South Korea has one of the highest suicide rates among the world’s developed countries.  The incidence of teenage suicides is particularly disturbing.  Official statistics indicated that in 2005 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the suicide rate among middle and high school students stood at 7.6 students per 100,000.  The causal factors are complex but what stands out is that more than half of the suicides were directly related to school bullying.

In 1995, KIM JONG-KI was a highly successful businessman handling market operations in China for a giant Korean electronics company.  Married, with a son and daughter, he was at the height of his career when tragedy struck.  He was traveling in China when he learned that his sixteen-year-old son, Dae-hyun, had committed suicide, leaving no clues as to the reason; JONG-KI would learn later from Dae-hyun’s friends that it was bullying in school that drove him to end his life.  The suicide devastated the family. It was no consolation to them that bullying and school violence were not recognized as life-threatening problems by the government or Korean society. Worse, those who repeatedly inflicted violence on his son continued to bully others. Heartbroken, JONG-KI knew he had to do something to channel his grief and to prevent similar youth tragedies.

In the year his son died, JONG-KI established the Foundation for Preventing Youth Violence (FPYV), the first organized effort in South Korea to address school violence as a systemic social problem affecting students, families, schools, and the community-at-large.  At that time, there were no means in the country for JONG-KI to complain and seek help.  There was little public awareness of the scale and seriousness of school violence—even the term was not recognized. School violence was regarded as mere fighting, normal among teenagers.  Government and schools did not want public attention on the issue; victims and their parents were afraid, or just did not want to speak out.  FPYV’s initial activity was to hold a press conference where JONG-KI spoke candidly about Dae-hyun’s suicide and the bullying that triggered it; this was the very first time the problem of youth violence and its destructive consequences was bravely acknowledged in public.

Over the next twenty-four years, JONG-KI and his staff painstakingly developed a holistic program of detection, protection, and management in youth violence.  Under JONG-KI’s committed leadership, FPYV carried out wide-ranging anti-bullying campaigns which included seminars, rallies, concerts and films; operated a hotline which now takes thirty to fifty calls daily, with the capacity to dispatch staff to respond to urgent cases, and lobbied for needed government policy and legislation.  After ten years, a law on the prevention and handling of school violence was finally enacted in 2004.  Today, FPYV offers counseling and mediation services nationwide in partnership with Korea’s Ministry of Education.  Its pioneering dispute mediation and reconciliation program pays as much attention to reforming bullies and healing families as it does to protecting victims. Its educational initiatives include a campaign against cyber bullying through a “digital citizenship” program.  In 2010, it started an institute offering both onsite and online certificate training programs on youth violence prevention, detection, and management that has since certified thousands of teachers, parents, counselors, police officers, and others.

The impact of JONG-KI and FPYV on Korean society has been profound, establishing a nationwide presence and creating collective action on a social problem hitherto neglected.  A 2018 survey showed that since FPYV started its campaign in 1995, the incidence of school violence has dropped from twenty percent to three percent. Yet JONG-KI knows that there is still much work to be done, even as he explains his work simply, “It was God’s command that I contribute my life to this cause.  It is my promise to my son.”  It is a promise he has fulfilled not only to his son but to the good of all of Korea’s youth.

In electing KIM JONG-KI to receive the 2019 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his quiet courage in transforming private grief into a mission to protect Korea’s youth from the scourge of bullying and violence, his unstinting dedication to the goal of instilling among the young the values of self-esteem, tolerance, and mutual respect, and his effectively mobilizing all sectors of the country in a nationwide drive that has transformed both policy and behaviors towards building a gentler, non-violent society.

I am so grateful to receive such an honorable and prestigious award. This award is the greatest comfort and reward in my life.

I used to be a businessman: someone who was tied to work and neglected his family. In my generation, everyone worked very hard. No one had time for their families, and I was like that, too.  Then, one day, I lost my beloved son. He ended up taking his own life, as he was unable to bear violence in school. Suddenly, I became the most miserable father in the world.  The shock and sorrow of losing my son drove my family to despair.

Wishing for forgiveness from my son and taking responsibility for my son’s death, I left my job and got into solving problems for the youth. I started with raising awareness on the reality of school violence and providing counseling for students and families who suffered from it. However, we faced huge challenges from the beginning—not only the absence of experts or studies on school violence but also the disapproval of education authorities made our work more difficult. But, I could not stop because it was the promise I made to my son.

Since then, I have never looked back and dedicated all my energies and fortune to changing the perception and responses toward school violence with unceasing determination. I led a nationwide campaign to gather signatures, receiving support from 470,000 citizens urging the law’s passage. This resulted in the Special Act on Preventing School Violence made into law in 2004. The law put strong pressure on government authorities and schools to take proper action. Finally, we were able to make positive changes, such as reducing school violence through various campaigns and legislation. Also, education authorities started to build nationwide measures and systems. I am very proud of these achievements. The work that started from my personal sorrow finally made a difference in the Korean education system and society.

Our organization is dedicated to providing counseling, educating teachers and police officers, leading non-violence campaigns, scholarship projects, and international activities. We started with only five people; now, we have 340 staff members nationwide. Also, the rate of school violence has dropped from 20% to 6% in the last twenty-four years. Our organization pursues the values of sincerity, professionalism, and transparency. As it grew to be a leading NGO specializing in youth problems, I am proud that we have contributed to Korean society.

I have gone through extreme hardships but poured out my passion, personal resources and connections to fulfill my goals. Management skills I obtained from my previous work also helped. To be honest, there were many times I wanted to give up, but it was my promise to my son. I finally found peace of mind, as I took this work as my destiny and mission from God. As society becomes more industrialized and materialistic, school violence perpetrators and victims are getting younger. And with the internet, incidents of cyber and sexual violence are on the rise. We have to gather our wisdom and efforts to protect our children.

Though this award is given to me, I would like to share the honor and prize with our dedicated staff and respectable supporters and volunteers. Taking this award as a stepping stone, I will dedicate myself to making a non-violent environment not only for students but also all human beings.

I thank every single person in the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation. Special thanks to my friends who came here with me all the way from Korea, the Board of Directors of my organization and my loving wife who has sacrificed everything for me.

I am sure my son is smiling at me from heaven. Thank you very much.

It is a cruel fate anywhere to be blind, and all the more cruel in societies where sightless people are cursed as unlucky and shamed as useless burdens on their families and on society at large. KIM SUN-TAE, director of Seoul’s Siloam Eye Hospital, knows these degrading aspects of Korean society from bitter personal experience. He has devoted his life to changing them.

KIM SUN-TAE was not born blind. For the first ten years of his life, he was the adored only son of a prosperous family. In June 1950, the violent outbreak of the Korean War suddenly rendered him an orphan. Not long afterwards, a mortar shell that he and other boys found while scavenging for food exploded and left him blind. Even his own relatives now treated him like a pariah and a slave. He ran away. Learning to survive as a beggar, KIM gathered strength from the random kindnesses of compassionate Koreans and American soldiers, and from Christian teachings he had imbibed in Sunday school. “God, please help me,” he prayed.

