Who are you? Where are you from? And why are you here?

A conversation with Pastor Sue Park-Hur about faith, identity, power--and the laughter, colors, and enemy-love that mark a decolonizing/ed life and faith

(Interviewed by Seth Martin)

Editor’s Note:
Sue Park-Hur is the Denominational Minister for Transformative Peacemaking of Mennonite Church USA. She is an educator, a church planter, and an ordained pastor who also co-directs a peace center in Los Angeles called ReconciliAsian specializing in conflict transformation, restorative justice, and trauma healing for immigrant churches.
The following conversation is taken from parts of a two hour online conversation between Sue (in California) and myself (in Seoul) last July, and the back-and-forth dialogue that followed for the rest of the summer.
I have included many bracketed descriptions of the laughter and gestures that took place during this wonderful conversation. I have also chosen to present the text as close to “real-voice” form as the written medium allows. I did this because, as I hope it becomes increasingly clear to anyone reading, one of the crucial points Sue underscored again and again--in her words and in the way she said them--was that one of the fruits of embodied decolonization and liberation is laughter. Also seen and felt throughout was honesty. These traits, along with marked humility and strength, permeated this conversation when Sue shared, and left a deep impression on me. Such examples of incarnation and liberation are difficult, if not impossible, to adequately record on paper. But I hope the bracketed descriptions at least help readers to feel something of the real spirit of this conversation, which was full of life, color and laughter.
-SM 

 
Seth Martin (SM): How have you been?

Sue Park-Hur (SPH): That's a weird question to ask these days, right? We are living in crazy times.

SM: Yeah, it's really apocalyptic.
 
SPH: These days I do inter-cultural development competency work with our churches. There are different stages of cultural competency, and one is polarization. There is also what is called reverse polarization, and this includes people who are overly critical of their own race or culture. It pulls them into the extreme other side. Everything on the "other side" is good. I think that's what happens, you know, even with parts of the movement right now, right? With racial injustice now. You find progressive white people acting as if no Black person can do wrong. No Person of Color can do wrong, and we just hate all white people. But that's not what this is all about, right?

SM: Well, that's a great point. And for a lot of the white folks joining in and wanting to self-identify or be identified as allies: how much of what they are doing, how much of that is perpetuating all the same stuff they're trying to get out of.

SPH: Exactly.

SM: It becomes another version of, Look at me! Look at me! [laughing together] Look at me! I'm NOT that! You know. And it's like, yeah, but you know, the problem is the "Look at me!" You managed to magnify yourself ten times more than before.

SPH: Without history, without context for where they're at, right? Without knowing the history, and trying to stay, to individuate yourself from that, again that's a very white supremacist kind of work, right? The whiteness perpetuates that. It's a hard thing. 

I just saw that Roots of Justice--an organization that partners with the Mennonites in doing anti-oppression work--has this series called "From Karen to Committed."  [laughing kind of incredulously together] And they recently had a caucus for white women, to talk about their insecurities of messing up: how do you be an ally? Right? But that kind of space is necessary. I think white people do need to get together and talk about their insecurities. Because now they're so afraid of making mistakes in front of People of Color, that they're not learning, or they're frozen. They're frozen in this trauma of over-information about what has happened, and what they did that they were not aware of! Right? [laughing]

SM: Right.

SPH: And it's like, Welcome to the party, white women! That was really helpful to hear. One of my friends--her name is Karen!--she was one of the panelists. [laughing together]

But you know, I just really appreciated that there was space for them to have that talk. Honest, frank talk about fearing different spaces. They're very aware of white woman tears. And so they're trying not to cry. But then that also can come off as, for People of Color, like oh my gosh they’re so heartless. Right? And so these white women don't know what to do! [laughing] And that's a real problem we have to work out now together. This liberative work takes all of us.

