"Koreans Awaiting Christianity"

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31018, 25 March 1966, Page 2

"Koreans Awaiting Christianity"

South Koreans were waiting for Christianity, but the churches were not doing a great deal about it, Miss Josephine Roberts, a Mothers’ Union worker in Korea, told a union gathering at Bishopscourt yesterday. “We maintain about one church to every million people. If we had 10 times as many churches and workers we could use them,” she said. Mis* Roberts, who has been in South Korea eight years, traced the country’s history from the Japanese occupation in 1908. whida deprived

Koreans of any training other than as coolies, through the destruction of the Second World War and the Korean War. “After 1945 we had to start all over again. The church had been driven out' of Korea and after the Korean War all our work in the north was lost. There was no equipment and few clergy.” After Miss Roberts made her first successful contact with Korean country folk by treating them medically, the Bishop of Seoul suggested she form Sunday schools, Mothers’ Unions and begin social work and adult education. Miss Roberts said there was not a hole in ground, a hillride, or a bridge in winch refugees (fid not try to make homes. “Camped underqjbth one

of the main bridges in Seoul I found a group of 62 families —about 370 people—including many starving babies. We managed to settle four families and helped with food and clothing, but during this year’s summer monsoon rains they were swept from their holes in the ground and many were drowned.” The Government moved the remaining families to a hillside camp where they were later joined by 34,000 people whose shacks had been burnt to the ground in a city fire. “They live in tiny tents, four families in each, with hardly room to stand. There is very little food, no heating, and not much clothing. They were still there when I left this January, and the temperature was minus 20 degrees,” she said.

Another of the many problems facing the church was the education of children of cured lepers who had been settled on collective farms and given homes and some land. “These children have never had leprosy, but because their parents are disfigured, schools will not accept them,” Miss Roberts said. A 15-year-old boy with three years’ schooling, who has been trained by Miss Roberts for Sunday school teaching, Is now teaching the children. They work in the little village church, using the backs of Christmas cards for exercise books. “What they will do when they catch up with Michael’s learning, and Whether he will be able to keep ahead with study, I don’t know,” she said.