KIM persevered and developed an iron will. From the hard life of the streets, he moved to the hard life of wartime orphanages and finally into school. He learned to read Korean Braille and to type. Vowing to become a Christian pastor, he became the first blind graduate of Seoul’s Soongsil High School and, in 1962, overcame the resistance of Korea’s military junta to enter Soongsil University. A master’s degree in theology followed in 1969, a doctorate in 1993.

Meeting hardship with frugality, KIM struggled to form Korea’s first church for the blind in 1972. Its seven members worshipped in a borrowed room and a dilapidated apartment. The following year, the Korean Presbyterian Church named KIM director of Blind Evangelical Missions, a new department with a staff of one. He seized the opportunity to build a ministry for blind Christians, visiting church after church, publishing Braille bibles and hymnals, and launching a scholarship program for deserving students. He began to travel widely and, in Japan and the United States, witnessed public amenities and rehabilitation programs for the blind that enlarged his hopes for Korea.

Increasingly, KIM devoted himself to the dream of a hospital dedicated to treating and curing blindness. Drawing support from Korea’s business community, in 1986 he led in founding Siloam Eye Hospital, where sight-restoring surgery and state-of-the-art facilities were available free to the needy. In 1996, Kim added a mobile clinic to deliver eye services to the rural poor, prison inmates, and other underserved communities. And, in 1997, he opened Korea’s largest rehabilitation-and-learning center to help blind and low-vision people cope with day-to-day life, learn new job skills, and become computer-literate using new Braille- and voice-friendly software. Meanwhile, KIM’s voice and esteemed example helped advance new laws requiring safe public spaces and employment for the disabled.

Today, more than twenty thousand people have received free eye surgery and two hundred thousand more have been treated at Siloam Eye Hospital and its mobile unit. There are medical missions to Bangladesh, Kenya, China, and the Philippines. And nearly one thousand students have received scholarships through programs that KIM initiated. Moreover, the church for the blind that he founded thirty-five years ago now has its own sanctuary, four hundred members, and many vibrant offshoots and branches.

As for his own role in all of this, Kim echoes the words of the Apostle Paul, “I can do all things through Him who gives me strength.” But Pastor KIM also has some words of his own. He says, “Blessed are those who never give up.”

In electing KIM SUN-TAE to receive the 2007 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the board of trustees recognizes his inspiring ministry of hope and practical assistance to his fellow blind and visually impaired citizens in South Korea.

To the distinguished chairman and trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, I feel truly honored that you have chosen to confer upon me this Award for Public Service, and I express my deepest gratitude. It brings me great happiness that my life’s work of helping my fellow blind brothers and sisters has been recognized in such an inspiring and dignified manner.

First of all, I would like to give all glory and honor to God who has given me my calling, continually blessed me and made all things possible.

Second, I would like to thank all the Christian ministers and believers for their unending prayers and support for the work of caring for the disabled and blind.

Third, I express my gratitude to those who have been like my hands and feet-all the dedicated doctors, nurses, teachers and workers of the Siloam Eye Hospital and the Siloam Welfare Center for the Visually Impaired.

Lastly, I would like to express my sincere thanks and recognize one who has been my eyes and a lifelong wellspring of love and support-my wife Jung-Ja. I humbly accept this Ramon Magsaysay Award with its great history and tradition-celebrated as the Nobel Prize of Asia-and am honored to be included among such esteemed men and women. More importantly I will cherish the spirit of this award and the philosophy it symbolizes deep in my heart. I will always strive to ease the suffering of my brothers and sisters in pain. I will continuously pray that my organization will be able to treat and improve the situation of the visually disabled not only in Korea but in all of Asia.

I am planning to establish a new Siloam Eye Center in Seoul and open its doors to my visually handicapped brothers and sisters throughout Asia. In the spirit of Christ’s love I want to provide them with free eyesight recovery operations, medical treatment and preventive care. I would like to honor and commemorate the Ramon Magsaysay Award by dedicating the prize money of $50,000 to the building of the new Siloam Eye Center.

It is a great privilege and honor to be able to meet all of you here today in the Philippines. I feel my connection to this country has been made long ago. In 1989 I sent a missionary to start a ministry for the blind in the Philippines and have been continually supporting this meaningful work by giving $3,000 every month. In addition, the religious organization I belong to has sent over 43 missionary families to serve and minister to the people of the Philippines.

I pray that the recognition and honor those of you from the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation have bestowed upon us will blossom and return blessings to your organization and glorify the wonderful work that you do. Thank you and may the peace of Christ be with all of you.

In less than a hundred years, Korea has suffered the loss of its sovereignty, foreign occupation, civil war and partition, and then poverty, dictatorship, and industrialization—all this before South Korea’s dizzying breakthrough to democracy and prosperity in the past two decades. Despite recent successes, PARK WON SOON believes that South Korea still suffers from “lingering authoritarian styles of leadership” and other ills arising from its past. More democracy is the cure. As an activist and institution builder, Park strives to expand South Korea’s democracy by expanding the power of its citizens.

Born in 1956, PARK grew up under military dictatorship in South Korea. At the age of nineteen, he tasted the hard hand of the state. Arrested for joining a political demonstration, he was imprisoned for four months and expelled from his law course at Seoul National University. Persevering, he passed the bar examinations in 1980 and threw himself headlong into South Korea’s emerging democracy movement. He became a human rights lawyer. Forgoing the rewards of a conventional legal career, he took up the cause of political prisoners and victims of media censorship, torture, and other authoritarian abuses.

Then, as the political tide began to turn, PARK addressed himself to South Korea’s troubled transition to democracy. In 1994, he helped form People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD). Under PARK’s leadership from 1996, PSPD assiduously monitored the stewardship of the country’s movers and shakers. It exposed the human rights records of lawyers and judges and pressured the judiciary to be “fair in the application of the law;” it advanced legislation banning corrupt practices in government and protecting whistleblowers; it hounded regulatory agencies to investigate fraud and waste in government contracts. PARK’s PSPD also championed the rights of minority shareholders in Korea’s domineering business conglomerates and filed lawsuits against executives for illicit transactions and insider trading. In 2000, it mounted a controversial blacklist campaign naming eighty-six candidates “unfit to run” for seats in parliament. Fifty-nine of them were rejected by voters. By this time, PSPD had become a national force.

PARK stepped down as head of PSPD in 2002 to lead The Beautiful Foundation, a PSPD offshoot. Aiming to rekindle Korean habits of generosity and to popularize philanthropy, PARK challenged individuals and companies to donate just one percent of their income or time. More than twenty-six thousand people have done so. The Foundation redistributes the money to the needy and to local public-interest groups. Meanwhile, in the Foundation’s chain of Beautiful Stores, volunteers recycle donated goods and clothing for sale to low-income shoppers.

