August 1, 2013 · 3:22 pm

Sister Ger Ryan, Mokpo, South Korea

Ambassador’s Message – Sister Gerardine Ryan in Mokpo

3 May 2011

Recently I travelled to Mokpo, in the southwest, Jeollam-do. The province has historically been one of the poorest and consequently restive.  Yong Am gun on the outskirts of Mokpo city has a major ship-building company working there but absent that there are precious few industries. Fishing and agriculture are important: No surprise then that many of the young leave for the bright lights of Busan and Seoul.

Some thirty- six years ago, Sister Gerardine of the Columban Order arrived to help with a mission to provide health care for the poor of the area and its many islands. The Columban sisteres started medical work in Mokpo when they first arived in 1955. Gradually answering the medical needs of the time they eventually built a large hospital of four hundred beds on a hill in the city, offering medical care to many and providing a sub-economy in the vicinity. In the 1990 the hospital was handed over to the diocese, but a series of management missteps tragically led to its closure and demolition.

 By this stage, Sr. Gerardine had devoted her attention to adults with special needs. Those mentally and physically handicapped encounter problems in all societies. Confucianism, with its emphasis on an ideally ordered and harmonious family, influenced by Buddhism’s notion of reincarnation and inter-generational reward and punishment, means that those with special needs face particular difficulties here, especially in rural areas where traditional beliefs persist more strongly.

My first stop was at Myongdo Child Care Centre.  ‘Myongdo’ translates as ‘the bright way’, capturing the sense that special needs people can and should realise their potential and live as independently as possible. Some 89 special needs children with ages ranging from 8 months to 11 years of age are looked after there with trained educational specialists and therapists. The facilities are first class and the environment stimulating and caring.

Next stop was the Myongdo Work shop where 40 adult men and women engage in making bread, manufacturing washing soap and soap powder, and undertaking various contract work from factories. They earn a salary from the monies generated through these workshop activities. I asked how on earth Sister Geraldine came up with the idea of making soap. She casually said she had seen it somewhere and gave it a go with some buckets and ladles, eventually getting the technique right and investing in two machines.

Both the Child Care Centre and Workshop were made possible with the help and continuing support of the British Association of Seoul and indeed the British Embassy. BASS are also supporting a residential house in Mokpo which Sr Gerardine is building to allow special needs adults live in the community, a project inspired by a similar venture in Germany. The house is largely complete but needs finishing work internally which will be undertaken when funding is found.

Our final stop was the Sister’s headquarters essentially, Myongdo Welfare Centre. On a daily basis, some 150 people of varying ages with various disabilities avail of the many programs offered at the centre from early intervention education to work shop and pre-employment training, to day- care facilities for the more profoundly challenged persons. The Centre also has a respite facility which offers temporary accommodation to special needs people allowing parents a break and enabling them to attend functions together or get away on holidays. Alteratively it offers shelter to the special needs person in crisis family situations.

With outreach from this centre, there are 250 persons in open employment in various factories, restaurants, launderettes, car washes, ceramic making factories and so on in the city and outer city areas in the vicinity. Sr Geraldine also has a home care team of 5 staff who have 350 families of persons with disabilities in their care.

Sporting events, hiking and excursions are organised for weekends to provide leisure activities and social integration for these people. She explained that many of these people do not know how to enjoy recreational times and that parents worry about allowing them out on their own.

Sr Gerardine has some 90 full time staff and 120 part-time. The many lives bettered immeasurably and potential realised by special needs children and adults through this work runs into the many hundreds. You don’t have to have faith or religion to admire the caring facilities that one woman, with the help of so many people, has built, working now as a lone religious, far in time and space from her native Limerick and the farm she left almost four decades ago. What she can continue to do and indeed improve on depends very much on voluntary funds.

