PROK E-News_?xml_:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
_?xml_:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />January 23, 2009
“Sharing One Bowl of Noodles” Movement
The Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea (PROK) continues to give expression, through concrete action, to our long-held commitment to peace and reunification of the Korean peninsula.
Hearing the silent cries of our suffering sisters and brothers in North Korea, the PROK has over the years sent aid in the form of rice and other food supplies, medical supplies, and, through the fundraising efforts and initiative of the PROK National Church Women’s Association, a vehicle equipped with X-ray and other equipment for diagnosing and treating TB.
As the food-shortage crisis in North Korea intensified again last year and as international society and Korean domestic NGOs again appealed for food aid to the North, the PROK Peace and Reunification Committee together with the PROK Peace Community Movement Centre launched a new campaign in June 2008, the “Sharing One Bowl of Noodles” Movement.
Notifying our church constituency through the PROK website and through letters to every congregation, the Peace and Reunification Committee then sent to responding congregations the requested number of small fund-collecting containers in the shape of the Korean traditional iron rice-cooking pot. Each household or individual was invited to put loose change in the received small “rice-cooking-pot container” at every meal time, praying for our North Korean kin while dropping in the coins. At each special season of the liturgical year, the congregations collect the coins from these containers and send the funds to the special PROK bank account. These offerings are then sent to the Korean Christian Federation (KCF) in the north, to support purchases of flour and equipment for their noodle-making factory. The KCF, which also operates a bread-making factory and a greenhouse for raising vegetables, had been forced to stop operating these three projects by June 2008 because of lack of electricity, resources, transportation, and management funds.
The PROK “Sharing One Bowl of Noodles” Movement, which continues through this year, is carried out in close cooperation with the international “Ecumenical Forum for Peace, Reunification and Development Cooperation on the Korean Peninsula” coordinated by the National Council of Churches in Korea (NCCK). This Ecumenical Forum supports sustainable alternative social development in the North, contributing long-term through this support, which looks beyond the present emergency situation, to peace and reunification on the peninsula. In May 2008 the Ecumenical Forum decided to facilitate the development of alternative energy sources in the form of solar and wind energy and to raise other support to enable the KCF noodle factory, bread-making bakery, and greenhouse to be self-sustaining, and the KCF itself to be financially self-supporting and viable in the long-term.
Through the “Sharing One Bowl of Noodles” Movement the PROK is participating in domestic and international campaigns to solve the food and energy crisis of North Korea. The aim is to make this “Sharing One Bowl of Noodles” Movement an ever-expanding project embracing our whole denomination at every level, and inviting our overseas partner churches also to join the effort.
To this point, with funds raised from PROK congregations, the PROK has sent wheat flour twice to the Korean Christian Federation (KCF) through the “Council of Civil Society Organizations for North Korea”:
- in September 2008: 52 tons of flour, purchased from 40,000,000 Won (about US$40,000) donated by congregations;.
- in November 2008: 50 tons of flour, purchased from 30,000,000 Won (about US$30,000) donated by congregations.
The PROK subsequently received written confirmation from the KCF that they had distributed the above flour to family households in North-Hamkyeong Province. The support sent so far was thus, in effect, from household to household.
With additional funds sent by congregations to the PROK account over the Christmas season amounting to 20,000,000 Won (about US$17,000) as of January 19th, the Peace and Reunification Committee plans to send a further shipment of flour to the North in the near future..
Overseas partners wishing to contribute to this campaign may send funds to:
Name of Bank: ShinHan Bank
Address: Suyu 174-17, Kangbuk-ku
Seoul 142-070, Korea
Account Holder: The Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea
Account Number: 180-000-728150
SWIFT Code: SHBKKRSE
PROK E-News, a publication of The Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea (PROK), has been “on hold” since July 2008; periodic bulletins such as this of January 2009 may be periodically sent