For PARK WON SOON, philanthropy itself is not really the issue. His is a larger vision: a “just society” in Korea. To achieve this, he says, “we cannot depend on the bureaucracy and businessmen.” Civil society must take the lead. Moreover, Korea today is becoming more complicated. “We are stepping up as the world’s tenth trade power,” he says. “We should be prepared to design our future in the right direction.” PARK is doing just that at his newly established Hope Institute, an independent think tank where ordinary citizens convene to devise pragmatic, policy-oriented ideas to guide and strengthen South Korea’s ongoing democratization.

Thinking of the rising gulf between South Korea’s rich and poor today, of corruption and abuses of power in public life, and of the moral confusion arising from rapid social change, PARK admits, “We have a long way to go.” His own optimism is based on the power of social movements. “Hope does not fall from the sky,” he says. “We create hope ourselves.”

In electing PARK WON SOON to receive the 2006 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the board of trustees recognizes his principled activism fostering social justice, fair business practices, clean government, and a generous spirit in South Korea’s young democracy.

I am so pleased to be here today, but at the same time, I feel guilty, because I stand alone in this great place without my colleagues who deserve to be here with me.

I always thought that good work could not be achieved by one person but by a group of people who share a common dream and common goals. This award is a result of not only my work but the work we have done together to make a better world. There are people who really care about our society, people who dream about a new alternative world with all of their being, and people who are willing to be members and contribute money for a common cause and the public interest.

Indeed these are the people who should be here with me today. These are people who donate their knowledge, wisdom, money, time, and talent for a better society. I would like to share this glorious award with all of them.

Tonight, I feel light as a feather, because I was awarded this esteemed prize. But I also feel heavy-hearted, because I can sense difficulties and barriers looming in the near future. It will give me more to do than what I have already done.

The People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy and The Beautiful Foundation have both played an important role in Korean society and have changed the lives of Korean people.

We have walked the path of democratization and humanization in the face of military dictatorship in much the same way as the Filipino people have. We have all come a long way.

People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, on which I worked from 1994 to 2002, tried to strengthen transparency and accountability in society through various campaigns and strategies, to increase government efficiency and to stop corporate corruption. We also protected small shareholders’ rights and challenged the top management of big corporations to take their social responsibilities to heart.

On the other hand, the Beautiful Foundation, which I served for the last six years, tried to expand the culture of giving in South Korea, and to build the bridge of unity in this divided society. Through our 1% sharing movement, which is such a magic number, shoe-shine boys, peddlers, and many others, poor or middle class, joined the campaign.

I have always believed and shouted out loud that the world can be changed by citizens’ power. With this catch-phrase, I helped ordinary citizens participate in politics, economics, and social issues and encouraged them to play a significant role in our society. As a result, these collective efforts achieved a field of blooming flowers called participatory democracy,  flowers which have now replaced disinterest and disregard.

This achievement is, however, just a starting point. This long journey has yet to achieve a deeper and wider democracy, higher humanism, and a more rational and systematic society within and beyond Korean society. And I still dream about reaching these goals in my every waking moment. This is why I felt guilt and heavily burdened when I was informed about winning the Ramon Magsaysay Award.

I deeply appreciate this award and extend my blessing to the President of the Magsaysay Award Foundation, its trustees, and all you distinguished attendants.

Today, I regard this most honorable Magsaysay Award as a constant reminder for me to be more diligent and consistent in my political journey with all of my friends — friends just like you.

Salamat. Thank you very much.

In South Korea these days, prosperity and democratization are advancing hand in hand. But this has not always been so. For decades after the cruel war that divided North from South, authoritarian governments prevailed in South Korea, even as the economy began its remarkable takeoff. In 1987 a democracy movement opened new space for citizens, who responded with a proliferation of civic-oriented, politically engaged nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs. But as YOON HYE-RAN discovered when she left her hometown of Cheonan in 1986 to attend university in Seoul, this positive trend was uneven. Provincial cities like hers were lagging behind. She determined to return home and make a difference.

YOON’s student years at Yonsei University coincided with Korea’s democracy movement and an upsurge of political and social activism. Not an activist herself, she nevertheless embraced the spirit of the times. When her fifteen-year-old sister was expelled from high school and was suddenly adrift, Yoon learned just how poorly equipped Cheonan was to assist young people at risk. YOON was familiar with the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and its many services for youth. Garnering support from Cheonan’s growing cadre of civic-minded professionals and from the master chapter in Seoul, she established the YMCA in Cheonan and became its manager and driving force.

YOON led Cheonan’s new “Y” to provide social and recreational facilities and other positive outlets for young people such as concerts, study groups, and clubs. She quickly discerned that it was not only youths in Cheonan who lacked social services but also other groups that are culturally marginalized in Korea: the elderly, the disabled, the poor, and the mentally handicapped. Passing leadership of the YMCA to a trusted successor, Yoon founded Citizens Opening the World for Welfare, or COWW, in 1998 to improve social welfare in Cheonan for these vulnerable sectors.

At COWW, YOON steered services to “the lonely elderly” and established the Association for Cheonan Elderly. She launched the Citizens Alliance for a Walkable Cheonan to campaign for everyone’s right to move about the city safely, including the disabled. She led in founding the Cheonan Parents Association for Handicapped Children and similar NGOs for disabled women, mentally handicapped citizens, and poor children. YOON’s innovative approach was to incubate these groups as independent community NGOs rather than to expand COWW. In each case, she articulated a need, formed an organization, identified and trained potential leaders, and then mentored the organization to maturity and financial stability before spinning it off.

As she did so, YOON also built a network of professionals and NGO leaders to press for public-sector reforms and formed the Cheonan Ombudsman Group to monitor the city’s social services. In advance of local elections in 2002, she organized a citizens’ group to develop a welfare-policy agenda and mounted a public forum where candidates for mayor were pressed to respond. More than one thousand citizens attended the forum and the winning candidate subsequently pledged to honor six of the group’s recommendations, including a city mental-health center and new funds for disabled children.

YOON is a calm but passionate worker. Today, Cheonan is enlivened by the different civic organizations she has incubated and by concrete manifestations of their good work — such as after-school programs for poor children and a new Center for the Elderly. At her urging, the city’s fledgling NGOs not only provide needed social services but also shape local policies. Groups do not have to be large to be effective agents of change, says thirty-seven-year-old YOON; her own is not. Indeed, YOON’s dream for Cheonan is of a city energized by the actions of “many small, healthy organizations.”

In electing YOON HYE-RAN to receive the 2005 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership, the board of trustees recognizes her catalytic role in enabling Cheonan’s civil society to exercise its social responsibilities dynamically and democratically.

The Honorable Chief Justice Hilario Davide, trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, distinguished guests, fellow awardees ladies and gentlemen, good evening.

First of all, I would like to thank deeply each and everyone at the Foundation and those who have supported me to this day.

When I first heard the news, I was more surprised than happy. Considering the Ramon Magsaysay Award’s international reputation and especially the achievements of previous awardees for the good of our society, I could not believe that I was selected to be this year’s awardee. When looking into the previous Korean awardees, from Chun-ha Chang to the most recent awardee, Pomnyun Sunim, every awardee has been a person I respect highly; I did not even dream about following their ways.

