Korean church in Brewer brings sense of belonging

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Chanju Byun returned home to South Korea much less worried about her daughters’ college years in Maine.

After spending a Sunday afternoon at the First Korean Methodist Church in Brewer, she found that her fears had been eased because her daughters would be able to connect with other Koreans, eat familiar foods and worship in a familiar language.

Byun was relieved because a group of about 40 Korean men, women and children worships every Sunday afternoon at the First United Methodist Church on South Main Street in Brewer.

Services in English and Korean are led by the Rev. Jeong Jae Kim, who has served the congregation for almost two years. Hymns are sung in Korean, bulletins are printed in Korean and fellowship includes potluck of Korean dishes.

Over the past decade, the Korean community has been growing in northern and coastal Maine. Colleges and universities in greater Bangor have recruited faculty and students whose roots are in Korea.

Business growth in the midcoast region and at The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor has brought a diverse group of scientists and engineers to the region. Still Koreans are a tiny minority of the state’s population.

The Brewer congregation has been a godsend for many like the Kim sisters – Kyungeun, 26, Juyung, 24, and Soo Jung, 21 – who are living together in Bangor while attending college.

Their mother, Chanju Byun, 54, lives in Kwangju, a large city on the southern tip of the Korean peninsula. She helped her daughters get settled before they began an English language immersion program earlier this summer.

“Being in a foreign country, I am very thankful that being away from my home country I can worship in Korean language and eat Korean food after worship,” Kyungeun Kim said after attending services recently with her mother and sisters.

She and Juyung are nursing students at Husson College in Bangor, and Soo Jung, who attended high school as an exchange student in California, is attending the University of Maine in Orono.

First Korean Methodist Church began about five years ago as a monthly Bible study group meeting in people’s homes with a Korean pastor who served a church in Portland, said Son Jong Carst of Ellsworth.

Carst, 44, works at The Jackson Laboratory and helped the group grow from Bible study to congregation. As more Korean natives moved into Penobscot, Hancock, Waldo and Knox counties and word about the group’s existence spread, it needed a permanent home and a full-time pastor.

“We are very grateful to the American church,” she said, referring to the stone church on Route 15 just south of the Joshua Chamberlain Bridge in Brewer. She said the pastor, the Rev. George E. Curtis III, and the congregation “have just been terrific. We really appreciate their generous support.”

The Rev. Jeong Jae Kim, 42, who is not related to the Kim sisters, came from South Korea two years ago to lead the small but growing congregation. He still is learning English and communicates with his congregants in Korean. He holds weekly Bible studies at homes in the midcoast and Ellsworth-Bar Harbor areas.

Services are about 90 minutes long and begin with about 20 minutes of praise singing. The structure of the service is the same as those conducted at United Methodist churches around the world. Worshippers follow the readings in Bibles printed in Korean and English, and often an English translation of Kim’s service is provided.

Not every Korean who worships at First Korean Methodist is a Methodist. Everyone is welcome to participate in the service, according to Carst. Christian worship and fellowship are more important than denomination.

That is what drew Yong Woo, 27, of Hulls Cove to the church when he moved to Maine two years ago to work at the Jackson Lab. Like a majority of the congregation, he came from a metropolitan area with a much larger Korean population.

“This church [gives] a sense of community and belonging, to worship God with people of the same culture and the same language,” he said.

It’s that community that assured Byun when she left her three daughters far from home, knowing they would find what Woo had.

Soo Jung Kim translated into English her mother’s feelings about the First Korean United Methodist Church.

“Of course, she’s happy knowing we have this,” she said. “Back in Korea, she will feel more secure about us and our being here.”

Korea and Christianity

Buddhism and Christianity are the dominant religions among South Korea’s 48.6 million people.

. About 30 percent of South Korea’s people profess Christianity, while about 25 percent are Buddhist.

Shamanism, Confucianism, Islam and the Baha’i Faith also have a significant following, but 35 percent of South Koreans profess no particular religion.

. In North Korea (estimated population 22.7 million) all formal religion is forbidden except worship of the late dictator Kim Il Sun and his son Kil Jong Il. Human Rights Watch last year estimated that 100,000 people had been imprisoned for practicing other faiths.

. Christianity reached Korea in the 17th century when Chinese copies of Catholic missionary Matteo Ricci’s works were brought back from Beijing. Priests began arriving in late 18th century, although propagation of a foreign religion was illegal.

A handful of U.S. Methodist and Presbyterian missionaries arrived in 1884.

By 1910, missionaries had founded about 800 schools attended more than 41,000 students – twice the number enrolled in all Korean government schools. Only the church provided education from the primary grades through the college level.

Japan annexed Korea in 1910, and the Protestant church’s emphasis on self support, self propagation, self government and independence greatly influenced the rise of Korean nationalism. Under Japanese rule, persecution of Koreans, including Christians, escalated until the end of World War II.

The division of the country into North and South and the Korean War in the early 1950s led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Christians seen as being anti-Communist and U.S. imperialists.

Once the war ended, however, millions of dollars of relief aid from Christian countries poured into South Korea.

Since 1960, the number of Protestants in South Korea has doubled every decade. By 1997, a third of the nation worshipped in Christian churches – 11 million as Protestants and 3 million as Catholics.

. South Korea also boasts one of the largest congregations in the world. The Central Full Gospel Church in Seoul has more than 500,000 members, a pastoral staff of more than 100, and a radio and television ministry.