ASIA/SOUTH KOREA - Catholic Bishops: 80 years after the division, let us not silence the desire to live together in the "common home" of the Korean people

Seoul (Agenzia Fides) – “We will support and actively participate in exchanges with North Korea based on cooperation and reciprocity. We will join forces to work together with those who wish for North and South to live together in “the common home.”

Eighty years have passed since the division of the Korean Peninsula, followed by the carnage of the Korean War. In a message prepared for the occasion by the Special Commission for National Reconciliation of the Korean Catholic Bishops' Conference, the ecclesial community of South Korea embraces the persistent and painful desire for unity of a people today separated and subjected to two different governments. An embrace that is also expressed in the adoption of concrete commitments.

The title of the message-document takes inspiration from Psalm 34: “Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.” The date below the text corresponds to August 15, 2025, the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, patroness saint of the Korean Church.

“After 35 years of suffering during the Japanese colonial period,” the document reads, “our nation finally achieved liberation thanks to God’s providence and the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Unfortunately, the joy of liberation was short-lived, and the division that followed continues to cause pain to this day.”

The Special Commission for National Reconciliation of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea established June 25 as the "Day of Prayer for the Church of Silence" in 1965, later renamed the “Day of Prayer for Reconciliation and National Unity” in 1992.

Every year around this date, initiatives and Masses abound to pray “for the healing of unhealed wounds and to intercede for the Church in the North.”

While there were moments of progress in dialogue and cooperation between North and South Korea in the 1990s, “the Korean peninsula found itself once again paralyzed before we could cultivate the fields with 'plow and sickles,'” the bishops explain in their message.

Thanks to “the Commissions for National Reconciliation” established in each diocese, the Church in Korea—the message emphasizes—has begun to provide broad and comprehensive support to the people of North Korea experiencing difficulties due to natural disasters and economic problems, actively promoting exchange through dialogue.

In the image of Jesus Christ, who “obtained true peace by sacrificing himself,” the Church is called to work “to leave a kingdom of peace to future generations,” a peace that does not arise “from subjugating others with weapons and military force in a climate of mistrust and hatred.”

Finally, the bishops invite the faithful to pray that God’s grace may heal the pain of division.

In this Holy Year, which coincides with the eightieth anniversary of the division, the message invites all Koreans to trust in God's love and grace as "Pilgrims of hope."

One can "hope," the Commission recalls, that "what is not possible according to the interests and logic of the world may be possible according to God's will." And if Pope Francis has defined the Earth, though wounded and in danger, as "the common home" of humanity, similarly, on the occasion of the eightieth anniversary of the division, the bishops commit to "Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it (Psalm 34:15) on the Korean peninsula." (PR) (Agenzia Fides, 9/8/2025)

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