Also, knowing that I am being awarded in “Emergent Leadership,” I feel very responsible and obliged because I am being awarded for expected future achievements aside from what I have actually achieved so far.

However, I want to share the meaning and happiness of this award with all the activists who strive for the expansion and deepening of civil society, especially those who, regardless of social recognition, devote their lives to transforming their local communities through various grassroots movements.

Recently, the Korean civil movement has been recognized for its noticeable growth and dynamism. Also, the great influence that our civil movement has had on creating an institutional framework for democracy in Korea is a fact that cannot be denied.

Even so, there are some criticisms we receive, such as that our “civil movement is without citizen” and that our “civil movement is based on specialists and well-known people.” Admittedly, the foundations of civil society in Korea are still weak, thus it is still hard to gain wide support and participation from our citizens. From now on, for our society to mature and become truly based on citizens’ participation and civil responsibility, I think it is urgent that we mobilize citizens’ commitment to, and active participation in, the issues confronting their local communities. For this to happen, local community-based grassroots organizations have to play more and more significant roles.

At this point in time, I would like to praise the Foundation for giving meaning to grassroots activities in Cheonan, a small city in Korea, and recognizing them as an important driving force that will change our society.

I started doing social work in my early 20s, and have now spent fifteen years interacting with my local community. I rejoice over how people have changed through all this work. Images of hard times, happy moments, and those who have been with me flash through my mind. I have worked hard to make change in the local community, but I think the one thing that has really changed is myself. An inexperienced and young woman from fifteen years ago has grown up to become — although it still sounds awkward for me to say this — a leader of the coming younger generation. After all, young people learn to take responsibility for themselves and others, to take care of and have a sense of solidarity with others, through various volunteer activities. They also learn to devote and sacrifice themselves for the socially disadvantaged. I believe that this is the true process of building civil society leadership.

When looking through my own experiences, I see that the charm of small grassroots activities is in the many possibilities these create to develop the leadership of everyone who participates in making the activities holistic and substantial. In my own case, I came to realize — through my experiences, not in theory — how a democratic citizenry is cultivated through grassroots organizations and their activities. Although it is a slow process, this is the fundamental power needed to transform society.

I could not be standing where I am right now without the guidance and care of many people. I want to thank my family who have shared my life burdens with me and encouraged me with all their hearts. Especially, I would like to give my love and thanks to my husband, Won Geun Lee, whom I met as a co-worker in my community activities fifteen years ago, and who has become my life companion, my work adviser and honest critic. I am also thankful to my lovely son, Hyun Shik, who always had to share his mother with others, but was always understanding and caring.

Each and every one who was with me — sometimes even compromising themselves in seeking justice and the common good — deserves this award. Most of all, everyone in Cheonan city knows that this award should go to Sung Ho Park, who has shared the same vision, was never reluctant to be humble himself in order to help others, and who has been a true mentor in my life.

Lastly, I would like to give this honor to the Lord who has “made me the way I am,” and I ask all of you to pray for me to become an instrument that is used according to God’s will. Once again, thank you so much.

By the time SUKHO CHOI was born in 1955, ten years had passed since Korea was partitioned at the end of World War II and two had passed since the Korean War and its carnage had come to a halt-without reuniting the country. His was a rigid world of North and South. As he came of age, his own home of South Korea made a successful transition to democracy and rose to industrial prosperity; North Korea, meanwhile, descended deeply into isolation and poverty. The two societies lived worlds apart, their otherness reinforced by the Cold War and its stigmatizing propaganda. CHOI concluded it need not be so. As a Buddhist monk and leader of South Korea’s Jung To Society, he has advanced the cause of reconciliation. 

SUKHO CHOI entered the Buddhist monkhood as a youth but abandoned his robes to join South Korea’s democracy movement. On two occasions he was arrested and tortured. As the movement prevailed, Choi turned from political issues to social ones. He formed the Jung To (or Blessed Land) Society to apply Buddhist teachings to the full range of modern ills, from greed and poverty to environmental degradation. In 1991, he was ordained a Buddhist monk and thus became the Venerable POMNYUN SUNIM, the name he is known by today. 

During the next several years, CHOI and his group established a free school and a medical center and village development program in Dongeshwari, a sixteen-village hamlet of untouchables in a destitute corner of India. But CHOI was increasingly consumed by matters closer to home. 

North Korea was long accustomed to dearth. But the 1990s brought floods and drought and by mid-decade people were starving. Tens of thousands of them fled across the border to China. CHOI visited these “food refugees” repeatedly and surveyed five hundred of them in 1997 and 1998. From them he learned the desperate circumstances of their lives in China and the appalling dimensions of the famine in North Korea. He calculated some three million people had died. 

As his organization assisted the refugees, CHOI raised the alarm at home. “People are dying,” he told South Koreans. “More than were killed during the whole Korean War. It’s happening right now, right at this moment.” He urged them to put aside their fears and suspicions and to help the North Korean people. This, he said, was the true path to reconciliation and reunification. They responded by donating some two million dollars for food aid and thousands of articles of clothing for North Koreans. One million of them also petitioned the South Korean government to send massive quantities of food and medicine to the North. Meanwhile, CHOI carried his message to relief organizations and governments abroad, beseeching them to increase their efforts in North Korea and to end Cold War embargoes. In New York, his local followers committed themselves to assist North Korean farmers with fertilizer, seeds, and tools and to build a factory there that now supplies essential nutrients for eleven thousand children. 

CHOI’s ongoing advocacy and relief efforts reflect his belief that Buddhists must engage the real world and act to relieve suffering. He does so in concert with other engaged Buddhists around the world and also with like-minded Buddhist and Christian NGOs in Korea. 

All of this is part of CHOI’s larger vision for “a new humane society” that also reconciles people with nature. Like the good teacher he is, SUKHO CHOI—the ever-smiling Venerable POMNYUN SUNIM—can convey his complex vision simply. What the world really needs, he says, is “Pure Minds, Good Friends, and Clean Lands.” 

In electing SUKHO CHOI to receive the 2002 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding, the board of trustees recognizes his compassionate attention to the human cost of Korea’s bitter division and his hopeful appeal for reconciliation.

It is a great honour for me to have been selected as the recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding this year, but I only have done what I had to do as a monk and indeed I do feel that I am unworthy of the award. I have realized, however, that this award is not given only to myself, but to everyone who took part in the humanitarian assistance to North Korea and the process of reconciliation. I accept this award on behalf of everyone who has been involved in the due course and I would like to express my profound appreciation to the trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for giving me this award and to everyone who is here today. Also, I would like to extend my heartfelt congratulations to all the other awardees tonight. 

