A global 70 day campaign of prayer for peace on the Korean Peninsula will kick off in March, coinciding with this year marking the 70th anniversary of the start of the Korean War.
The campaign, which was launched with events this week hosted by the World Council of Churches in Geneva as well as organisations in Seoul, South Korea, and Washington DC, is also calling for a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula as part of a nuclear-free world.
WCC general secretary Rev Dr Olav Fykse Tveit (right) invites churches worldwide to join prayers for peace on Korean peninsula. PICTURE: Ivars Kupcis/WCC
In a statement released this week, Rev Dr Hong-Jung Lee, general secretary of the National Council of Churches in Korea, said that the ongoing 1945 division on the Korean Peninsula and the unfinished 1950 Korean War had become a “socio-geopolitical ‘original sin’ against Korean people’s life security”.
“In our daily lives, we concretely experience the division and war as a sin against God, humanity and nature, and as a paradigmatic reaction in violation of the divine covenant for building a life-abundant Korean oikoumene,” he said.
“We believe that the prayer campaign will be a key of peace to open the gate of God’s grace, a breath of peace to cultivate forgiveness and reconciliation, a fountain of peace to revitalize a global ecumenical solidarity, and a milestone of peace toward the God-recreating Korean oikoumene.”
Rev Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, told the event in Geneva on Thursday that Koreans in the North and South had “lived in pain and with hatred for a long time.”
He said it was the sincere aspiration of churches to end the Korean War and replace the Armistice Agreement with a peace treaty. Recalling the human chain of 500,000 people that formed along the 500 kilometre Demilitarised Zone in May last year, he said it reminded him “of the fact that transformation is an essential dimension of the Kingdom of God but also what is needed for the Korean people to hold hands in prayer in seeking for transformation of this Demilitarised Zone into a peace zone.”
Tveit said he hoped the 70 days of prayer this year would be a “wake-up call to all of us”.
“And during this period of prayer, churches around the world will hear…stories of those who have gone through the suffering from this division, their heart-breaking stories. They will tell us how the people who lived under this situation already see and hope and pray for the reconciliation.”
“Together with them, we…invite Christians around the world to pray for the end of the war on the Korean Peninsula.”
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A toolkit of resource materials which includes prayers and Bible studies is available in the lead-up to the event which will run from 1st March to 15th August. It includes advocacy material for use on social media as well as a booklet, 70 stories of Love, Justice and Peace.
The Sunday before the 15th August is the day on which, for more than 30 years, Christians around the world have been invited to join in a prayer for peace and reunification of the Korean Peninsula.
That date – 15th August – is celebrated as Liberation Day in both North and South Korea and marks the day in 1945 when Korea won independence from Japan but was also divided into two countries.
