Korean paper stirs controversy
By PAMELA SCHAEFFER NCR
Staff St. Louis
When Kye Song Lee left South Korea for the United States 13 years
ago, he had no idea he would become the focus of national controversy as editor
and publisher of a Catholic newspaper seeking reforms in the Korean-American
Catholic community.
He came to study, planning to get a masters degree in
business administration at St. Louis University, then return to his homeland.
He hoped to expand a company he owned there, a manufacturer of medical
equipment, into international trade.
Instead, he stayed in the United States, changed careers,
eventually becoming something of a lightning rod for conflicts in the
Korean-American Catholic church.
His story, though not typical of all Catholic Koreans who
emigrate, illustrates some of the major themes at tension in this community
that is growing within the United States. They are tensions that result from
the clash of Korean tradition and its high regard for priests and the pull of a
new freedom of expression Koreans have found in their new country.
Lees studies took longer than I expected, he
said. My children were growing up. I got involved in the newspaper
business. Lee was writing a weekly column on a variety of topics for a
now-defunct daily Korean newspaper in Chicago. He and his wife, Subok Lee, have
four children.
About eight years ago, Kye Song Lee founded a biweekly newspaper
for some 7,000 Koreans in the Missouri area. Two years later, he started his
moneymaker, the publication that keeps the others going -- a slick ad-packed
national trade magazine called Beauty Times. It goes to Korean-owned
businesses that supply the African-American beauty market. Koreans own about 60
percent of that market nationwide, he said.
Next Lee started two other magazines, neither profitable but both
filling information gaps in the Korean-American publishing world. One, called
The Flora, is a literary journal aimed at women. The other, which Lee
founded in 1996, is called Catholic 21. It has about 7,000 readers, he
said.
Lees Catholic 21 -- a name he chose to symbolize a
new vision of church for the 21st century -- is highly controversial. Operating
independently of the official church, it serves as counterpoint to two official
Catholic newspapers published in Korea and distributed in the United States
with special sections for U.S. news. One is published by the Seoul archdiocese,
the other by the Taegu archdiocese, Lee said.
Catholic 21 has staunch defenders who say it plays a vital
role as watchdog on Korean-American church life and critics who accuse it of
being divisive, even anti-Catholic. Some critics, however, such as Fr. Paul D.
Lee, a priest of the Washington archdiocese, acknowledge serious problems in
the nations approximately 100 Korean-American Catholic communities. Fr.
Lee and others familiar with those communities say the problems, in part,
reflect the vital role of religion in the life of Korean-American
immigrants.
An anomaly
Although the Catholic church is only about 200 years old in Korea
and Protestantism about a hundred years younger, Korea is the most Christian
nation in Asia except for the predominantly Catholic Philippines. Most Koreans
are Buddhists, at least nominally, but Christianity has become a vibrant force,
particularly in recent decades. Of South Koreas more than 41 million
people, about a quarter are Christians. Of that 10 million, about 2.5 million
are Catholics. Koreas current president, Kim Dae-jung, is a Roman
Catholic.
Catholicisms start in Korea is an anomaly. Korea is the only
nation where Catholicism began without priests or missionaries. As Pope John
Paul II told the story during a visit to Seoul in 1984, Koreans who learned
about the faith from China sent a young man to Peking to talk with some
priests. He was baptized and returned home in 1784, bringing books on
Catholicism with him. Catholicism spread for more than 40 years without
priests, except for a short period in which two Chinese missionaries played an
active role. The first priests, French missionaries, arrived secretly in 1836,
a time when Confucianism was the state religion and practicing Catholicism was
illegal.
Once introduced, Catholicism picked up momentum very
fast, Kye Song Lee said. It was almost a spontaneous
movement. Protestantism has grown dramatically through mass revivals and
other missionary efforts.
