Karen Spicher '02 and Jae Young Lee, MA '03, are personally committed to God and to each other, while professionally committed to peacebuilding.
By Earl and Pat Hostetter Martin ’64, MA ’98
He peered through binoculars intently. His life, after all, might be at stake. Through the optics he could see the enemy smoking a cigarette, just over the border. Though he felt no hatred, Lee realized that at any moment he and that soldier could be trying to kill each other.
Jae Young Lee, 16 years later, remembers the absurdity of that moment. North Korea’s “beloved leader,” Kim Il Sung, had just died, and both militaries – north and south – along the “demilitarized zone” were on red alert.
“We had been given orders to shoot anything that moved in the river [dividing the armies]. We were all very quiet as we dealt with our own thoughts and fears of life and death. I thought, ‘I don’t even know his name. I don’t hate him, but if war broke out, I would shoot him and he would shoot me.’”
Lee realizes that the border dividing the Korean peninsula at the 38th parallel, a vestige of the Cold War, remains a potential flashpoint for nuclear-armed nations. He also observes that the wider North Asian region holds other historical traumas and current competitions which could – if not handled carefully – explode into regional or global conflict.
Hence Lee and a growing band of colleagues are laying careful and visionary plans to establish a vigorous program for training a new cadre of peacebuilders in the region. They are laying the foundation for establishment of a Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute.
Lee’s transformation from watchful sniper to dedicated, savvy peacebuilder has been over a decade in the making. After he completed his 26-month stint as a draftee in the South Korean army, his father suggested Lee might want to get some education in North America. Forty-five years earlier, his father had worked as a farm manager in a vocational training school for orphaned boys. The school was run by Mennonite Central Committee, which led his father to suggest that Lee apply to a Mennonite college.
In 1996, this fun-loving, ex-Marine found himself in classes at Canadian Mennonite Bible College (now Canadian Mennonite University) in Winnipeg. One of his professors teased Lee that he was the first student to wear camouflaged fatigues to his class. “They were the most comfortable pants I owned,” Lee now says with a chuckle.
In Canada, Lee kept hearing people talking about, and praying for, world peace. “One day I saw 20 old ladies packing health kits for North Korea. I asked them why they were doing this and they said, ‘There is famine in North Korea and we know that someone out there will get help from these kits.’ I cried because I realized that I myself had no concern, but these Mennonites cared.”
In 2000, Lee headed south to attend the Summer Peacebuilding Institute at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU). His first class was “Introduction to Conflict Transformation” taught by John Paul Lederach. His second class was “Restorative Justice” with Howard Zehr. His third class was “Philosophy and Praxis of Reconciliation” with Hizkias Assefa. Lee had ended up in classes taught by three of the legendary professors of the program. The experience settled the matter of what he wanted to study. With financial support from the Mennonite Central Committee and his parents, Lee completed a master’s degree in conflict transformation at EMU in 2003.
At EMU, Lee remembers witnessing a vigorous exchange between Fulbright-supported students from Israel and Palestine. They said that after this face-to-face encounter they would probably next face each other over the military tanks in the Middle East. “But at least they could meet,” Lee says wistfully. “I felt I may never be able to meet my brothers and sisters in North Korea.”
During these years, Lee was undergoing a personal transformation. He was beginning to realize that guns cannot build trust between people. You build trust by meeting each other. He came to the conclusion that nothing will change people’s world views except education.
“We in Korea have not had alternate models to the military model. War begins from the mind, and peace also begins from the mind. So peace education from a young age is important. I owe a lot to SPI [Summer Peacebuilding Institute] and EMU because they got my peace education started.”
In Seoul in 2001, Lee joined a fellow graduate of Canadian Mennonite Bible College, Kyong Jung Kim, and a Canadian Mennonite service worker, Tim Froese, to found the Korean Anabaptist Center. Lee became its Peace Program Director. He also became a founding member of Grace and Peace Mennonite Church in 2007, one of two Anabaptist congregations in Korea.
Lee began to envision ways to foster a paradigm shift in Northeast Asia, from an atmosphere of animosity and militarism to one where both national security and human security are guaranteed. And thus the idea of a regional peacebuilding institute was born.
Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute (NARPI) organizers used 2009 as the “network building stage” for their regional effort. By early 2010, Lee had visited China, Japan and Taiwan to build interest and explore funding possibilities. He also found enduring support in Karen Spicher, a 2002 graduate of EMU, who came to Seoul to teach English under the sponsorship of Mennonite Mission Network. Though trained as a teacher, she has become increasingly involved in launching NARPI. The two plan to marry soon.
In late April 2010, 20 people from six countries came to Seoul for several days for the first NARPI steering committee meeting. One of its first tasks was planning courses for a three-week training institute – similar to SPI – to be held annually beginning in the summer of 2011, with its location rotated among participating countries.
Mennonite Central Committee and other donors have provided seed money to launch this critical effort, but Lee hopes that at least a quarter of the funding will come from the Northeast Asian region by 2011. NARPI is seeking a broad spectrum of supporters as it begins to train activists linked to non-profit organizations, peace educators, religious leaders, school teachers, university students, government officials and others desiring to move their region beyond the attitudes and practices fueled by the Cold War.
Northeast Asia contains more than a quarter of the world’s people and will likely emerge as the center of global economic and military power in the coming decades. In Lee’s view it is critical for the region to transform its “long-standing animosity and mistrust” created by “wars and military confrontations.”
“What Northeast Asia now needs,” according to the NARPI brochure – printed in English, Korean, Japanese and Chinese – “is not only a new political structure and diplomatic framework, but also peace institutes through which sustainable peacebuilding can be discussed and molded.” (More at www.narpi.net or email admin@narpi.net.)
The Korea Anabaptist Center is responsible for an English-language-training institute, Connexus, located in the same office building. Lee welcomes English-speaking volunteers to work at Connexus for a year or more, especially those who can model Anabaptist values. Connexus teachers are accommodated in an apartment with other teachers of the same gender, provided with their food, and given a small monthly stipend. The cost of round-trip transportation between North America and South Korea can also be covered. For more information, visit www.connexus.co.kr/english or e-mail master@connexus.co.kr.
