Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Aknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Korea in the 1960s
- 2 The Columbans
- 3 Learning the Ropes
- 4 Cultural Adaptation
- 5 In at the Deep End
- 6 The Cultural Experience: Where to Begin
- 7 The Confucian Monolith
- 8 The Chosŏn Bureaucracy
- 9 The Buddhist Ingredient
- 10 Exclusivity Myths
- 11 Chilmajae Songs – Sŏ Chŏngju
- 12 Korea’s Greatest Asset
- 13 Tales of the Immortals
- 14 At the Cultural Coalface: Immersion, Submersion? – Take Your Pick
- 15 Nine Priest Immortals
- 16 Seeking the Way
- 17 For Those of us with Less Than Immortal Status
- 18 Learning Korean
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Aknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Korea in the 1960s
- 2 The Columbans
- 3 Learning the Ropes
- 4 Cultural Adaptation
- 5 In at the Deep End
- 6 The Cultural Experience: Where to Begin
- 7 The Confucian Monolith
- 8 The Chosŏn Bureaucracy
- 9 The Buddhist Ingredient
- 10 Exclusivity Myths
- 11 Chilmajae Songs – Sŏ Chŏngju
- 12 Korea’s Greatest Asset
- 13 Tales of the Immortals
- 14 At the Cultural Coalface: Immersion, Submersion? – Take Your Pick
- 15 Nine Priest Immortals
- 16 Seeking the Way
- 17 For Those of us with Less Than Immortal Status
- 18 Learning Korean
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
THE COLUMBANS ARE a society of missionaries, founded in Ireland in 1916, with home houses in Australia, Britain, Ireland, New Zealand and the US. In recent years we have ordained quite a few Columbans from our mission territories and they are the hope of the future. Our founding vision was to work in evangelization among the Chinese, but we were forced by circumstances to branch out in East Asia and South America. In the 1920s and 1930s, we were a suspicious lot to the British authorities. Documents recently released by the British government show that British diplomats in the Far East viewed us with singular suspicion: they saw us as an organization of Sinn Feiners, bent on the destruction of British institutions. It makes amusing reading today. The last Columban priest in China was expelled in 1953. Anticipating what was coming, the society expanded into the Philippines, Burma, Japan and Korea. In the 1960s, prompted by a call from the Pope, the Columbans moved into South America.
In 1964 I came to Korea as a Columban.
Salute
At eighteen I joined the army.
At twenty-four I was commissioned.
I came to this foreign place,
which I learned to love as I love my life.
I gave it my best years
and I was rewarded with love and affection.
Eighty years have passed.
The bells of jubilee ring out.
My spirit rests under mounded grass.
For the remnant it's time to go;
a bleak prospect, I suppose.
Weeds cover the yards of home;
pigeons nest among broken tiles.
But behind the cathedral in Ch’unch’ŏn,
on the hill in Hongch’ŏn,
in the dead fields of Seoul –
friends’ forever beds –
in Chŏlla and in Chejudo
something Christlike lives.
May it ever be so!
By any standards, the Columbans were an extraordinary group of men, especially those I call the men of old, who were mostly in their fifties or older when I got here in 1964. I look back now at these giant men, the lives they lived, the isolation and loneliness of their parishes, the Spartan conditions they endured, and I marvel at their strength.
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- Information
- My Korea40 Years without a Horsehair Hat, pp. 4 - 21Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2013