Throughout our time in Seoul we have been living in a classroom on the 3rd floor of the Children's Village which is part of Global Sarang. The accommodations are lovely; Jonathan and I have a room and we share a bathroom and kitchenette with Dr. Kahala Cannon, a Global Ministries Missionary working in Korea. Kahala is a dentist from Tennessee who has been working for the past two years in India. For the past three months she's been teaching English two days a week for the school of Global Sarang and two days a week for the Wildflower Youth center we visited during our first week in Korea.
Today we spend the day getting to know the ministries of Global Sarang in greater detail. We started out in Rev. Kim's office, he is the founder and director of Global Sarang. Many years ago he began working in factories raising concerns for the working conditions for Koreans. He quickly realized that the most vulnerable in the workforce were migrant workers who had no legal rights within the country.
Currently the umbrella of Global Sarang includes a migrant labor center, a hospital, several schools, day care centers, and a woman's shelter. In addition to his responsibilities with coordinating the work of Global Sarang, Rev. Kim is also a pastor of a local PROK congregation. Through his leadership there are several worship services conducted for migrants from Sri Lanka, Nepal and China. The church also has a missionary training program.
Our day consisted of visits to several locations:
1. Rev. Kim's office and the administration center for Global Sarang. This building also houses an after school program.
2. One of the main Global Sarang building which has a cafeteria where free meals (lunch and dinner) are provided for all migrants, roughly 200 a day. The building also had a shelter and a hospital which includes services for dentistry, outpatient and inpatient services (currently the facility is in need of qualified doctors).
3. The main building for migrant workers which included an entire row of translators (at least a dozen) there to help translate labor concerns for workers, there was also a counseling center (labor rights, work related injuries, visas etc) and classrooms for teaching Korean, computer skills, and tae kwon do. There was also a large auditorium in the building that migrants could use for free to celebrate their own local holidays. The labor center counsels approximately 40,000 workers per year.
4. We visited the school were Dr. Cannon teaches two days a week. The school has kindergarten through high school. We had lunch with the kids and visited the various classrooms. All of the students are from migrant families and their education is provided for free. Later in the week an orchestra comprised of entirely blind members were coming to perform at the school.
5. Next we traveled to a kindergarten program that is considered a public school but the government contracted with Global Sarang to run the administration. We arrived at nap time so we were just able to visit with one class of children because the others were resting. The center stays open from 7:30am to 7:30pm to help working parents.
Global Sarang, and specifically Rev. Kim have been instrumental in raising the profile of migrant workers in Korea. Because of their work Korean labor laws have been extended to all industries in the country (with the exceptions of farming, fishing, and factories with under 5 employees). Rev. Kim has also been a driving factor in the work visa program in the country. Rev. Kim is regularly featured in Korea's equivalent of Time Magazine's most influential people.
The president of Sri Lanka was so impressed with how much Rev. Kim has helped the Sri Lankan community in Korea that he offered him an elephant, which Rev. Kim donated to the South Korean zoo.
We ended the day by attending a weekly prayer service for reunification of the Korean peninsula. The prayer service is held every Monday evening at 7pm in the office building where the National Council of Churches in Korea is located. The service included many Koreans as well as international ecumenical church workers. Together we celebrated communion, prayed for peace and shared together in the unifying spirit of Christ.
Gracious God, with you there are no borders, no division between Jew or Greek, slave or free. We pray that we can live in a world that celebrate the commonality of humanity and treats all people fairly. We give thanks for the work of those who strive to live out Jesus' command to love our neighbor as ourselves and while we no that nothing in this world, not powers or principalities, can separate us from your love, that the borders and boundaries we have created to separate ourselves from one another will come tumbling down. Amen.
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