Fr. Lee said Christianitys message of equality was
very liberating to a rank-conscious people burdened by repressive
structures. It was especially attractive to people in the lower
strata, he said. Catholicism also attracted a lot of scholars at
the beginning, he said. A lot of intellectuals were fascinated by
Catholicism.
Before religious freedom was proclaimed in Korea in 1886, some
10,000 Korean Catholics were martyred. The martyrdoms occurred in an
isolationist era when Korean leaders viewed the church as an extension of a
foreign power, Kye Song Lee said. Pope John Paul canonized 93 Korean martyrs in
1984, all but one members of the laity. He also canonized three French bishops
and seven priests who were beheaded after the missionaries presence was
discovered.
Kye Song Lee was baptized about 40 years ago, along with his
parents and five siblings, when he was in seventh grade. We were very
poor, he said. We went to the church for free groceries and grain.
It was sent to Korea by the American Catholic church.
The Catholic church has tremendous prestige in Korea because
it has taken a very active role in movements against oppressive regimes,
he said. In the old days some truly great, brilliant and noble people
became priests. But they are getting old, and many of the new recruits are not
as good as their predecessors.
Lee said the stage is set for trouble in the approximately 100
Korean-American Catholic communities in the United States because they are
headed by priests sent from Korea on temporary assignments, generally for
four-year stints. Korean-Americans are eager to assimilate into U.S. culture
and value their religion highly, he said, but the priests are often isolated
from their concerns.
The priests owe their allegiance to Korean dioceses and most speak
little English, Lee said. In some cases, he said, they have been sent overseas
to escape their problems at home. Although U.S. dioceses are supposed to
exercise oversight, it is often lax, he said.
As a result, Lee told NCR, the Korean Catholic community in
the United States is in disorder. There have been many abuses of power, many
grievances of lay people. Even the best of the Korean priests are
detached from real life here, he said. They are not capable
of helping the faithful grow into informed participants in the wider church
life and in American society.
The most flagrant clerical abuses, he said, involve either sex or
money, including a practice among some priests of demanding large Mass stipends
as a kind of bribery. Laity have complained of priests gaining
considerable personal wealth at the expense of men and women who are struggling
to raise families, he said.
The paper reported recent cases in which Korean priests working in
America had allegedly engaged in affairs with married women. In one case, the
paper reported, the priest returned to Korea after his lapses were exposed. In
another case, the paper reported, the husband of a woman had sued a Colorado
diocese over an alleged affair between his wife and a Korean priest.
A lead editorial examined the role of the free press in U.S.
society, a freedom relatively new to Koreans, and Catholic 21s
determination to stand firm against efforts to suppress its voice. A second
editorial traced a now-resolved conflict with archdiocesan officials in St.
Louis after the paper -- mistakenly, Lee now says -- tried vainly to gain
official status there.
No solution
While Fr. Lee readily acknowledges problems in Korean-American
Catholic life, including the system of importing Korean priests, he regards
Catholic 21 as anything but a solution. Fr. Lee was ordained in the
United States 15 years ago, the first Korean-American to be ordained a priest
in this country. Since then, about 30 others have been ordained, he said.
In a letter to NCR, he described Catholic 21 as
of poor quality and taste, lacking discretion or conciliatory
spirit. The priests the newspaper has criticized, he said, may not
be exactly perfect, but as public persons ... deserve some basic dignity and
privacy. Catholic 21, he said, has caused unnecessary
confusion, discord and even anger among Korean-American Catholics.
Fr. Lee doesnt regard celibacy or abuse of power as major
problems for Korean priests -- no more significant, at least, than for U.S.
priests. The majority are very faithful, he said. But loneliness
and culture shock are big problems for those on temporary assignments, he said.
Priests come here reluctantly. They are put on pedestals in Korea, but
over here its very different. Some of them are not very well treated by
the people or by the dioceses. Arrangements to send priests are usually
between specific Korean and U.S. dioceses, he said. There is no
centralized control of personnel.