SM: Speaking within a still-Christian narrative, or at least something of a Christian framework, these days I find it quite difficult to know how to respond even to the question, Are you Christian? On one level, it's "of course." And on another level, with a completely different meaning, it's "of course, and I'm trying to not be." I've been reading and seeing a lot of so many problematic tendencies and behaviors coming up that are so repetitive, through recent history. How do you get past the performance? And the fixation on whiteness, too? Fixation. We need whiteness as a target, of course, because it has to be taken down. But not this rebuilding of it through, for example, sales going through the roof of White Fragility, you know? While there's hundreds of other books already written by experts of color, you know? And they're not just new books. They've been around since the beginning.

SPH: Exactly.

SM: It's disturbing to see so many narratives, at least in my social media feeds, where folks are really clearly getting a tone of "positioning"--does that make sense? People are finding their spots. And already I can feel it and see it, and I'm sure that I'm doing it unconsciously too, and don't want to be doing that. But it's like, now let me show you what I know about being a woke white person.

SPH: Right.

SM: Meanwhile, shootings continue. And all these institutions are still on stolen land. And I don't know if what the world needs right now is a huge resurgence in land acknowledgements by settler institutions that aren't giving up their buildings? You know what I mean? It just becomes something really poisonous feeling, you know?

SPH: I think you raised a really good question about language. You know, I am saying something, and we're using the same language, whether it's Christian, or whether it's anti-racism, or whatever, but we're not always talking about the same thing, right? What we're talking about is God, and forgiveness, and I'm talking to people, but we're speaking and thinking about totally different concepts. How do we find a common glossary of words, so that we can have true dialogue recognizing and realizing the differences? Because for a lot of People of Color or BIPOC, when we’re talking about racism, we're talking systemic issues. And I think a lot of white people just think about it on a personal issue level. So, basically, when we're talking about this, for many white people it's "are you calling us all racist?"

But generally, we're not really talking about specific people. Yes, people manifest a lot of that, but we're not talking about people who have a bad attitude, or someone who looks down on us. We have plenty of those experiences, but that's not what we're trying to talk about. So, it's often totally different things [demonstrates by showing both hands crossing one another going opposite directions, back and forth, but never touching]. I mean, we have to think about that. 

And it's not just with racism in the States. I think about this problem also with Korea, and especially North Korea. We have similar struggles of meaning and language when we try to raise awareness about Korea here in the States. It's just that in the US, there's almost no basis for us to even have a common dialogue about North Korea, right?

SM: Definitely.

SPH: And definitely it is the same with racism. Some people are so good with words, like those woke white people that you were talking about. They are so smooth, so you think they get it, and then you realize they don't get it, right? [sad laughter]

SM: Right. And it becomes really difficult to tell: are you unconsciously not getting it, and perpetuating this, because of your own skilled privilege, education, and wordsmith ability? Is this language becoming another way for you to protect yourself? By spinning your wheels? Is it conscious, or unconscious?

SPH: Right.

SM: You know, at some point I start wondering about, and wanting to ask, folks displaying this behavior: are you a psycho? Are you woke white people way scarier than the overtly right-wing rural white folks I grew up with? Because it seems like any criticism that pokes in there--that kind of subcultural thing that we're talking about, of the woke, white, academic, even activist thing--the response is so quick to seemingly embrace it. [Dramatically] YES! Yes, you're right! I am horrible! Annnnnnd... then it is swung around before we can even finish the conversation, into a teacher position or something. It's psycho...

SPH: Right. That's what I've noticed. And I've wondered. Then again, I've often thought about those people with good hearts, who have learned, and they want to do something. And yet--again, with the cultural competency lens, they just don't have that yet. So, they know it, but they don't know how to embody it. So it's up here. It's all in their heads. They have different categories of what to say, about what the problem is. They can identify it [points pointer finger to head, closes eyes], but it hasn't been integrated into their life, right? And they're still in the academic setting, and maybe they're still in a white suburban neighborhood. Or they're in very insulated churches where they can talk about all these things theoretically, right? And I think that's something that I would say you have that's different. Because, you have the intellectual understanding. But also you live it, you know, you're living in a place where you're learning, right? I'm sure you won't say you've fully arrived at understanding everything about Korea…

SM: No way! [laughs] 

SPH: But you know how hard it is to embody it. And you recognize the privilege of even living in Korea, as a foreigner, as a white person, right? You see the complexities of the heart and the privilege of all of that, right?