I hope this award will create more interest in achieving peace on the Korean peninsula in the international community and that together we can harbour peace and expand humanitarian assistance and protection of the North Korean refugees. It should be given to the North Koreans who are still going through very difficult times. Furthermore, there are conflicts and wars still going on even as I speak in some parts of the world. For the sake of everyone who is suffering from wars, disasters and ideological conflicts, I hope that they will be resolved soon. Peace Movement starts from understanding and recognising their differences and to be awakened to the fact that we are all connected as one. Hence, we all need to make a transition from relationships of competition and hostility to harmonious ones. Upon receiving this award, I shall put my best efforts forward to realize peace in Asia and the Korean peninsula. 

In closing, let me express my sincere gratitude to the late President Magsaysay in whose memory these awards were established. I would also like to express my respect for the people of the Philippines, for having such an honourable award. I thank everyone who is gathered here today, and in the name of the Lord Buddha and the teachers of humanity, I pray that there will be peace, love and happiness among all living beings. 

Thank you very much.

“Everyone dreams of a good life,” says Father JOHN OH WOONG-JIN. And in today’s South Korea, many can achieve it. Yet as some are swept up into Korea’s surging prosperity, others fall to the side and live needily on its fringes. And what of them, he asks? What of Korea’s abandoned children? What of the poor who beg for food, who dwell in squalid makeshift shelters, who die by the roadside? Father OH says the answer lies in the simplest moral dictum: We must love them.

Born in August 1945, OH witnessed as a child the cruelty and suffering of the Korean War. He determined upon a life of service and, inspired by a Catholic priest who aided poor children, chose the Church.

In 1976, as a newly assigned parish priest in the town of Kumwang in south central Korea, OH noticed an old, ragged beggar limping past his church. He followed him to a nearby hovel and watched as the old man shared his food with a destitute family. Once prosperous and happily married, Grandpa Choi—as OH came to know this remarkable old man—had many years before been conscripted, tortured, and forced by the Japanese military to toil in the frigid Hokkaido coal mines. Physically and mentally broken, he later settled under a bridge in Kumwang. Now, at seventy, Choi begged food for others too weak to beg and performed countless other deeds of kindness—clearing shards of broken glass from the playgrounds and, despite his own severe infirmities, rescuing homeless drifters from winter’s killing cold.

Electrified by Grandpa Choi’s example, OH persuaded his parishioners to build a five-room charity house for Grandpa Choi and a few others. As word of OH’s little project spread, other homeless people began to arrive. Rejecting local fears that Kumwang might be overrun with undesirables, OH decided to dedicate himself wholly to helping the needy. To do so, he founded a new congregation of religious men and women and, enlisting the support of Korea’s Catholic hierarchy and thousands of contributors, established in 1983 a sanatorium for beggars: Kkottongnae, or Flower Village.

Like the Biblical loaves and fishes, Kkottongnae quickly blossomed with additional residence halls and services for Korea’s have-nots: in 1985, for the mentally ill; in 1986, for tuberculosis sufferers; in 1987, for the homeless elderly; in 1988, for alcoholics; and, in the early 1990s, for physically and mentally handicapped adults and children. In 1988, a 140-bed charity hospital also rose at Kkottongnae.

Today, more than 2,700 people live in Kkottongnae’s two-hundred-hectare hillside campus, where they are cared for by religious brothers and nuns and by hundreds of lay volunteers who arrive daily by the busload. Father OH has also launched two new Kkottongnae complexes, one in the north, another in the south, each one designed to care for thousands more.

Although Father OH has received a few large donations and assistance from government and the army, most of his endeavors are funded by scrupulously-accounted-for contributions from 700,000 individuals, each of whom pledges a small sum each month. Indeed, OH limits the amounts of regular gifts so that as many people as possible can “experience the happiness of helping others.”

Love, says OH, is the root of happiness. In its absence, the weak are left to fend for themselves, families collapse, societies degenerate. But with it, decency is restored to human relations. Some people say that Kkottongnae is a miracle. Yes, says fifty-one-year-old Father OH, but a miracle of a special kind. “Only those who practice love will understand it.”

In electing JOHN OH WOONGLIN to receive the 1996 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the board of trustees recognizes his arousing in Korea a compassion for the poor by personifying the scriptural injunction to Love Thy Neighbor.

Kkottongnae is a social welfare complex that heartily welcomes Korea’s abandoned people, protecting, curing, and guiding them so that they may go to heaven in peace. These are the people who are starving or freezing to death, who are lying sick beside the road or under bridges, who have no place to live nor strength to beg for food. Kkotongnae was established and is being operated by 720,000 donors; annually 200,000 people volunteer for service; and about 300 members of both the Congregations of Kkottongnae Brothers and Sisters of Jesus also serve. In addition, there are the supportive efforts and love from the Korean government. A special source of great power was the love bestowed upon all of us by the Korean Catholic Church, the diocese of Cheongju, and the Most Reverend Nicholas Jung Jin Seok. In accepting this award, I would like to stress that it should be awarded to the above-mentioned individuals.

What of beggars? Beggars know how to beg but not how to give. The reason why there are beggars is due to lack of love, not lack of material things, knowledge, skill, or health. What Kkottongnae must do is to cure simultaneously the causes of human misery and to warmly welcome, protect, and cure those who live in misery. That is, to tech love to all the people throughout the country. When people love each other, never shall the diseased and the weak be cast into the streets.

God is love. Let us love one another. We must make God’s love known to this world.

For more than twenty years, I have been going around churches, government offices, and companies and have visited students all over the country to teach love by preaching and lecturing. After seeing more than 200,000 people from all walks of life visit Kkottongnae every year—practicing and learning love—I decided to launch the Institute of Love. The institute is the very place where love “of the people, by the people, and for the people” is taught.

The institute is now under construction and will be completed on October 10, 1996. There we will teach the love of God, which can lead to happy individuals, a happy family, a happy nation, and a happy mankind.

For those who need love most, those who have no place to lean on nor energy to beg, those who are abandoned by their families, and those who are treated with contempt, I live as their servant. I would like to thank all who have given immeasurable love and service to Kkottongnae. On all of their behalf, I humbly accept this award. I am convinced that this award will be of great comfort to help those who are abandoned and need love. I thank all of them. God really loves us.

Thank you.

Victims of war and social upheaval must fend for themselves. Yet many cannot, especially the children. Amidst a general struggle for survival, rare is the person who will reach out to help others. All the rarer in bleak, poverty-stricken surroundings like those encountered by KIM IM SOON on Koje Island, South Korea, in 1952. 

It was to this remote place that KIM IM SOON fled when her husband vanished during the Korean War. She took up teaching to support herself and her young daughter. One day a desperate welfare official left seven abandoned infants in her charge. Accepting this daunting, unasked — for responsibility as a challenge from God, KIM set up Ai Kwang Won — the Garden of Love and Light. 

KIM started with a stony patch of hillside overlooking Koje Bay, in a crude hut built of earth and thatch. Year by year she made improvements, adding new and better buildings on adjoining lands that she bought with money given by her parents and friends. She also received help from church congregations and her former classmates at Ewha Woman’s University. But KIM managed largely on her own, building Ai Kwang Won without regular external support. 