 Donations can be made via the following bank account:

 St. Columban’s social Welfare Corporation. 성골롬반사희복지법인

Bank. Nyong Hup 농협 689ㅡ01ㅡ171908

 Best wishes,

 

Eamonn

 

Eamonn McKee

Ambassador of Ireland

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August 1, 2013 · 3:19 pm

Daring and Visionary: Fr. P.J. McGlinchey, Jeju Island Korea

Ambassador’s Message – Fr P.J. McGlinchey in Jeju

9 September 2011

 Approaching Jeju City, the main port and town of Jeju island, one could see the town on the low slopes, virtually every building a one story thatched building.  The only slate roof belonged to the school.  There was no running water and electricity was only being introduced.  The poverty was intense and pervasive.  This too was a society traumatised by extreme violence.  Perhaps as many as 30,000 of the 250,000 inhabitants had been massacred in the 1948-49 anti-communist campaign. As part of the security operation, some 70% of the villages in the mountainous interior were destroyed and their inhabitants driven to live on the coast. 

It was into this dire circumstance that Fr P.J. McGlinchey, of the Irish missionary Columban Order, stepped from the ferry in 1954. The Korean War had just come to a close.  He was a striking figure, six foot tall with tousled brown hair and a handsome Irish face. While driven by his sense of spiritual mission, Fr P.J. was also an intensely practical man – the two characteristics that the Columban Order looked for in priests and nuns since its origins in 1916.  Aside from pastoral care, he took stock of the appalling privations and began a life devoted to employment projects: manufacturing and agricultural undertakings that offered work, skill development and hope to the inhabitants.

Today, when you arrive at Jeju International Airport, it is very difficult to connect what you see with the island that greeted Fr McGlinchey on his arrival.  Its busy airport, well-developed roads, fine hotels and a host of golf clubs, combined with the island’s natural beauty, encourages some 6 million visitors to come each year, boosting employment, public income and of course land values.

By the time of my visit to Jeju, Fr McGlinchey had retired some months earlier.  My wife and I were accompanied by the new chairman of the Isidore Development Association, Fr Michael Riordan.  I would meet Fr McGlinchey at the close of the day.  Michael is a burly bearded Dublin man, a veterinary doctor by training.   Richard Troughton, from Northern Ireland, runs the stud farm there and is not only passionate about horses but about encouraging links through the horse industry with Ireland. 

St Isidore’s has an impressively large dairy and stud farm, which evolved from Fr McGlinchey’s early importation of cattle, pigs and sheep to help the stock and livelihood of the Jeju farmers.  Of course, the farm and related business is only a means to an end.  Nearby is the old folks home, St Isidore Nursing Home, catering for about 85 people some of whom are bedridden.  Down the road is the St Isidore Hospice which can cater for up to 23 patients.  The nursing home is supported by the government and the hospice is supported wholly by donations and from income from the profit making Isidore activities – the feed mill and the farm.  Both these welfare facilities are run by the Holy Family Sisters – a group formed in Korea by a Paris Foreign Missionary priest.  The St. Isidore kindergarten caters for nearly 100 kids – more than the local primary school. The St. Isidore Youth Centre is run by six Salesian Sisters and a lay staff. They cater for over 18,000 young people every year. They run mainly human development programmes which last for two or three days at a time.

Aside from doing business to fund care facilities, St Isdore Farm also hosts a Retreat Centre, run by lay staff and three Benedictine sisters.  There is also the Trinity Church which can host 4,000 people at its liturgies; the church is in the shape of a Celtic cross and in impressive edifice at that. There are also nineteen contemplative Sisters of St Claire in the parish.  Each year nearly 4,000 people come from the mainland and about 2,500 Jejuites use the retreat facilities.   There is also a place of pilgrimage referred to as the Hill of Grace which has life sized figures depicting various events in the life of Christ.  From there you wend your way over gentle slopes and woods through the Stations of the Cross, peopled by life-sized and quite striking bronze statues in settings of either natural wood or more elaborate sets of marble and stone.  All of the statues were created and caste by a Korean artist, Park Chang Hoon (John). 

By the time we got to the natural contemplative lake, twilight was falling.  Michael accompanied my wife and me to meet Fr McGlinchey.  We were worn out just walking around the Isidore enterprises and undertakings but here he was, after a life of struggle and hard work, benign and welcoming.  You could still see in his frame and charisma the younger man who had come to Jeju, a very different place, almost sixty years ago.  In his modest office, surrounded by a life-time of mementos, he showed us a surviving example of the blanket his textile factory had produced, modelled on Donegal tweed.  The business eventually closed due to competition but over four decades had given employment to some 1,700 Jeju women when jobs on the island were few and far between. 