SM: Learning. At least I hope so.

SPH: And I don't think a lot of people have that, Seth, in our churches.

SM: Well, let's talk more about church and Korea. I really hope at least a big chunk of our conversation, maybe toward the end after we sort of set a base here, will be hearing your perspective, and some of your personal story too, on the significance of the 70 years of unended Korean War. What does this story mean? How is it understood in Korea and the US today, and what are the consequences of this understanding? Of course we can say it goes back further than 70 years, by half a decade, a decade, or many decades, depending on which angle we're looking at. But I mean--was it about two weeks ago? Maybe a little earlier, right as the uprisings were really hitting the news in the US, and getting covered in Korea: the US Embassy was flying the Pride flag and the Black Lives Matter flag.

SPH: Wow. Whaaaatt?

SM: Of course the results were super interesting and complex. I believe US Ambassador Harry Harris even made a statement. It just is so twisting: what is real here? What is not real here? What is performative? I mean, at the same time that grandmothers in Seongju are being pushed out so they can reinstall and upgrade the THAAD anti-ballistic missile defense system, which is completely tied to US military dominance of South Korea; at the same time this is happening, staff at the US embassy are pushing these socially progressive causes. And of course, what was the response from so many of my friends? Wow! This is great! Oh this makes me feel so good! So proud! And then a few days later, both flags were taken down. 

The whole thing was so powerful for narrative building. I mean, when Nan Young saw it, she kind of choked. She just said, as a kind of half-Korean joke, "The US Embassy is the number one Pyeontae" [pervert]. In the world, it's just the highest level pervert, you know? Is this justice? Something to applaud or mourn? It depends on what perspective you're looking at it from. Like, from a radical Korean--are these signs of solidarity that should be celebrated in Korea? Coming from a position of power that is colonizing Korea? You know what I mean?

SPH: Totally. I'm just imagining. I've been to the Korean Consulate, and I know exactly where that is, at the heart of everything. Where it's positioned. And its relationship with Korea. But it is, it's just so paradoxical, and yet that is the reality of living in the Empire, isn't it?

SM: Yeah. And then, the organizers for Black Lives Matter Korea chapter, a lot of the support behind that chapter, it comes from amazing Black women and men that are in the military. You know? And why are they in Korea? Why are they connected to Black Lives Matter Korea instead of Black Lives Matter such-and-such US city? Because they're stationed here. And why are they stationed here?

SPH: And where are they stationed?

SM: Many are working and living in the largest [non-domestic] US superbase in the world.

SPH: Yep.

SM: You know, with golf courses and all the things.

SPH: And where else are there [US] bases in the capital city, right? The history of power. Yeah, I've been in there a couple of times. It's a weird, whack place. But those examples are potent and complicated. I mean, I think that there's performative action, there's a way of branding. And branding is really big. You also have to seize the moment, right? This is a time where you have to do the right thing. And to show that we are up to date and aware of what's happening. Again, to appease, and also hoping this is [not how] things will stay, right?

SM: Right.

SPH: And again, the systemic part. My heart breaks when I think about it. I was recently invited to an Indigenous circle process. A circle group. There were about ten of us invited to that space, and you know, we were asking questions like, where do you call home? And you know, just talking about where you're from, I thought--the first thing is that it's always different, right? And I said, as an Asian-American it's hard when people ask where you're from, right? [laughs]

SM: Yeah, you... [laughs]: "What are you trying to say?" You know.

SPH: Right, but I think they were calling for something deeper, and I appreciated that. And I just said, you know my heart always feels divided. My country is divided. And living in America, you have to compartmentalize yourself, and divide yourself into many pieces to survive, right? And I'm acutely aware of the layers, knowing this history, but again being reminded through different anniversaries as such, that this is not normal. The boundaries are not natural. Somebody drew a line. And it wasn't even debated. It was just like [exaggerated motion of drawing a line]. Korea is split.

