cynical about his wife’s family background, but the whole situation remained undiscussed within the family circle until both parents had passed on.

As she grew up and matured, Dr Kim became tortured with her life-long question, Is loving your enemy possible? She was driven to ask herself from a spiritual and ethical perspective about the role of Korean women in North-South reconciliation as survivor, reconciler, healer and peacemaker. She wanted to overcome so-called political realism, and for 60 years since the ceasefire, Koreans, including Korean Christians, have been asking, “Who is our enemy?” when the real question is, “Who is our neighbour?”

She has been driven by insights from the theologian Jurgen Moltmann and his thinking about working for justice between the generations and Immanuel Levinas’s axiom, “Be responsible for all others who are in pain”. She also draws on Hannah Arendt’s comment about the banality of evil which can be overcome through thoughtfulness, self-reflection, sensitivity training for peace and, lastly, solidarity with the poor, vulnerable, marginalized and suffering people. After all, North Korean mothers also love their children, especially when they are starving. “Like us, they praise God and love and support each other”.

Since 1995, she and her female colleagues have been addressing the food shortages affecting women and children. The further ethical question has thus become, “What is the ethical response when your government does not permit food aid to North Korea since the South Korean government strongly believes that rice, beans and flour have been used for the North Korean army and other purposes?”

Dialogue sessions between women from both sides occurred in 2002, 2005, 2011 and 2013. Food aid has been sent in 2004 after the explosion at the Yongchun station in North Korea, after the floods in 2007 and again in 2011. However, in 2013, the South Korean government has disallowed its citizens to visit North Korea, so the meeting took place in Shenyang in China. She ended her presentation with the words, “In a long, divided and hostile relationship, building trust takes time. In order to be a friend with an enemy, we need to be patient, wait and never give up. And try not to be indifferent for your children and the next generations whose faces we do not know. Yet we wait for their peaceful co-existence without fear of war any more”.

The conference highlighted the current impasse in North-South dialogue and the tragic stories of death and retribution, of divided families and of tentative attempts to win the peace. The older South Koreans are becoming worried about the commitment to unification of younger people who see no real purpose in achieving such unification. They feel that each nation should advance, forging their own separate identities and national history. In any case, unification would provide a huge financial impost on South Koreans.

The Border Peace School Korea

Since March 2013, in the newly built but rarely used Peace Conference Center within sight of sentry boxes and demarcation lines, the Border Peace School has been training peace makers who will move into North Korea if and when unification takes place. The North Koreans will need much help in making the adjustment and reinvigorating their society. It is an academic program, three years in length, with studies including conflict resolution, peace education, eco-farming, health and hygiene and sustainable development. The young participants were the organizers of the conference and the peace ceremony.

The Battle of Baekma Hill – Interfaith Peace Ceremony

Baekma Hill, a small hill, 1,296 feet in height, is located right on the edge of the restricted zone. It oversaw a strategic transportation route during the War. In October 1952, the Battle of Baekma Hill, also known as the Battle of the White Horse, took place over ten days in the province of Cherwon. Occupancy of the hill changed hands 24 times with the Chinese troops pitted against the UN forces of mainly South Korean, USA and French troops. An interesting historical vignette is that a South Korean, Cho Chang-Ho, was taken prisoner, being held in captivity until he managed to escape on a Chinese boat 43 years later in 1994, and dying in 2007 at the age of 75.

On a glorious autumn day upon the hill, the interfaith peace ceremony began with a liturgical dance by a lone Korean dancer who in her gestures and fluid movements expressed the sorrowfulness of the place where the bodies of the soldiers are buried in mass graves and the yearning for peace. Various readings from the Buddhist, Christian and Muslin scriptures were followed by a series of prayers, including the one below expressing the Abrahamic tradition.

With that, two long pieces of cloth were stretched across the hallowed ground and everyone present took a paint brush to write a message of peace on the cloth before the bell of life was sounded fifteen times, reverberating across the valley below across to the DMZ. The ceremony concluded with a final liturgical dance.

BAEKMA HILL PEACE CEREMONY
ABRAHAMIC PRAYER of FORGIVENESS and HEALING

Towards the end of the Korean War in October 1952, its bloodiest battle took place at Baekma Hill where approximately 8,500 soldiers lost their lives from both sides. Sixty years later, for the first time, on October 27th 2013, the first ever interfaith service was held on the Hill in the presence of the Governor of Gangwon province. This prayer was recited on that occasion, overlooking the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea.

Today, on this hill of great sadness and tragedy, I pray with you this prayer of forgiveness and healing on behalf of the Abrahamic religions, the sons and daughters of Abraham, our father in faith, to the one God of Judaism, the one God of Christianity and the one God of Islam.

Let us pause in silence in memory of those too many soldiers from both sides of this terrible conflict who died in bat
tle, and also for those whose physical and psychological wounds still remain 60 years later.

(IN SILENCE)

O compassionate God, the God of life and love,

Forgive us, as we stand on the edge of the DMZ,
Forgive us for the stupidity of war, its killings, its injuries and its destruction.
And teach us again and again,
Teach us that all war is a defeat, a defeat of all that is divine in the human spirit

Forgive us, as we gaze across to the ridges of blood,
Forgive us for not following the message of the prophets of our three faiths.
And teach us again and again,
Teach us their messages of love, justice and reconciliation, their messages of peace and compassion.

O compassionate God, the God of life and love,

Heal us, as we look across to the observation points looking suspiciously at each other,
Heal the hearts and minds of those still affected by the wounds of war.
And teach us again and again,
Teach us that our enemy is also our neighbour, our brother and sister in common humanity.

Heal us, as we are watched by the satellites circling above,
Heal the minds and hearts of our political and military leaders.
And teach them again and again,
Teach them to have the courage to take the path of risk and determination in achieving unity and unification.

O compassionate God, the God of life and love,

Let not humanity be crucified on the cross of war as it was on the 38th parallel,
Let not women and children again become collateral damage in the engagement of war,
Let not our leaders, political, military and religious, be blind to the folly of war and the banality of evil.

This we pray to the God of Abraham in peace,
In the rising of the sun and in the going down of the sun,
O God of Light, LEST WE FORGET, Amen.

Professor Des Cahill,
Chair, Religions for Peace Australia.