When we visited Jeju island in the autumn of 2022, we had not expected to experience another Encounter with the Lord. As it were, the allure of old friends reuniting, nature beckoning, and savouring the yet unfamiliar Korean cuisine was enough to assure us of a most fulfilling week of fellowship and experience to come. Thankfully, there was to be more.
We discovered the sites and stories of the lives of Saint Fr Andrew Kim Taegon and Fr P J McGlinchey. Curiously, they were inextricably linked by a number. Twenty-five was the age when St Kim was martyred in 1846 – the first Korean priest to be ordained, accused of communicating with foreigners (to bring missionaries and the Faith to Korea). Twenty-five was also the age when Fr P J McGlinchey was sent to South Korea after the war, and then to Jeju in 1953 to start a third parish, and to restore an impoverished agrarian population into an luminary farming project in Hallim, on the western part of the island.
We found the St Andrew Kim Taegon memorial museum at the western Yongsi-pogu port. He was on his way from China to Korea on the Raphael but encountered a storm and was washed ashore on the coast of Yongsu-ri, Jeju-do on October 22, 1845. The site, together with the simple and cheerful chapel, is at the start of the Jeju Olle Route 13 : Yongsu – Jeoji Olle.
It was at this port, chapel & memorial that we learnt more about the lives of St Andrew Kim Tageon and of the thousands of early martyrs and saints during the Joseon Dynasty, when many Christians were persecuted and executed. It was a sombre & poignant moment to behold, even as we also enjoyed the iconic sceneries of squids drying on a string by the seashore, and experienced the sublime moment when the sun dips below the horizon.
Earlier on that Sunday morning, we had sought to attend Mass near our comfortable hotel in Hallim, and were directed by Naver Map to a church barely 5 minutes away. Thankfully we could not reach our destination by car using the App, due to road-barriers. Instead, we arrived at the St Isidore Farm’s organic dairy ice-cream parlour, and from this placid pasture field, on sun-drenched rural farm roads, we set off on foot and were gradually drawn to the magnificant Celtic Cross-shaped Church to attend Mass.
Later, we wondered across the vast expanse of what we next discovered to be the Hill of Grace Sanctuary, contemplating the life-sized Stations of the Cross and Rosary Garden by the lake. Together with the Isidore Farm, these were fruits of the the 1000 hectacres of wasteland first purchased by Fr McGlinchey half a century ago.
There are several personal accounts of Fr McGlinchey’s contributions to the farming community at Jeju. Here, he writes factually without embellishment, two accounts in the St Columban Missionary web-site, first in 2009 and again in 2016, two years before his eventual passing.
The Hill of Grace – Hallim Parish. The island of Jeju, situated about 60 miles off the south-west coast of Korea has a population of 550,000 people. At the end of the Korean war (1950-1953), during which nearly three million people were killed, there were just two small parishes on Jeju. In 1954 I was sent to open a third parish. This was to be situated in Hallim on the western side of the island. On arrival I learned that 95% of the population were farmers and there was extreme poverty everywhere. To assist local farmers out of their poverty, I set up the St Isidore Training Farm and a number of farm-related projects such as a feed mill and milk processing factory. The farm is situated in a central location on the island and is easily accessible to all of the 24 parishes. I have set up the Hill of Grace Shrine which is open all year round to Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Among other things this shrine has a large church, shaped like a Celtic cross. The ground floor accommodates 2,000 people during the six cold months of the year and 4,000 during the six warm months. The shrine also has full-sized bronze sculptures depicting the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ. There is also a large Lourdes grotto as well as a lake with a Rosary walk. The Columban Fathers continued to send more priests over the years resulting in a remarkable growth of the Church. We now have 24 parishes and the island is a diocese with its own Korean bishop, 36 Korean priests and 60,000 Catholics. ((Columban Fr. P.J. McGlinchey Jul 2009)
Faith Flourishes on Jeju Island, Korea
The Paris Foreign Mission Society handed over pastoral responsibility for Jeju Island to the Columban Fathers in 1933. At that time it had two small parishes, one in the north and one in the south of the island. The Japanese occupied Korea until 1945 when they were expelled at the end of World War II. During that time they made missionary work almost impossible. Then in 1950 the Korean War broke out, and two million people were killed, and the country was devastated with starvation prevalent everywhere. I was appointed to Korea in June 1952 and later, after some delays with visa clearance and language studies, I was appointed by the Columban Fathers to open a third parish on the western side of the island. The name of the new parish was Hallim. This was a township consisting of 26 scattered farm villages with a total population of 20,000 people, all living in small, thatched houses. Of course there was no priest’s house or church or other building. But more importantly, there were 25 baptized Catholics! I gathered them together in one of the Catholic houses for Mass in Latin! They had been well prepared by a group of St. Paul de Chartres Sisters who had come with thousands of other people to the island as refugees.
