Social welfare foundation Dail Community opened its 4th “Bab Peacemakers” event on August 8 at Odusan Unification Tower in Paju, Gyeonggi-do. Previously the event had always been held outside, but due to this year’s scorching temperatures, hard to endure even while motionless, and accompanied by heat wave warnings, this year’s event was held at an indoor auditorium. Even so, the event held great meaning due to its location, giving a bird’s eye view of the whole area of Gaepung-gun in Hwanghae-do, North Korea. Odusan Unification Tower is the place where one can get the closest look at the Northern land from within Gyeonggi-do without going through the special process required to enter the Civilian Control Zone.
Rev. Choi Il-do (center) of “Babfor” said, “It will not be long before South Korean mothers will boil rice for North Korean soldiers, and North Korean mothers will serve rice to South Korean soldiers…We will try to prepare the 5th Bab Peacemakers on a common festival day such as Chuseok (harvest festival) or Seollal (Korean New Year).” He predicted that just as Korea’s supreme military commanders from South and North, President Moon Jae-in and State Affairs Chairman Kim Jong-un, met and ate together at Panmunjom last April, the vision of soldiers from both sides laying down their guns and eating together will soon become reality.
Bab Peacemakers is a movement aiming to heal the pains of national division through the shared rice table. Rev. Jeong Seong-jin of Kwangsung Church, a co-representative of Bab Peacemakers, said in his video message to the event, “Rice is life and peace, as Jesus showed on the plain of Bethsaida when he fed many people with five loaves of barley bread and two fish…I dream that South and North will put down their weapons and share rice together.” Presbyterian University and Theological Seminary President Im Seong-bin endowed the occasion with further meaning with his comment, “Peace (pyeonghwa - 平和) is the act of putting boiled rice, made of rice grains (ssal - 禾), into everyone’s mouth (ib - 口) based on equity (gongpyeong - 平).”
Reporter Woo Sungkyu (mainport@kmib.co.kr), from Paju, with Marion Kim (marionkkim@icloud.com)
Original Article in Korean:
“남북이 총 내려놓고 함께 밥을”: 다일공동체, 통일전망대에서 제4회 ‘밥 피스메이커’ 행사
