A Korean lay missionary’s active role in her parish and beyond touched many lives in Japan.
By Fr. Bede Cleary

During my time as a Columban pastor in Tanabe, Japan, I often noticed how easily foreign English teachers employed by the education office became involved in the local culture. They joined clubs for tennis, fishing, martial arts, etc., and often were invited into homes to talk about their ability to meet people and because of the hosts’ interest in the English language.

I thought if our own local church could have a comparable young committed person working about town, it would be a great help in evangelization. It would have to be an affable teacher who had a demonstrated faith and commitment as well as a sense of adventure.

It was at this time when our first group of Korean lay missionaries arrived in Japan. A few parishioners and I met Agrippina Kim Yun Keong at the airport. Her “million won” smile won our hearts from that day until a large crowd said goodbye with many tears at the same airport nine months later.

Kim lived her life as a member of our Christian community and accompanied our priests, catechists and people in mission. During her time in Japan, her activities extended beyond our church in an admirable way. Here are just some of the ways that her time in Japan was an exemplary example of evangelization.

Prayer liturgy. Without prompting, Kim attended daily Mass with the small number of Christians at 7:30 a.m. Her demeanor was a lesson in itself: She took an active part in the Sunday liturgy, choir practices, and took her turn at the responsorial psalm with a beautiful singing voice.

Witness to the Christian life. Through her sense of humor and a joyous, helpful and kind disposition, Kim showed no hesitation in declaring her lay missionary status to both Christians and non-Christians and openly shared her faith and life experience. That’s not as easy as it looks, even for us priests sometimes, in a country with such a small minority of Christians.

Service to humanity. Kim joined an Amnesty International group of which most members were not Christians and one was a Buddhist priest. She was active in our church-based environmental group, taking part in tree planting, farming and networking with similar groups in town.

Kim achieved these accomplishments among her many other activities:

• She joined an English conversation club and became friends with members, who were mostly non-Christians, and was invited to their homes for overnight stays with their families.
• She collaborated in a movement to correct proposed textbooks that presented a whitewashed version of Japanese-Korean history. The group consisted of Anglicans, Catholics and other people of good will. Her voice as a Korean carried weight at meetings, and she expressed the Church’s concerns. The offending passages were corrected when most of the school principals in Japan refused to accept the proposed textbook.
• She volunteered to harvest fruit for local families, held Korean cookery classes in a local school and had a remarkable rapport with the old and lonely in homes and hospitals, sometimes getting in where no priests had ever been invited.

These examples of connecting non-Christians to the Church are valuable work in Japan, where the vast majority has no connection whatsoever. Kim became known to one and all in the community as Yun-Chan, a Japanese term of endearment.

Dialogue and inculturation. Kim visited area temples and had an openness and interest in all things Japanese. This along with her proficiency in Japanese enabled her to hold in-depth conversation with friends, including one time when she explained how she grew up with a hatred for Japan in her heart that she could not shake.

Her anger was tied to the dark history of Japan’s colonization of Korea. The history of discrimination against Koreans in Japan makes sad reading. Left to her own wishes, Kim would never have chosen to go on mission to Japan. But Kim changed little by little during her time in Tanabe.

Proclaiming the Gospel. Kim gave talks at Masses in all the churches of our prefecture. She joined with four young mothers and walked with them like a catechumen. She bonded with them outside the catechist’s instruction class. When the mothers and their five combined children were baptized the following Easter, Kim was invited to be the godmother of one of the children, a 10-year-old handicapped girl.

A Completed Transformation
After her lay missionary term was over, Kim came back to Japan for an important reason: Her marriage to a fine young Japanese Catholic man, whom she had met during her volunteer work with the homeless.

Her anger about Japan had taken a dramatic transformation to the point she could decide to marry a Japanese man.

I concelebrated the couple’s bilingual wedding in Seoul, Korea, in the presence of 20 of the groom’s non-Christian relatives, a group of Tanabe Catholics and all of the bride’s relatives.

The couple now lives in Japan in Osaka, a stone’s throw from St. Mary’s Cathedral, where Maria Hasu Shudo, their first child, was baptized on April 24 this year. I was honored to be asked to baptize Maria Hasu.

My hope is that our latest newly arrived lay missionaries will follow Kim Yun Keong’s remarkable example.

Columban Father Bede Cleary of Ireland has served as a missionary in Japan for more than 50 years.