At that time each Columban Father was given the equivalent of $55.00 a month for living expenses, so there was no money for building of any kind. Then an extraordinary thing happened. One very dark, moonless night in April 1954 a 9,000-ton American freighter, on its way from Vietnam to Japan, had a radar breakdown and ran aground in the middle of the parish. It didn’t topple to one side but remained upright, stuck in the soft volcanic rock of the island. The bow of the ship was lifted high in the air and the stern was in deep water. It would require a number of oceangoing tugs to pull her back afloat. Some of the crew lowered a makeshift elevator from the bow, and I was able to go on board and meet the captain. There were several large holes torn on both sides of the hull, but thanks to the lessons learned from the Titanic disaster, the builders of this freighter had made sure that all of the cargo holds were independently sealed so that water leaking into the ship could not spread to other areas.
The captain asked me what I was doing on this remote island in the Yellow Sea. I explained that I was a Columban missionary priest, but that I was only recently arrived and had no priest’s house or church to which I could invite him and his crew. After some quiet thinking the captain said he had a surplus of lumber on board, and he would be happy to give me as much timber as I could unload in four days. Needless to say I regarded this man as a heaven-sent angel. I rushed back to the village with the good news.
Among our 25 Catholics we only had half a dozen who could do heavy work. Nevertheless, we decided to gather at the ship at dawn. But much to my surprise, a couple of hundred of able-bodied men turned out as volunteers! Our Catholics had spread the word to their neighbours, and for four days they worked from dawn to dark. We got enough timber to build a church and priest’s house and that is when I came to know something of the calibre of these islanders.
Jeju is famous for its abundance of rocks. Just as they did with the timber from the ship, hundreds of volunteers carried rocks on their backs to a piece of ground outside the village. This site had been procured many years before I arrived in Hallim. Next we needed sand and gravel. That was available in plenty from the seashore a few miles away. To move it I approached the Korean army who agreed to lend me a couple of trucks for a week provided I fed the drivers and supplied the gasoline. I approached another military base (Marines), and they gave me the gasoline.
I still needed cash to pay for cement and for one professional carpenter and one stone mason. All the other labor was supplied by our volunteers. Here again the good Lord intervened!
All Columbans must make an annual retreat. This meant going to Seoul which was a time-consuming and tiresome journey involving ten hours by small wooden boat to the mainland and a further ten hours by train to Seoul.
By an extraordinary turn of events I found myself getting a free ride to Seoul on an American bomber which had to stop off for two hours at a large American Air Force base half way to Seoul. There I had the amazing good fortune to meet the Catholic chaplain, Fr. George Gerner. Like the ship captain, he wanted to know what I was doing in Jeju Island. So I told him, and he agreed to send me the Sunday collection every week thereafter. And that is how we built the Hallim parish church. The parish numbers increased so much that over the years four new parishes were formed out of the original one.
The second church, shaped like a Celtic cross, is part of a shrine called the Hill of Grace. It has a life-size Stations of the Cross and a Rosary Walk around a small lake. It also has a retreat house to which about 8,000 adults come every year. Next door is a monastery of eighteen Contemplative Poor Clare Sisters. For young people we have a youth institute to which about 15,000 students come every year for various seminars. The youth institute is run by six Salesian Sisters. The retreat house is run by three Benedictine Sisters.
We also have a nursing home for 85 elderly people and a hospice, both run by four Holy Family Sisters. All of these activities are gathered together in the parish of Keum Ak which is one of the four which grew out of Hallim. Keum Ak parish is still run by the Columban Fathers.” (Columban Fr. P.J. McGlinchey November 2016)
We can see in retrospect the priest’s memories rekindled as the decades peel away towards the end of his life, a sharper clarity of recollection and the details of the virtuous encounters with the good people that had brought the mission of Christ a step forward. St Andrew Kim would have none of that luxury of recollection, in his short-lived priesthood, brutally ended by the abrupt persecution of the feudal lords. Yet, were not for the fruits of St Andrew and his companion Saints’ heroic efforts to bring the faith to his countrymen, none of these would have been possible.
Was it not written in Scripture, that “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit (John 12:24)”. And so it is, that the lives of the saints collaborate not just on earth in chronos, but in kairos, in God’s Time.
On 23 April 2018 at the age of 90, Fr McGlinchey died in the hospice which he had founded at Isidore. He is buried on a traditional Korean grave, pictured here in the background, nestled beneath the embers of autumn leaves on a small knoll overlooking the Rosary Walk by the lake, on the Hill of Grace.
At dusk, by the beach on Yongsi-pogu port, alongside many other travellers, we watched as yet another ritual sets across the distant horizon. Another day of grace in our collective memory.
G9 Lumix, M Zuiko 75-300 mm, Panasonic Lumix 20 mm F1.7, Panasonic Leica 8-18 mm F2,8, 2022