More recently, I visited Happy Valley, some forty minutes north of Seoul, in the company of Andrew Salmon, an expert on the Korean War, and Tom Coyner of the Irish Association of Korea.  In January 1951, it was far from a happy place for the Royal Ulster Rifles and Royal Irish Hussars.  While pulling back from a Chinese counter offensive moving toward Seoul, they found themselves overrun, struggling to evacuate along a frozen river under fire, tragically and mistakenly illuminated against the ice and snow by flairs dropped from an American plane.  As Andrew Salmon told me, more Irish blood was shed here than in any other place during the war.  He is best placed to know as the author of To the Last Round: The Epic British Stand on the Imjin River, Korea 1951 (Aurum Press, London, 2009) and Scorched Earth, Black Snow: Britain and Australia in the Korean War, 1950 (Aurum Press, London, 2011).  [Check out his website and blog at www.tothelastround.wordpress.com ]  Many of the 130 Irish who died with the Royal Ulster Rifles during the War met their end here.  No monument marks the spot but some exploratory discussions to that end are underway.  Another 29 Irish died fighting with US forces during the war, not to mention countless first generation Irish Americans.

The Irish contribution to the Korea War, like the work of Irish missionaries to Korean society is, for the most part, unsung and unknown.  However, I am delighted to say that the Royal Irish Academy has agreed in principle to publish a history of the Irish in Korea.  We are only at the outset of the project, with many challenges ahead, including fundraising for the research.  However, in addition to retrieving and recording the contribution of the Irish, it will be an important work that will strengthen and deepen Irish Korean relations.

In the meantime, at this thanksgiving weekend, we can spare a thought for the many Irish who have made a noble and distinctive contribution to Korea.  For more information on the story of the Irish here, check out our brief survey at the Embassy website under the heading ‘Relations between Ireland and South Korea’ (www.embassyofireland.or.kr ). 

Eamonn

 

Eamonn McKee

Ambassador

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August 1, 2013 · 3:14 pm

Northern Ireland: Devolving Policing and Justice

Devolving Policing and Justice, Northern Ireland

5 February – A Good Day for Ireland

 I am delighted to report a major achievement of the Northern Ireland peace process.  

 On 5 February 2010, the parties in Northern Ireland reached an agreement at Hillsborough which will see the devolution of responsibility for policing and justice by 12 April; will seek to improve the prospects for agreed outcomes to contentious parades; and will improve the working of the Executive and Assembly at Stormont.

 As the joint statement by the Taoiseach Brian Cowen and Prime Minister Gordon Brown states:

 “The successful outcome of these negotiations is the result of the political parties in Northern Ireland demonstrating leadership, mutual respect and political will to act in the interests of the whole community.  The two Governments fully support and stand over this agreement. We are committed to working, as appropriate, to ensure its faithful implementation.  Today is a good day for the people of Northern Ireland and for the people of these islands.”

 The Northern Ireland peace process has been a complicated and long process.  It has been necessarily so given the complex origins, duration and course of the conflict between 1969 and the ceasefires in 1994.

 I was honoured to have been part of the team of Irish officials involved in the negotiation of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.  At the time we had faith that the Agreement was the most comprehensive document addressing the complexity of factors that made the conflict in Northern Ireland so intractable. 

We also knew that agreeing an outcome document was one thing; implementation quite another, even in the context of the tremendous process of change brought about by the Anglo-Irish Agreement some thirteen years earlier.  And so it proved to be. 

That peace making and peace building in Northern Ireland should take such time and attention should not detract from what a success it has been, whether for measured for example by the power sharing arrangements or the transformation of policing. 

A major feature of the Good Friday Agreement was the establishment of the North-South Ministerial Council which is a structured inter-governmental framework for cross-border cooperation across a range of economic and social sectors.  From this process, for example, emerged Tourism Ireland which jointly promotes the island of Ireland, North and South.  This cooperation has helped enormously to bridge relations across the border and advance the social and economic interests of all of the people who share the island.