SM: That reminds me. Can you see back by the mirror, there's an old map hanging up?

SPH: Yes! Oh is that a map?

SM: Let me see if I can move this computer a little closer. Ok! So, see how one whole section looks like it's been chewed out?

SPH: Oh yeah [laughing].

SM: Well, that's because it has been. That's the edge where our cat Nancy sits, and she always chews on the map.

SPH: First of all...

SM: Yes, I mean, you could give so many lectures about the symbolism [laughing].

SPH: Wow.

SM: It gets wilder. This is a National Geographic map I found on a tour, randomly, I think in 2012, and it was somewhere around Chicago, in a Goodwill or some other kind of second hand store. And I didn't think that much about it then, but just thought it was cool. And, now it gives me goosebumps every time I see it. Because it's a National Geographic map of the "China Coast and Korea", quote unquote. And the location and publication date: Washington, October 1953.

SPH: Whaaat?

SM: And so that's several months after the Ceasefire.

SPH: Is there a line?

SM: There's a line but there’s no "North" or "South" Korea officially.

SPH: Wow.

SM: And all the names for different locations are very western, imperial-centered, from the spelling to the Imperial Japan-centered framework. So it's, of course it's not Dokdo, you know, and of course it's--

SPH: Sea of Japan?

SM: Sea of Japan, and those kinds of names, right. But I thought, this is just something--talk about the lens and the layers! Even several months after the war stopped and about 8 years after Liberation from Japan, this edition comes out and all it says is "Korea." I assume as far as a mainstream publication goes, it's the last popular culture map in the English language to present an undivided Korea.

SPH: Wow.

SM: It must be, you know, cause it's so far after the division, right? And who knows all the reasons, maybe it's politically an unwillingness on the part of the US and other western powers to recognize North Korea as a country? But, there's so much to think about that. The past didn't go anywhere. It's right here.

SPH: That's so true.

SM: And very unnerving.

SPH: Wow, you guys need to frame that. Or put that in some kind of exhibition when Nan Young does her next exhibit.

SM: I think I need to find some new version of it somewhere and order it, because--

SPH: No, that one! That one has to go [laughing] with your cat chewing on it. And who else is chewing on that? [laughing] Who else is chewing on that country?

SM: Exactly! It's so much to think about.

SPH: Yeah. That makes me think about a lot of things. Like how long term was the division meant to be? Did they think that this was gonna be a permanent thing? How long did they expect Korea to be divided? Did they think that we could sign a peace treaty soon afterwards? I don't think they were really expecting that it would be this way. I don't know. Or maybe it's like you said earlier, they didn't care. Did they even care?

SM: And now when people in the US talk about the "Forever War" it's usually about Afghanistan, right? But, Korea is still divided and at war. 70 years. And the US is still here, but this war's the "Forgotten War."

SPH: Right, but forgotten by who? It's forgotten by the people of the Empire with power, but Korean people have not forgotten and live with the consequences everyday.

SM: This map on its own gives us so much to talk about. I don't know where you want to go from here. But to me it's [hits head dramatically a few times] kind of exploding and lighting up all these other ideas too, and thoughts about, for example, all the statues coming down. And renaming, reclaiming names for mountains and regions to honor the Indigenous, Original Peoples of the Lands--and how much this naming is about power.

SPH: Absolutely.

SM: And controlling narratives. For example, of being Asian-American. Or of being a Christian leader. Being a Christian Woman Leader in a peace church tradition, you know? All at this time in 2020, you know?

SPH: I know! [shakes head, laughs]. 

SM: And on the West Coast, with the multicultural kind of narrative--the US West Coast is the land of "strangers from a different shore". Right? Contrasted with the East Coast narrative, which is almost all white heroics mythology.