KIM later founded an institute where older orphans and needy girls were trained to become self-supporting, eventually adding a technical school for boys, a day nursery, and Korea’s first youth hostel. All the while she accepted more children, some 750 of them by 1978. In that year, there being few abandoned children or orphans in now-prosperous South Korea, she converted Ai Kwang Won into a home for mentally handicapped children. A special school and new facilities for physical and occupational therapy and vocational training followed. 

In 1986 KIM opened Dandelion House for severely retarded children. Life there is full of cheer. The children live with music and bright colors, amidst fruit trees and flowers, overlooking the grand landscape of Koje’s hills and bay. Every child is given special attention; for most, a cake and brightly wrapped gifts on their birthdays are the first in their lives. In running this home, KIM is inspired by the thought: “If you raise a child with love, he will grow up to shed light in all the world.”

From Ai Kwang Won, KIM has energized community life on all of Koje. She has helped aid-giving organizations find the neediest groups and individuals and led in founding Koje-do Christian Hospital. She has taught local villagers about family planning, helped organize a credit union benefiting thousands, and opened a library for children. Recently she established the Koje branch of the Korean Legal Aid Center for Family Relations. KIM’s good works have inspired others to follow her lead, one reason why her grateful neighbors call her the “Queen of Koje Island.”

Today Ai Kwang Won is staffed by more than eighty professionals and aides. Aside from monies earned selling its own handicrafts and farm products, it receives a partial subsidy from the government, as well as funds from patrons near and far. As superintendent, KIM presides cheerfully with no thought for herself. Her own accommodations are spartan, her day-to-day clothes hand-me-downs. At sixty-four, she moves nimbly about the sloping grounds of Ai Kwang Won from dawn to dusk. She says, “When God calls me home one day, I will be able to say I’ve tried my best.”

In electing KIM IM SOON to receive the 1989 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the Board of Trustees recognizes her nurturing hundreds of abandoned and handicapped children to adulthood in an atmosphere of beauty and love.

It was November 1952. In the midst of confusion due to the North-South conflict on the Korean peninsula, I, as a twenty-six-year-old woman, after fervent prayer, made a promise to God. Since then I have pulled a heavy cart up the hill, utilizing all my strength. There were times when my work load overwhelmed me and times when people insulted me. Nevertheless, the wide eyes of the little children sustained my strength and their undivided pure love gave me new hope and courage. 

Although at times I felt as if I were standing in the wilderness alone, I became a fearless soldier to protect their rights and a comforting mother to dry their tears and ease their heartaches. My endless prayers became hymns of praise as I kept pulling the cart. 

These thoughts came to my mind when I heard the amazing news that I was chosen for the Ramon Magsaysay Award. However, a voice from within warned that the prize is not for me alone. It is for the many whose names are not known and who receive no glory, those who through thirty-eight long, hard years have supported, helped, and enabled me to pull the cart. I accept this totally unexpected honor as a representative of the many who have worked for the success of our endeavors; I also accept it with a deep and serious sense of responsibility. 

I humbly offer this aging body and soul to continue to work for the betterment of mentally and physically disabled children. I pray that God uses the rest of my life to help me guide these children to live as dignified human beings and to utilize their God-given talents for greater happiness and hope. I see this award as a manifestation of God’s grace and of his renewed promise for the disabled children at Ai Kwang Won. 

We realize and truly appreciate how fortunate we are through observing those who are less fortunate, and we learn the precious lesson that their suffering and pain might have been ours. I appeal to all of you. It is not only a nation or government’s responsibility but also the responsibility of churches, social groups, and individuals to reach out and provide assistance to the less fortunate. I consider myself an early-morning church bell, reminding the world that some of our neighbors need us and that we must share whatever we, as “normal people,” have — our love, health, material gifts, time, and talents.

During my long years in this work, I have come to realize that the miracle in the Bible, of how Jesus fed the multitudes with five loaves and two fishes, was not only a miracle of two thousand years ago. I have personally witnessed and experienced this kind of miracle over and over all around me. 

As I use this prize money to reconstruct the old school classroom buildings for my two hundred disabled children, I call on all of you to pray that the same miracle may happen again.

When South Korea’s effective modernization began a quarter of a century ago, it was geared to a manufacturing for export drive that stunned the trading world with efficient production of low cost goods. Disciplined laborers working harder, often for less, than anyone else in East Asia, were a key to this success. Unlike in Japan and Taiwan, where after World War II rural progress came first, in Korea villages felt the sweeping winds of change only a decade later. Hence seekers for employment and opportunity flocked to the cities, making Seoul one of Asia’s dozen largest cities and inevitably creating massive slums where social services lagged behind the need.

Life in a slum, though devoid of most amenities, still allows a sense of family warmth and home. Networks of relatives and co-workers cushion harsh outer realities. Now even this make-do haven is threatened by booming urban land values and both public and private redevelopment schemes that mean misery to evicted slum dwellers.

Thirteen years ago, Jesuit JOHN VINCENT DALY, a Sogang University philosophy professor, decided to learn how the poor viewed life by moving into Cheong Kyei Cheon, a Seoul slum. There he met PAUL JEONG-GU JEI, recently expelled from Seoul National University for leading demonstrations. Their first partnership in community concern lasted less than a year. JEI, after readmission to the university, was soon jailed for 11 months for antigovernment activities. Not long after he was released he and DALY decided to open a community center in two rented rooms in Yahng Pyeong Dong slum. Convinced that outside problem solvers tend to impose their perceptions, the two sought to be catalysts fostering community-determined change.

Three years later Yahng Pyeong Dong was classified for redevelopment. Little compensation or concern for their rehousing was vouchsafed the residents. Fifteen families approached DALY and JEI for help.

With US$100,000 from MISEREOR, the German Catholic Social Aid Fund, and other monies from abroad, the two were able to purchase a small plot of land 12 kilometers southeast of Seoul only days before the eviction was to be carried out. DALY, JEI, and the committee of slumdwellers which they had helped create, expected fewer but finally accepted 170 families. In May 1977 all but 20 of the families moved into tents on the new site and joined in building the village of Bogum Jahri, the Place of Happiness. With three skilled members as construction supervisors, and enthused by interdenominational prayer, the newcomers completed construction of the buildings by November 1977, and the sewage system for the 170 houses was finished by the onset of winter cold in December.

From such beginnings emerged a practical system for building housing at the equivalent of US$166 per pysong, or 3.3 square meters, largely with self-made construction materials which are one-third the cost of commercial materials. The second village was Han Dok and the third MokWha. A community center was constructed within walking distance of all three.

DALY, who was born in Philo, Illinois 51 years ago, has made South Korea his home for 26 years. Both he and his partner,JEI, who was born in 1944 in South Kyong-sang province, have become participants in the daily struggles of the homeless poor. They have established the Korean Catholic Research Institute of the Urban Poor to aid slum dwellers in learning their legal rights and correcting injustices such as unwarranted or unrecompensed evictions. The two are also attempting to prove that a rich cultural heritage can be retained and enhanced by the most disadvantaged, provided there is effective community organization and local leadership.

