Appealing for Peace

A Letter from Kurt Esslinger and Hyeyoung Lee, serving in Korea

Fall 2022

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Dear friends,

Our family arrived in Jenkintown, PA at the end of last July. For the past three months, we have been hosted by Rydal Park senior living center and Human Good, who agreed to offer us an apartment space while we offered to give presentations for the residents throughout our six-month stay in the U.S. Our son, Sahn, has also enrolled in third grade at Highland Elementary School in the Abington School District where we live. Before this visit to the U.S., we were slightly concerned about how he might adapt to schools here since he has predominantly grown up in Korean language schools. Thankfully, he arrived off the bus on his first day telling Hyeyoung, “Today was fun!” Reading to him in English each night and speaking primarily English with Kurt seems to have been enough to prepare him for this half-year in U.S. schools.

We have also been using Jenkintown and Philadelphia as a home base for traveling around the U.S. to visit churches and talk about our ministries in Korea. We’ve been able to visit some churches for the second time in more than five years to give updates on our work, but we have also made some new connections to churches we have never visited before! This last Sunday was special as we visited First & Central Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, Delaware, the home church of Grace Fulda who had just completed a Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) year with us in Korea at the end of July. We created a three-part team presentation so that her congregation could hear about Kurt’s work with the National Council of Churches in Korea (NCCK), an overview of the YAV site in Korea, and Grace’s personal stories about the things she experienced working and living with our partners in Seoul and Gangjin. Hyeyoung then preached a sermon during worship highlighting the voices of Koreans calling out for justice and peace, sharing the stories of the grandmothers fighting for justice for the “comfort women” and the NCCK championing the Korea Peace Appeal. So far, each church that has heard from us about the Korea Peace Appeal has responded with eagerness to learn more, and First & Central Presbyterian Church was even more so as they now had one of their own young adults live alongside Koreans working for peace on their peninsula.

The World Council of Churches also hosted a meeting of many of the members in the Ecumenical Forum for Peace, Reunification, and Cooperation on the Korean Peninsula (EFK). These EFK members gathered informally in Karlsruhe after the General Assembly concluded to take stock of the current status of our relationship with the Korean Christian Federation in North Korea, which has been strained as they are still unable to travel to participate in the General Assembly or in meetings with the EFK members as North Korea continues to close its borders to avoid uncontrollable outbreaks of COVID-19 infections that could potentially overwhelm their healthcare system. We also took stock of the state of the peace process on the Korean Peninsula, which has not only stalled since the U.S. government refused the gradual trust-building steps of cooperative projects and mutual concurrent disarmament as proposed by the North Korean leadership and South Korean leadership at that time. Since then, the new leadership has taken over in South Korea and made steps toward war instead of toward peace by reintroducing plans for pre-emptive strikes on North Korea and expanding the annual military drills that practice invasions of North Korea, bringing in more powerful weapons of destruction to South Korea and ballooning numbers of U.S. troops on the peninsula. As promised, North Korea has responded in kind, restarting its own missile tests seeking to increase their own firepower to compete with that of the U.S. and South Korea. The discussion of EFK members revolved around one particular question, “How do we convince leadership in the U.S. to stop blocking the efforts of Koreans on the peninsula to rebuild trust through measured cooperation?”

Our partners in the NCCK have shared their frustration with us, having watched the most rational attempt by a South Korean government to this date to implement the kind of slow trust-building cooperation projects for which the NCCK has been advocating, only to see it unceremoniously ended at the Singapore Summit in 2019 as the U.S. returned to an all-or-nothing proposal that we assumed North Korea would reject. North Korea told the U.S. they would reject such a proposal, and they were true to their word. Since that rejection, we have been waiting for the U.S. to offer actions that could prove they have changed their tone, but instead, those actions have been to increase policies that we recognize as hostile, including a renewal of the travel ban for U.S. citizens entering North Korea.

In this context, we continue visiting churches throughout the U.S., sharing stories of our Korean partners struggling to end the Korean War. We testify to our faith in a God that can make a way where there is no way. We sing in solidarity with U.S. Presbyterians in praise of a God that dismantles walls of division and hostility, reconciling people on opposite sides of the conflict. We hope that you join us in those prayers and those songs, and if you add your name to the Korea Peace Appeal, please make sure you note the “Presbyterian Church U.S.A.” in the affiliations field! We thank you for your support and solidarity, and we hope to continue struggling together to live into the peace that God has promised. Amen.

Hyeyoung and Kurt

Please read the following letter from Rev. Mienda Uriarte, acting director of World Mission:

Dear Partners in God’s Mission,

What an amazing journey we’re on together! Our call to be a Matthew 25 denomination has challenged us in so many ways to lean into new ways of reaching out. As we take on the responsibilities of dismantling systemic racism, eradicating the root causes of poverty and engaging in congregational vitality, we find that the Spirit of God is indeed moving throughout World Mission. Of course, the past two years have also been hard for so many as we’ve ventured through another year of the pandemic, been confronted with racism, wars and the heart wrenching toll of natural disasters. And yet, rather than succumb to the darkness, we are called to shine the light of Christ by doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with God.

We are so grateful that you are on this journey as well. Your commitment enables mission co-workers around the world to accompany partners and share in so many expressions of the transformative work being done in Christ’s name. Thank you for your partnership, prayers and contributions to their ministries.

We hope you will continue to support World Mission in all the ways you are able:

Give – Consider making a year-end financial contribution for the sending and support of our mission personnel (E132192). This unified fund supports the work of all our mission co-workers as they accompany global partners in their life-giving work. Gifts can also be made “in honor of” a specific mission co-worker – just include their name on the memo line.

Pray – Include PC(USA) mission personnel and global partners in your daily prayers. If you would like to order prayer cards as a visual reminder of those for whom you are praying, please contact Cindy Rubin (cynthia.rubin@pcusa.org; 800-728-7228, ext. 5065).

Act – Invite a mission co-worker to visit your congregation either virtually or in person. Contact mission.live@pcusa.org to make a request or email the mission co-worker directly. Email addresses are listed on Mission Connections profile pages. Visit pcusa.org/missionconnections to search by last name.

Thank you for your consideration! We appreciate your faithfulness to God’s mission through the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

Prayerfully,

Rev. Mienda Uriarte, Acting Director
World Mission
Presbyterian Mission Agency
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

To give, please visit https://bit.ly/22MC-YE.

For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians 4:6