The agreement on 5 February last to transfer policing and justice is the last unfinished business of the Good Friday Agreement and a major testament to how far we on the island of Ireland have travelled from conflict to shared responsibility.  Its significance is enhanced by the fact that it was the parties themselves that negotiated and concluded the agreement.

Of course, there remain many challenges ahead.  However, the 5 February agreement is an historic step toward the realisation of the vision set out in the Good Friday Agreement. 

Eamonn McKee

Ambassador

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August 1, 2013 · 3:09 pm

Exploring Diaspora Strategies

Ambassador’s Message – Exploring Diaspora Strategies

 1 February 2010

You may be interested in a useful and stimulating report called Exploring Diaspora Strategies: Lessons for Ireland.  It emerged from the Exploring Diaspora Strategies workshop, held in NUI Maynooth on 26-28 January 2009. 

The workshop, which was part funded by the Emigrant Support Programme of the Department of Foreign Affairs, was coordinated by Professors Mark Boyle and Robert Kitchin, both of NUI Maynooth. It brought together policy makers from Australia, Chile, India, Ireland, Jamaica, Lithuania, New Zealand, Scotland, and the World Bank, to explore how different countries have approached the formulation and implementation of Diaspora Strategies. Irish officials involved with and knowledgeable about emigration issues were represented. 

As defined by Boyle and Kitchin, ‘a diaspora strategy is an explicit and systematic policy initiative or series of policy initiatives aimed at developing and managing relationships with a diaspora… [It] is perhaps best thought of… as an overarching framework for providing a level of coherence to the range of diaspora policies devised and implemented by a variety of agencies.’ 

 Many countries pursue a range of initiatives and policies designed to engage, support and ‘harness’ their Diaspora; however, very few can claim that these initiatives form a distinct and coherent Diaspora Strategy. That accepted, some common principles supporting strategy formation have begun to emerge, and the workshop aimed to establish what these were, and how these could be applied by policy makers.

Overall, the paper reflects positively on the ‘wide range of programmes and schemes through which [Ireland] engages its diaspora’, noting that ‘together these… provide a broad range of services to, and partnerships with, the Irish diaspora across the globe and constitute a constellation that few other countries can match in terms of scope and reach.’

The authors see a lack of cohesion amongst these programmes, which, they suggest, do not currently form a coherent, overarching diaspora strategy.  Amongst other recommendations, the paper suggests that while ‘[i]t does not make sense to force all existing programmes into a centralised single organisation responsible for overseeing and managing them’, the State should look to improve coordination of the ‘various strands of [Diaspora] strategy across departments and agencies to ensure a continuity of effort, avoid duplication, and undertake the effective monitoring of progress’. This, it suggests, could be achieved by officially appointing a single agency or unit – the authors suggest the Irish Abroad Unit at the Department of Foreign Affairs as a candidate – to coordinate (although not centrally manage) the Diaspora Strategy. 

 Other key recommendations in the paper include:

  • developing a state-sponsored website portal that provides links to all diaspora programmes, but not content
  • developing an awards scheme to acknowledge and reward the Irish abroad who have made a significant contribution to Ireland and the diaspora
  • devising a strategy to develop philanthropic relationships with members of the Irish diaspora
  • recognizing the value of an ‘affinity diaspora’

 The Global Irish Economic Forum held in Farmleigh last September was a significant contribution to the debate on the Irish Diaspora (the report is available on http://www.dfa.ie).  One of the Forum’s key objectives is to establish how Ireland’s relationship with our overseas communities can be brought to a new, more dynamic level. It is envisaged that the Forum will identify a range of concrete Diaspora initiatives – potentially including some of those outlined in the attached paper – and will be a key step in the formation of a Diaspora Strategy. 

 At any rate, the report of the recent Maynooth workshop is a useful survey which you may find interesting.