In electing Father JOHN VINCENT DALY and PAUL JEONG-GU JEI to receive the 1986 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the Board of Trustees recognizes their education and guidance of the urban poor to create vigorous, humanly sound satellite communities.

Because of the continuing spirit of President Ramon Magsaysay manifested through the Foundation and the awards named after him and the trustees and staff we have been privileged to meet in the last two days, it is a great honor to receive the Magsaysay Award. But it is an even greater honor to receive it in 1986, the year when the people of the Philippines—and the spirit at work within them—added a new chapter to human history, giving hope and courage and light to millions of ordinary “little people” all over the world.

You may wonder what I have hanging around my neck. It is a list of the names of the 135 families who rent rooms in an area of Seoul called Sang Kyei Dong who have been resisting eviction because they have no money and they have nowhere to go. Because they are delaying the construction of new high-rise apartments which will bring a $20-30,000,000 profit to someone, on June 26 of this year the 60 or 70 women who happened to be home that day were severely beaten up. Some of them were swung about in the air until they lost consciousness; their furniture and houses were half-destroyed; some of their children were picked up and tossed through the air onto piles of debris. This went on for about five hours while some 300 riot police just stood by. When the fighting ended the police arrested the 60-70 women who had been beaten up.

I lived with these families most of July and tasted, a bit, their fear and anxiety at not knowing when the next attack would come. But I tasted a lot more their courage and dignity.

When I left Korea onJuly31 these people gave me this gift with their names on it, saying, “we want to be with you.” They are. They are here on this stage today. In fact, in my mind, there are many people here right now accepting this award: my mother, father, brother and sister and the rest of my family; Cardinal Steven Kim; the staff of organizations like MISEREOR (Federal Republic of Germany) and CEBEMO (Netherlands); the rest of our Bogum Jahri Team; the people of our three resettlement villages—Bogum Jahri, Han Dok, MokWha; the courageous people of areas like Mok Dong, ShinJeong Dong, Sa Dahng Dong, Oh Kum Dong, Ha Wang Shim Ni and Sang Kyei Dong; and the 3,000,000 people who will be made homeless if the government carries out its schedule of “redeveloping” 230 areas in Seoul by 1990.

I accept this award in their name. And I pray to God that this gold medal will give them the light to recognize their own infinite value so that they will have the tremendous courage they will need to continue to fight for their rights as human beings—to fight not out of hatred but out of love—love for themselves, love for their children and grandchildren, love for the people, culture and future of Korea.

I thank all of you—Mrs. Magsaysay, the trustees and staff of the Magsaysay Foundation—from the bottom of my heart for doing the one thing—in a sense the only thing—the urban poor of this world are longing and crying for, the thing they need most of all: you have recognized them as human beings come.

I only hope that your courage in taking this stance will prick the consciences of many governments and city planners and nudge them to take a second look at the urban poor, to see them not as faceless and troublesome statistics which must be removed to make room for “development,” not as stray dogs or pieces of furniture which can be driven away or moved around whenever someone has a chance to make a few dollars, but as people, as citizens and as human beings who have every right to a little bit of ground under their feet end a roofover their heads.

People’s power, Philippine style, shows us all that that day can come.

When South Korea’s effective modernization began a quarter of a century ago, it was geared to a manufacturing for export drive that stunned the trading world with efficient production of low cost goods. Disciplined laborers working harder, often for less, than anyone else in East Asia, were a key to this success. Unlike in Japan and Taiwan, where after World War II rural progress came first, in Korea villages felt the sweeping winds of change only a decade later. Hence seekers for employment and opportunity flocked to the cities, making Seoul one of Asia’s dozen largest cities and inevitably creating massive slums where social services lagged behind the need.

Life in a slum, though devoid of most amenities, still allows a sense of family warmth and home. Networks of relatives and co-workers cushion harsh outer realities. Now even this make-do haven is threatened by booming urban land values and both public and private redevelopment schemes that mean misery to evicted slum dwellers.

Thirteen years ago, Jesuit JOHN VINCENT DALY, a Sogang University philosophy professor, decided to learn how the poor viewed life by moving into Cheong Kyei Cheon, a Seoul slum. There he met PAUL JEONG-GU JEI, recently expelled from Seoul National University for leading demonstrations. Their first partnership in community concern lasted less than a year. JEI, after readmission to the university, was soon jailed for 11 months for antigovernment activities. Not long after he was released he and DALY decided to open a community center in two rented rooms in Yahng Pyeong Dong slum. Convinced that outside problem solvers tend to impose their perceptions, the two sought to be catalysts fostering community-determined change.

Three years later Yahng Pyeong Dong was classified for redevelopment. Little compensation or concern for their rehousing was vouchsafed the residents. Fifteen families approached DALY and JEI for help.

With US$100,000 from MISEREOR, the German Catholic Social Aid Fund, and other monies from abroad, the two were able to purchase a small plot of land 12 kilometers southeast of Seoul only days before the eviction was to be carried out. DALY, JEI, and the committee of slumdwellers which they had helped create, expected fewer but finally accepted 170 families. In May 1977 all but 20 of the families moved into tents on the new site and joined in building the village of Bogum Jahri, the Place of Happiness. With three skilled members as construction supervisors, and enthused by interdenominational prayer, the newcomers completed construction of the buildings by November 1977, and the sewage system for the 170 houses was finished by the onset of winter cold in December.

From such beginnings emerged a practical system for building housing at the equivalent of US$166 per pysong, or 3.3 square meters, largely with self-made construction materials which are one-third the cost of commercial materials. The second village was Han Dok and the third MokWha. A community center was constructed within walking distance of all three.

DALY, who was born in Philo, Illinois 51 years ago, has made South Korea his home for 26 years. Both he and his partner,JEI, who was born in 1944 in South Kyong-sang province, have become participants in the daily struggles of the homeless poor. They have established the Korean Catholic Research Institute of the Urban Poor to aid slum dwellers in learning their legal rights and correcting injustices such as unwarranted or unrecompensed evictions. The two are also attempting to prove that a rich cultural heritage can be retained and enhanced by the most disadvantaged, provided there is effective community organization and local leadership.

In electing Father JOHN VINCENT DALY and PAUL JEONG-GU JEI to receive the 1986 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the Board of Trustees recognizes their education and guidance of the urban poor to create vigorous, humanly sound satellite communities.

After learning that I was recipient of the 1986 Ramon Magsaysay Award I was, for a few days, in a state of confusion. I thought to myself, I have already received my reward; how is it the Lord is giving me another? The reward I had already received was the ability to live as a poor man, not out of some kind of moral imperative or Christian sense of drag, but happy and content as a human being with other poor people; and I was also given the power to confront and challenge no matter what kind of suffering or persecution should follow—the powers of injustice which dehumanize the poor.

Since I considered these things my reward, I couldn’t see how or why the Lord would be giving me some other award. And I even began to worry a bit, wondering, what has been wrong in my life that He is giving me this very big and very prestigious Award.

