Jude Lal Fernando – « Rethinking Human Security »

With the facilitation of the WCC, church groups and public intellectuals from the North and South have been meeting for decades in deep conversations concerning their aspirations for justice, peace, reunification and reconciliation in the peninsula.  One can find a very rich range of letters, telegrams, reports, and written conversations in the WCC library that testify to this engagement. The theological reflections of NCCK and KCF determine the contextual meaning of Just Peace announced by WCC by daring to state the concrete sociopolitical and geopolitical meanings of their self-reflective journey of faith. 

In one written conversation between the two groups, a North Korean Juche philosopher, Pak Sung Dok, reflects on the common ground between the North and South. 

Progressive theologians [in the South] are arguing widely about the interpretation of the Bible. They are studying the Bible critically on the basis of an historical reading… Furthermore, progressive theologians criticize the domination of man and struggle for the reform of the capitalist society in a revolutionary way. Minjung theology [in South] maintains that the subject of history is the minjung. Theologians are struggling against a fascist system. The Juche idea [North Korean national ideology based on economic, political and cultural self-reliance] demands that religion must be dealt with in terms of how it deals with the aspiration of the people. Christianity must be measured by how it opposed oppression.^[1]

Here the hermeneutical lens brought to a reading of Christian faith is freedom from oppression, which continues to define not simply the North Korean understanding of national sovereignty, but also of the entire conflict. 

The conversations are held on the basis of understanding the North and South not as two separate worlds, but mutually reinforcing systems both linked to an oppressive international order—as a theater of the Cold War, the insecurity of the North has led to deadly nuclearisation programmes and the utter dependence of the South on the USA since the end of Japanese colonialism has led to an unprecedented level of military build-up and broken the relationship between the North and South. The conversations of the two groups recognize the distinct struggles of each community, yet embrace a common ground based on the mutual recognition of resistance to oppression, seen as the pathway to peace. In the conversations, the Juche philosopher says:

 ‘I oppose two tendencies: the first is a stress on international solidarity while ignoring national independence; the other is to stress national independence at the expense of international solidarity. History shows that when a nation does not defend its independence it is subjugated. But if a nation does not have international solidarity it is exclusivism. Friendship among nations is possible only when each nation is respected. But we can truly be independent when we have solidarity and friendship’.^[2]

One of the most critically self-reflective faith testimonies emerging from the South Korean churches led NCCK is the Declaration of the Churches of Korea on National Reunification and Peace.^[3] The declaration makes public confession for having ‘been guilty of the sin of violating God’s commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”. (Matthew 22:37-40). ‘Because of the division of our homeland, we have hated, deceived and murdered our compatriots of the same blood, and have justified that sin by the political and ideological rationalization of our deeds’. This sin is caused by the ‘structure of division’ of the Cold War and the Korean Christians have internalized this structure by depending on foreign powers and betrayed their people ‘through the forfeit of [their] spirit of national independence. (Romans 9:3). ‘Peace had to be the fruit of justice (Isaiah 32:17), and a peace without national independence or human liberty was only a false peace (Jeremiah 6:13-14)’. Dependence on powers that dominate is sinful and divisive. Reliance on an oppressive international order that mutually reinforces militarisations (in plural) of the North and South is sinful. Peace cannot be achieved with such dependence. 

The structures of division have become a new hermeneutical lens for the churches to reread what it means by sin. Turning away from this sin means abandoning dependence on foreign powers and the peace that they promise and to embrace the spirit of national independence for the whole of the peninsula. As  Dong Jin Kim, a South Korean  Presbyerian Pastor and a Peace Scholar/Campaigner who has engaged in peacemaking and peacebuilding initiatives through humanitarian aid with the participation of many South Korean N.G.Os notes how the Declaration raised the awareness of the Koreans by focussing on the structure of division ‘to embrace the paradox of relationship’ between the North and South and ‘re-story the narratives of dictatorships’ of both regions.^[4]

The theology and spirituality of the Declaration can be found in the subsequent work of NCCK. In the Ash Wednesday Prayer of 2015, NCCK laments over the South Korean government’s prohibition of humanitarian aid to the North. ‘People still, after all these many years, live with the pain of separation. Our government will not allow us to send rice and flour to our starving northern brothers and sisters’.^[5] Humanitarian aid is seen as obeying God’s commandment. This faith language rules out the use of UN human rights discourse to justify economic embargoes which weaponise food and lead entire populations to starvation. In an article titled, ‘Peace as North Korean Human Right’,  Paul Liem argues:

‘[A] human rights framework that overlooks peace as a fundamental human right contributes little to understanding the North Korean people and their plight today and what is needed to restore their security going forward. How their social development would fare under conditions of peace, conditions that would allow for the redirection of resources away from military expenditures and access to development assistance from the international community, is not even a consideration of the “human rights” advocates of regime change’. ^[6]

It is with this consciousness that NCCK urges the Christians to say the Ash Wednesday Prayer and enter into the Season of Lent. 

In commemoration of the 70^th anniversary of separation between the North and South both NCCK and KCF issued 2017 Easter Joint North-South Prayer which urges God to ‘clear away the pain-filled memories of separation, and also the rusty barbed-wires’. ‘Help us remember the days when the North and the South once were one’. It is to God of life, justice and peace that the prayer is addressed. These three features are intertwined and inseparable. It is only by overcoming the memories of division and abandoning military solutions (rusty barbed wires) that life can be protected and Just Peace can be achieved. ‘God of life,in this season of resurrection where we await the signs of spring, Help us see the hopes of new life,sprouting in the cold barren land.’ ^[7]

The Pyongyang Appeal issued by the Steering Group of the Ecumenical Forum for Peace, Reunification and Development Cooperation on the Korean Peninsula on 28 October 2015 is a testimony to a public prophetic stand. Attended by delegates from the WCC, KCF, NCCK, and churches and other organizations from the UK, USA, Germany and Canada the group is an indicator of a broad base for working toward Just Peace. The Appeal called to strengthen international solidarity with the Korean people who seek Just Peace. It is made to ‘all churches, church-related organizations and people of good will around the world, calling for renewed and strengthened solidarity, advocacy and action’, actions that overcome rusty barbed wires as in the Korean Easter Prayer. It appeals for the implementation of the terms of the 2000-2007 Inter-Korean Peace Process, to end all military exercises directed towards North Korea and ‘provocative demonstrations of armed force’, to lift economic sanctions that harm ‘the most vulnerable’, to resist ‘confrontational misuse of human rights’ and to uphold the need for persistent North-South dialogue on the basis of ‘mutual recognition, peaceful co-existence, reunification and reconciliation’.^[8]