 

Eamonn McKee

Ambassador

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August 1, 2013 · 3:02 pm

Columban Sisters in Korea

Ambassador’s Message – The Columban Sisters in Korea 

11 March 2010

 As we celebrate our National Day, it is appropriate we recall the contribution of the Irish to Korea.  Our Embassy website has information on much of this and if anyone can add to it please contact us.

 I asked Sister Teresa of the Columban Sister’s here for a brief account of their work in Korea and she kindly provided the summary below.  For those of us new to this country, it is hard to make the imaginative leap back to what it must have been like in the 1955, just two years after the war’s end and the awful destruction which had been visited on the peninsula as the war front chewed its way back and forth. 

 As with the Columban Fathers who had come before them, they brought compassion and assistance to a people in real need.  And when the time came, they conveyed ownership of their achievements to the people of Korea.  Today, they continue their work with those in need of help and support.

* * * 

 The Columban Sisters in Korea

 Mokpo Project

 The story of the Columban Sisters in Korea began on 23 June 1954 when Columban Father Harold Henry, Pro-Prefect of the Prefecture of Gwangju, Cholla Province, wrote to the then Superior General of the Columban Sisters, Mother Mary Vianney Shackleton, requesting Sisters to open a hospital in Mokpo, 400km south west of Seoul. At that time there was great need for medical facilities in Mokpo, a port city, with a population, at that time, of 150,000 people, many of whom were still suffering from the after-effects of Korean War 1950-1953. It catered to 288 inhabited islands off the coast.

 On 17 January 1955 four pioneer Sisters arrived in Mokpo. Their first task was to study the Korean language. Every afternoon they sorted medicine and clothing for the sick poor and prepared for the opening of the outpatient clinic. From their walks around the neighbourhood they became aware of the urgent needs of the sick poor and they were anxious to do something to alleviate their suffering. They used a small Korean house as a temporary clinic until the new clinic was opened on 5 July 1955.

 Meantime, the number of patients attending the clinic began to grow and it became obvious that a hospital was urgently needed to cater for inpatient care. On 20 January 1957, St. Columban’s Hospital was opened. As the number of patients continued to grow the need for nursing staff also grew. It became apparent that the only way to provide nursing staff was to train their own staff. The Sisters decided to build a new hospital and refurbish the existing buildings and land to the Columban Sisters’ nursing school corporation. The nursing school was started on 3 March 1967 and a new 150-bed hospital began to receive patients on 25 March 1968.

 The Sisters also inaugurated training programmes for X-Ray and laboratory technicians which remained in operation until the need was met locally. In the late 70’s state approved maternity training was introduced and in 1979 an intern programme was launched for medical students. By 1980 the nursing school was upgraded to a Junior Nursing College and had an annual intake of 80 students.

Other services which complemented the work in the hospital included: the implementation of a full-time home care service, the teaching of Natural Family Planning methods, the employment of a full time Catechist and a social worker.

From 1955 the Columban Sisters were touched not only by the needs of the sick poor but also by the sweeping changes that became part of living in Korea with the onset of a developing democracy in the late 1980’s. As a result of economic prosperity medical facilities expanded and medical personnel increased. As missionaries and in line with our charism we were drawn to look at how the ministry in the hospital had developed over a period of 30 years.

We felt truly blessed and privileged to have witnessed to the changes that had taken place, the people who had touched our lives and the people we had touched. The whole new reality led us to look at our mission in the hospital and nursing college. After much discernment and dialogue the time seemed opportune to pass on the responsibility to the local Church. The negotiations and preparations to hand-over the entire mission as a free gift to the Archdiocese of Gwangju were completed on the 10 February 1990.

As Columban Sisters we had already found ways to care for life in new and creative, inclusive and relational ways. This meant walking in solidarity with the poor by being sensitive to justice and peace issues, recognizing the equality and dignity of women and care of the earth. Our ways of being in mission were/are also shaped by various dialogues – with culture, religions, with the poor those suffering from exploitation including people with: Hansen’s disease, literacy needs, Learning Difficulties and HIV Aids, as well as Migrant Workers, Women who are Trafficked for the Sex Industry, people who are terminally ill, the elderly as well as the sick poor.

