As the three elderly men walked away, one with a slight limp, young Sister Maria Ko looked at me inquiringly, “Who are those decrepit old men?” She had seen me invite them for college and walk with them to the gate. “Those are living martyrs of the Korean Church.” I told her.
On June 25, 1950, the communist army of the North invaded South Korea, and sent millions of refugees poring from the North into South Korea. Women and Children were stopped at the bridges and train stations. Young men of military age were loaded first as boats and trains left for the South. If left behind they would be forced into the North Korean Army. As they fled South they were conscripted into the Bamboo Curtain stabilized at the 38th parallel in 1953, dividing North and South Korea, these men were caught in the South and their wives and children sealed off in the North. As they were released from the Army the Catholic men, especially, faced a cruel predicament. In a structured Confucian society where “onside” work is done by women and “outside” work is the role of men, these men could not survive without their wives. Loyal Catholics, presuming their wives survived in North Korea, they could not remarry.
Father Leo Pang, a rather eccentric Korean priest, whom I met for the first time in the Seoul Railroad Station, a portly, disheveled gray man, dressed in black cassock and round broad-brimmed clerical hat, invited such men to join him in a religious Brotherhood. As religious Brothers they remained faithful to their wives in North Korea and at the same time supported themselves as carpenters, farmers, or by whatever occupation they had before the War. Father Pang called them the “Brothers of the Korean Martyrs.” Over thirty men joined him. When they petitioned for approval as a religious congregation Rome refused to allow the married men to take religious vows, saying they must eventually return to their wives in North Korea.
When I began the Kan Sek Dong Parish in 1974 the Brothers loaned us their monastery Chapel for Sunday Mass until we built a Parish us their monastery Chapel for Sunday Mass until we built a Parish Church. At that time the Bishop appointed me to be their Father Confessor. During six years as Pastor of Kan Sek Dong I got to know these Brothers as simple men, saying their prayers together in early morning and late at night, working all day long in the fields of the monastery. Since I was assigned elsewhere in 1981 the Brothers have sought me out several times a year for confession and spiritual direction. Several have died. Four of them left the Brotherhood and married, after I investigated the circumstances of their wives in North Korea and concluded that they must be presumed dead. Eight of the Brothers still visit me. Every Christmas they bring me a crate of apples from they farm. Tired old men now, largely forgotten by the Korean Church, somewhat looked down upon by their morning and night prayers together, and work long hours on their farm, supporting the newest work of the Brotherhood, a facility for the care of mentally afflicted poor people. When they formally shake my hand as they leave, I feel the callused gnarled knuckles of their hands, and I think “When the Gate of Heaven opens for these decrepit old men and the fisherman Peter holds out his hand to welcome them, with his calluses and the faint smell of fish about him, that will be the meeting of kindred spirits, ordinary men loyal and dedicated to their Lord.” It’s been an honor to know them.