South Korea: Missionary receives major award

Fr Donal O'Keeffe

Source: AsiaNews

Columban missionary Fr Donal O'Keeffe has been awarded the 'immigrant of the year award' by South Korea...

Fr Donal, 70, arrived in Korea in 1976, when the country was still marked by military dictatorship and strong repression. In a nation still influenced by Confucianism, where the level of education determines social prestige, starting from the 1980s, Fr Donal dedicated himself to the workers who move from the slums to the industrial districts of Korean cities. "Any type of association was forbidden at the time, the only place where people could meet were churches."

With the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, Fr Donal created an 'open house", a place where workers, sometimes even very young people aged 15 or 16, could meet and share problems, dreams, aspirations. The priest describes how "most of them had abandoned their studies after middle school. They were people who felt terribly inferior because they had not studied, with very low self-esteem due to social pressures. We started with personal growth programs, created groups where young people could make friends or engage in various activities, from learning to play the guitar to walking in the mountains."

The most beautiful thing was to see the children grow up, "to see them flourish," says Fr Donal.

Korea has been transformed in the past 40 years. The situation changed shortly before the 1988 Seoul Olympics, when it was realized that in order to host the Games, the country had to be more stable. The democratic movement had organized demonstrations across the nation to demand free elections and civil rights. The first presidential elections took place in 1987 and since then, with what is called the Sixth Republic, South Korea has become increasingly rich, free and open.

Social challenges are not over though. With the economic development of the 1990s, the middle class began to move to the suburbs, where the 'moon towns" were, slums on the sides of the hills from where the moon could be seen. The people who lived there were evacuated to build apartments which would then be rented at prohibitive prices.

Fr Donal said: "Those big buildings have begun to rise where the richest people live at the top and the poorest in the basements. As seen in the movie 'Parasite'. Although before when there were slums life might have seemed worse, the quality of relationships was actually better. Poverty has been hidden, but people have become increasingly isolated."

He explained that the problems of Korean society are different now. Here too, as in China, women are valued much less than men, especially in rural areas. And women are not that attracted to marriage now that they are economically independent. As a result, some Korean men 'order' their wives from abroad. They are the so-called 'mail order brides' and come mainly from the Philippines, Vietnam and China.

"In many cases they don't turn out to be good relationships. In the villages the living conditions of these women are not easy; their children are excluded because Korean society takes great pride in being ethnically pure". This is a new challenge for the government but also for the Church.