Another aspect of our mission today is that while we are small in number we witness to the call of mission in the Church. This is evident in the fact that Columban missionaries are numbered among Korean missionaries throughout the world, in the fledgling mission sending Church.    

St. Columban’s Clinic, Chuncheon was established in November 1955

Myongdo Services for People with Learning Difficulties and St. Mary’s Home for single mothers and abused women were established in Mokpo in the late 1980’s.

St. Columban’s Home Geodu-ri, Cuncheon City was established on the 25 March 

* * *

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Bloody Sunday

Ambassador’s Message – Bloody Sunday

15 June 2010

Today is one for the history books.  The report of the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday will be published (www.bloody-sunday-inquiry.org ), some twelve years after it was established in January 1998 and some thirty eight years after that awful event which saw 13 shot dead and a further victim die from his wounds five months later.  The events of Bloody Sunday in 1972 were significant not just for the lives lost.  It accelerated the cycle of violence, ramping up recruitment into the Provisional IRA and alienating nationalists from the forces of law and order.  The British public inquiry under Chief Justice Widgery compounded the tragedy by having the effrontery to blame the victims in an attempt to exculpate the perpetrators.  If the Chief Justice were to deny the victims justice, where stood the rule of law? 

In all its aspects, Bloody Sunday was a pivotal event in the tragedy of the Northern Ireland conflict.  With the emergence of new material about the event and focused pressure from the Irish Government, the New Labour Government under Prime Minister Blair agreed to set aside the Widgery Inquiry and institute a new one.  It was a signal development indicating that New Labour was going to break the mould in Northern Ireland.  Three months later, the Good Friday Agreement was signed.

The inquiry has been criticised for its costs – which is fair enough – and hence for its every establishment –which is neither fair nor logical.  Public inquiries exist to find the truth about matters of deep national concern and as such are of elemental value to democracies.  Costs are a function of legal fees (half Saville’s costs) and the degree of cooperation an inquiry receives (the inquiry had to fight many legal battles; the British Army accidentally destroyed the rifles used on Bloody Sunday just as the Saville inquiry got underway).

Will today’s report reveal the truth?    What course will it recommend to serve justice for the families of the victims?  We must wait and see.  The template for questions raised remains the Irish Government’s Assessment of the New Material which critically assessed the Widgery Report in the light of the new evidence emerging at the time.  And justice ultimately can only be served by the courts and by the rule of law.

But the Saville Inquiry will already have achieved much by way of truth retrieval, the process of collecting new witness statements, new material and new evidence that will be a rich trove for the families and historians in coming to terms with the narrative of that day.  The arguments and interpretations will continue but at least a rich seam of information exists that might otherwise have been lost. 

 

Eamonn McKee

Ambassador

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August 1, 2013 · 2:56 pm
August 1, 2013 · 2:53 pm

Greetings

During my time as Ambassador to Korea, I had the privilege of being introduced to the Republic of Korea, a dynamic economy and complex society.  The exploration of the history of relations between Korea and Ireland turned out to be quite compelling: themes of empire, war and faith (both spiritual and secular) over-lapped and intersected.  

Accredited to the DPRK, I had the opportunity of visiting Pyongyang and taking field trips to see the work of Irish NGO Concern and UN agencies, particularly the WFP.  Over the years of my posting (2009-13) I issued a series of Ambassador’s Messages to the Irish community in Korea and friends and contacts, including Koreans interested in the Irish relationship with Korea and things Irish generally.  Many of these messages were of only contemporary interest such as assessments of the Irish economy or contingency planning during an emergency.  Some others though may have more enduring interest, including such topics as the Irish peace process, the first Irishmen in Korea, the Irish Columban mission to Korea, North-South lesson sharing with Korean officials and Irish involvement in the Korean War.  I’ll be posting them over the coming period and then intend to post new material from my next posting to Israel.

I have been asked on a number of occasions what an Ambassador does every day.  I answer by saying it’s what you plan to achieve over the course of your posting that determines your day; what you do every day comprises steps toward that end.  

There is of course no typical posting; each is shaped by location, interests, policy and events.  Taken together, then, the messages here give can only give an overall sense of one four year stint by an Irish diplomat in Korea.

 

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