I am so delighted to be here today and thank Rev. Jeong Won Jin for kindly inviting me to share the sermon time.  I look out and see so many friends, and pray that you have all been well in all your doings.

What an exciting time for the Korean peninsula!  It is an answer to many years of sincere prayer as we see the leaders of North and South speaking face to face.  My prayers, and the prayers of many in Canada, are with their discussion, as we have longed to bring reconciliation, to open the border to free exchange of families, ideas, economic development.

Marion Pope (Bang Mae Ryun), a medical missionary to PROK for many years, in talking about the PROK Jubilee year, hoped that in that year we could find ourselves dancing in Hamheung, the site of the Canadian mission to Korea in the years before division. The graves of Canadians are there, and the prayer of those ancestors in faith, missionaries and early Korean believers, will still live among those hills. My prayer, like Marion’s, is that soon we will be able to go there to dance, pray and celebrate our faith.

When I went to Canada a year ago, many times I thanked Donald Trump and Kim Jung Un, because everyone I met wanted to know what was going on in Korea.  Throughout 2017 I continued working for UCC (United Church of Canada) as ecumenical coworker, telling about my position with PROK and NCCK and my life in Korea.  Especially I lifted up the peace work I had been involved in.

I called my sermon for the Canadian churches, “Reaching Across Boundaries”, and used today’s passage from Ezekiel.  Few people are familiar with the division of Israel and Judah in the year 930 B.C., and of God’s deep longing, as expressed by Ezekiel, for reunification of his people.  Nor were they familiar with what was taking place in Korea.

I talked about the Monday Night Prayer which PROK committed itself to, especially the way we would sing Oorie sowonon tongil to close each service.  When I was in a Korean congregation, they would sing with me.  Do any of you know Rev. Chun Jun Hyok who has a church in Edmonton? When I was there he sat and played it on the piano and we sang as a congregation.

I talked about going to the DMZ on many pilgrimages, sometimes with PROK, sometimes with visitors to show them the situation and to experience the heart-breaking reality of looking across to fields tended by sisters and brothers, but unable to reach them.

I told about going with NCCK to the US in 2016 summer from Los Angeles to Washington to urge the US to back a peace treaty after 70 years of unfinished war in Korea. Do you remember that trip, Shin Yeon Shik Moksanim?

I also told about Women Cross the DMZ.  In 2015, an international group of women peacemakers from around the world, committed to Peace Treaty in Korea, spent time in Pyongyang, crossed the DMZ at Kaesong and met many South Koreans (me included) for a peace celebration in Imjinkak, then held  peace workshops in Seoul.  They work closely with the Korean NGO Women Making Peace and with the YWCA.

In this group were peace activists who had won Nobel prizes in recognition for their work for peace making, from Ireland and Liberia in Africa.  Both women had helped stop civil wars in their countries.

There are studies which show that if civil society women share in working towards peace, a peaceful result has a better chance of succeeding.  In a major study spanning three decades, looking at 40 peace processes and 182 signed peace accords, an agreement was reached in all but one case when women’s groups influenced the peace process, and a positive agreement was 35% more likely to last if women participated in its creation.

WCDMZ will have another campaign in Korea at the end of May this year.  I hope many of you will share in their action.

I kept in touch with WCDMZ after I left Korea.  At the worst time of the fear of a war starting between the North and U.S. in the fall of 2017, a letter was sent from WCDMZ to the US, urging them to step back from conflict.  I was able to get the UCC to officially sign on to this letter.

In conversations with WCDMZ, we (UCC) and another Canadian peace group Voice of Women, decided to hold a meeting in Canada to include women from North and South, to explore ways to de-escalate tensions and to go about establishing an effective peace network.  We wrote to DPRK ambassador at the UN Honourable Yi Ki Ho, with an invitation for DPRK women, but just as earlier with the UCC the request was denied.

The UCC had cancelled their round table discussion in May but in the fall we decided to continue and made a delegation to go to Ottawa, the Canadian capital, to lobby the government to do three things: 1. To distance themselves from US policy, 2. To reestablish diplomatic ties with Pyongyang, 3. To ease the severe sanctions against the North which the US demanded.  Ahn-Kim Jeong Ae from Women Making Peace in Korea joined us.

A few days before we arrived in Ottawa, it was announced the US and Canada would co-host a summit of foreign minister of the 20 so-called Sending Nations who fought for the UN against the North in the Korean War, to decide ‘what to do about North Korea’.  Unfortunately, of course, no DPRK, China or Russia was asked to participate.

Our strategy changed, adding a strong request to have civil society women participate, for the reasons stated above.

We held interviews with numerous government ministers, most importantly the Foreign Affairs Dept. who were planning the January Vancouver summit.  The second day we attended a workshop hosted by the Korean embassy, again on the topic of North Korea.  The American government representative was very frightening, but at the time the Canadian Foreign Affairs announced that WCDMZ was invited to participate in the summit.  What rejoicing among us!

I could not go to Vancouver because I was visiting my daughter in London who had a baby son, but the UCC was represented among the 16 women who participated by the director of People in Partnership Dept.

The women had an opportunity to speak to many ministers, host a teach-in for the public and lead a street march.  Those who went from Seoul to be part were Lee Mi Hyun of People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, Rev. Lee Moon Sook of PROK and NCCK Reconciliation and Reunification Dept., and Lee Yea Jeong of Korean Sharing Movement.

Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung Hee was there on the government side.

The women were disappointed when the foreign ministers upheld the severe sanctions against the North, but pleased at the positive networking and visions of possibilities for pathways to lasting peace.

By that time, of course, the Olympic accord was taking place, and all the hopeful moves toward peace.  These hopes were excited in Panmunjeom Friday as Kim and Moon signed their meaningful accord.

It is my deep prayer that I can continue to be an advocate for peace in the Korean Peninsula, and that one day soon, I will be able to ‘dance in Hamheung’.  I pray the peace process be in God’s hands, and that the two in his hand will become one – ‘one nation in the land, on the mountains of Korea’ (Ezek.37:22)

Thank you for this opportunity to see you all and speak, and thank you to sonsangnim for translating and giving these words.  The Peace of the Lord be always with you.  Amen.