But two days later I went to visit an area where people have been struggling and fighting against inhuman eviction, and as soon as I saw their ecstatic welcome and joy, at that moment I began to realize the meaning of this Award.

That is, before I saw this as an honor to me personally; now I saw it as a recognition of all poor people who long to be really human and who fight against violence and injustice. The absence of justice and the presence of structural and organized violence in the world is whet makes and keeps people poor, but even in their poverty, they do not forget, but rather cling to the value of the truly human.

And so, this Award is being given to me, not for some insignificant work or achievement, rather it is given because of a way of living.

Thus, I came to realize that this Award is not so much an award, but rather a ray of light to the countless numbers of anonymous companions who commit themselves to a similar way of living—accepting with joy and gratitude all kinds of pain and difficulties, being isolated and lonely, and receiving no recognition or acceptance from the world.

I am especially happy and grateful to receive this Award in 1986, the year in which the remarkable spirit and burning zeal of the late President Ramon Magsaysay blossomed, bore fruit, and empowered the Philippine people to attain democracy.

Not “three cheers,” but ten thousand cheers for the Philippine people, and ten thousand “hoorays” for the fullness of humanity and for a more just and righteous world. 

In this century of modern mass warfare few countries have been as devastated as Korea. Armies that 30 years ago carried their campaigns down the peninsula left the “land of the morning calm” scarred almost beyond recognition. Cities were leveled by artillery and bombs. Bridges, roads, dams and farmsteads were badly damaged; livestock was eaten by the soldiers; and several million Korean civilians were among the casualties. 

For the survivors, the loss of family and the wreckage of society were even more traumatic. In the mass flight south from the communist invaders tens of thousands of parents lost their children; some families are only now being reunited through televised appeals. In the cold Korean winters, amidst the confusion of combat, many a child seeking shelter or a warm bowl of barley-gruel disappeared. War left nearly one-half the adult population without productive employment and reduced to selling rags and waste paper, begging, and stealing as a last resort. When Fr. ALOYSIUS SCHWARTZ arrived—four years after the war’s end—as a secular priest in the southern diocese of Pusan, most of the city’s then over one million residents still lived in makeshift shacks. 

Born in 1930 in Washington, D.C., SCHWARTZ had decided in grade school upon his vocation as a missionary priest, and in college on serving the poor. Studying initially in a Maryknoll seminary, he found the living conditions too plush and transferred to the Societe des Auxiliares des Missions in Louvain, Belgium, where he completed his schooling. He was ordained in Washington and promptly left to take up his assignment in Pusan. 

Amidst the poverty and cruelty of what in 1957 was one of Korea’s worst slums, he assisted in diocesan work while learning the Korean language. Deeply sympathetic to the human tragedy around him, and angered by pious complacency, Fr. SCHWARTZ increasingly became convinced that Christianity must be expressed through a “church of the poor.” Invalided to the United States in 1959 for complications arising from hepatitis, he pondered how to proceed, and in 1960 founded Korean Relief, Inc., to raise funds by mail in the U.S. to be used in service to the poor. 

Returning to Pusan in 1962 he was appointed pastor of the depressed Song-do parish, where ministering to spiritual needs proved to be only part of his calling. Disturbed by the poor care given orphans, he enlisted and trained young women volunteers to become “mothers,” each to 10-12 of the orphans under his care. 

From such beginnings grew Pusan’s Boystown and Girlstown, which now provide kindergarten through technical high school—and recently junior college, for some 1,400 of the most underprivileged. Boystown and Girlstown in Seoul followed, where over 2,600 are similarly educated and cared for. Fr. SCHWARTZ conducts mass on both campuses to build spirits, and encourages sports to build bodies, teamwork and self-confidence. His hospitals in Seoul and Pusan, and Tuberculosis Sanatarium in the latter, serve only the poor and are staffed by some of Korea’s ablest medical personnel. Kaengsaengwon, another home, provides care for 1,500 destitute aged and disabled adults, and training for 200 poorly adjusted or retarded youngsters. Operating these institutions are the Sisters of Mary, founded by SCHWARTZ from the nucleus of “orphan mothers,” and now numbering 150 Korean women. Assisting them are the 13 men of his new order, the Brothers of Christ, likewise dedicated to serving the poor. Visitors remark on the spontaneity, cleanliness and health of the young charges, the involvement of the sick and elderly, and the fine maintenance of all the facilities. 

Fr. SCHWARTZ raises three-fourths of his annual budget—today approximating US$8 million—through a direct, personal, mail-appeal-for-Christian-giving to millions of Europeans and Americans each year. The Korean Government covers the rest of the costs, recognizing that Fr. SCHWARTZ provides for that sector of society which has not benefited from the nation’s remarkable economic advances of the past two decades. Although gangsters and others have tried to thwart his interference with their exploitation of Korea’s social outcasts, and have tested his perseverance, no one has shaken his determination that the poor not only must be fed and clothed, but also given the education and skills to enable them to participate fully in society. 

In electing Fr. ALOYSIUS SCHWARTZ, priest of Pusan, to receive the 1983 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding, the Board of Trustees recognizes his mobilizing European and American support to succor acutely deprived Korean youngsters, homeless elderly and infirm.

It is with mixed feelings that I accept the Award this evening. Certainly I am very grateful. I am pleased. And I am honored. At the same time, I am a bit uneasy inside, somewhat embarrassed and somewhat discomfited. 

The announcement of the Award on August 12 generated enormous publicity in Korea. The newspapers, TV, radio and a number of magazines gave excellent coverage to the news. This publicity has already proven useful and helpful to my work. 

More than this, the Award announcement was a tremendous morale booster for the 4,000 or so orphaned boys and girls I care for in Pusan and Seoul—and the 150 dedicated Korean Sisters who look after them. The Sisters and the children were absolutely elated when they heard the news. Not only that, but the Boystown and Girlstown graduates?who have left me and are now living on their own in society—were just as excited. Many have written or phoned. One boy called up and told me that they were dancing in the factories after they heard the announcement. It does my heart good to see the Sisters, children and graduates so excited and happy. And for this I am tremendously grateful. 

At the same time, as I mentioned, I am a little embarrassed. In the gospel Christ in effect says: When you give alms to the poor, or for that matter, do anything worthwhile, don’t spoil it by sounding a trumpet and telling the whole world about it. Rather enhance the beauty and the value of whatever little good you do by doing it in a quiet and hidden manner. In fact, your right hand should not even let your left hand know what it is doing. In accepting this Award I am not only telling my left hand what I am doing—but I am telling the whole world as well. 

Therein lies the dilemma and the source of my mixed feelings. But in balance I think the positive elements far outweigh these negative and somewhat scrupulous reservations. In the Psalms it is written: “Not to us, O Lord, not to us—but to Thy Name alone give glory.” My feeling and my hope is that by accepting this Award I will be giving honor and glory to God. And ultimately this is what really counts. 

So, to conclude these brief remarks, as we say in the “home country”: “Kamsa hamnida. Kamsa hamnida. Taedanhi kamsa hamnida.” Which means simply: “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so very, very much!”