Kun H. Park of Seattle, president of the 7-year-old North American
Coalition of Korean Catholic Laity, rejected Fr. Lees criticisms of
Catholic 21 as typical of complaints from clergy. His
organization is a reform-oriented group that he describes as similar to Call to
Action.
Its a very valuable newspaper, he said.
There are pastoral abuses all over the country. Many Korean
Catholics support priests blindly, he said. When critical articles
appear, they are never willing to discuss the merits of a case.
Parks organization claims just 350 of an estimated 50,000
Korean Catholics in the United States. Although the group is small and has been
criticized as anti-Catholic and destructive, its
leaders feel it is addressing critical issues. Its really just a
forum for speaking up ... to correct the mistakes that are being made, he
said.
Park, of Seattle, publishes a free paper for Asian-American youth,
called Asian Focus.
Fr. Lee thinks the conflicts in Korean-American Catholic
communities reflect, in part, the situation of new immigrants. Problems
get exaggerated in Korean-American religious communities because new immigrants
tend to be isolated from the American mainstream, he said. A lot
were professionals back home, but when they come here they cannot function as
professionals. They find ways to defuse that tension. The church community
becomes the center of their life. Sometimes they get very
unreasonable.
The difficulties of hardworking Korean-American immigrants has
been widely reported. Most came after 1965 to seek better economic
opportunities and have found their dreams hard to fulfill. As products of a
rank-conscious Asian culture, Korean-Americans find that loss of status often
creates psychological stress.
Language barriers
Many of the new immigrants -- nearly 600,000 as of the 1990 census
-- are highly educated professionals, members of the Korean middle class, but
barred here by language barriers from professional jobs. As a result, a high
percentage of Korean men are self-employed. Racial tensions, often related to
business operations, are common. During the 1992 riots in South Central Los
Angeles, Korean-Americans were targets of African-American rage after four
policemen accused of beating Rodney King, a black man, were acquitted. More
than 600 Korean-American businesses were burned.
Fr. Lee said the U.S. Catholic hierarchy has done little so far to
address problems among Korean-American Catholics and Catholic immigrants from
other Asian countries. He hopes to attract other Korean-American priests --
those ordained here -- to a conference in Washington, possibly next year, to
discuss concerns. It could be an occasion for sharing the vision,
that is, developing an evangelization program for a nearly invisible minority
in the U.S. Catholic church. He hopes to gain from U.S. bishops and their staff
members in Washington insights into experiences of other immigrant Catholic
groups. Id like to see the USCC [United States Catholic Conference]
take a more active role, to make direct contact with the bishops
conference in Korea and develop some unified personnel policies, Fr. Lee
said.
Meanwhile, Kye Song Lee has had troubles with the U.S. hierarchy,
specifically with officials of the St. Louis archdiocese.
About two years ago, when attacks from his Korean-American critics
became strong, Lee turned to the archdiocese for help, hoping for official
recognition. After many letters back and forth, the diocese not only refused,
but Archbishop Justin Rigali, speaking through his communications director,
also demanded that the word Catholic, be removed from the papers name.
Following a stern four-page letter from Park this fall, the
archdiocese apparently backed down. In a letter dated Oct. 22, Msgr. Dennis
Delaney, the communications director, told Lee that as long as he makes it
clear that the paper has no official ties to the archdiocese, officials would
let the matter rest. Delaney noted that other publications, such as NCR,
use Catholic in their titles yet operate independently of the
church.
Lee was pleased with the comparison. We like
NCR, he said. Thats the reason we made our format the
same. He displayed a copy of Catholic 21, which strongly resembles
NCR before its recent new design.
Of his effort to get official recognition, he now says, I
was so naive. Koreans, he said, have lived under oppressive regimes
for a long time. Its an ingrained habit to look for permission.
His new approach, Lee thinks, is more American. I am a
Catholic. I will die as a Catholic. But I am not worried anymore about
endorsement or permission from authority. I just do what I must do.
National Catholic Reporter, January 8,
1999
|