SPH: I've been trying to do a lot of decolonizing work on my own, of my story, of my narrative that I've claimed as my own as a settler immigrant. And to deconstruct that has been hard. I was thinking. I was tracing back of how we even came to the States. Because in 1980, on May 9th, we all came. My aunt invited us. And four families, her relatives, all of her siblings and basically the whole family. We all came on two planes. It was just madness!

SM: What a time, too! May, 1980.

SPH: Yeah! All the craziness in Korea, I remember seeing things on TV. Park Chung-hee. And we got out of there. But then I thought about it, how did she--my aunt--get here? Right? How did she get to America? And it was through her husband's sister. My aunt's sister-in-law was married to a GI. And growing up there was always a story that was linked to my aunt, who had invited us, and this kind of American Dream nonsense. So there's that. And then there's another piece of all this, wrapped around my dad. He was 17 when the Korean War broke out. He was born in 1933. He was 17, but you know in Korea that's 18. And so he picked up the gun, and then he had PTSD all of his life that we were not able to name it until he was in his sixties, right?

SM: He moved with you? All of you moved, right? So he spent the rest of his life in the US?

SPH: With us, yeah, in 1980. My dad couldn't hold a job in Korea. So my mom worked, and again, the shame factor, right? Dad heard voices. His military superior--his colonel, general, whatever the title--he heard his voice for most of the rest of his life. And so, when he had his episodes, he would drive funny. He’d be driving and I would be like, Dad, we need to get off that freeway! And he wouldn't because he's hearing a voice that's telling him to go make a left and a right. And to go in circles. All this madness.

SM: Wow.

SPH: And I lived with this confusion, with this insecurity and not knowing, not knowing quite how my dad was going to respond, day after day. And yet, we had to, it was this open secret. Something we don't talk about. We had these code words. Oh, is dad “sick”? Yeah, he's sick. I’ve thought a lot about why we did that. It was a way to honor my dad. He was not physically abusive to us. He was emotionally abusive because of his illness but, again, we had no words for PTSD until later, right? And there was the shame of mental illness that is deep in Asian culture. We never talked about it. I realized there must have been a whole generation of people like me! People who never talked about it, who were and are probably suffering all alike. If you're a gentle, normal person and you're 17 years old, and you're out there seeing blood and slaughter--how could you stay sane, right? So for most of his life he suffered. 

There's this other component too. Because my dad suffered, my mom had to overcompensate, and she was never home. It was my grandmother who came to all the yuchiwon parties, and all the undong-hae, all the sports competitions and stuff. Because mom was always working, right? And I hated that--that my grandmother, this old lady, had to come in place of my mom.

So, coming to America was a second chance, right? And we're grateful. But who created the situation so that we had to come? And why was it my dad had to suffer?

I think I grew up with the attitude of: God, thank God I'm in America! Thank God I had a chance. And thank God my brother and I could be educated. And we could A-B-C, right?

And later I thought, damn, why did we have to come here at all? For me, the very reason we had to come was because of the Korean War. And so I've been re-narrating my story, to tell the full truth as I am learning it. I am grateful in a way. But it's tragic that I even had to come here, right? Yet I am grateful, to have this life, to live in such a moment, as an Asian-American woman, in a Mennonite church, and as a faith leader. I also mourn that I can't be in a Korean church where I can be fully myself, and where I feel like I can use my gifts the most, knowing that culture. But it's a patriarchal, Christian culture that will never accept me fully, in the faith, as a reverend, right? You know Mennonites, we don't like using titles. But when I'm in a Korean context, I am intentional about my reverend title! [laughing]

SM: To push it!

SPH: Yeah! To say: This is what a woman pastor looks like! And I'm not crazy and I am a pastor. I think this visibility is important because I want to make space for other women, other Asian-American women, and faith leaders, to be like, Oh! I can. Maybe I'll be like her! You know? Maybe I can lead the church too.

And so there's always been this tension. I feel very blessed, but then also, damn [laughs]. Why can't I be where I feel like I'm most at home, right? Whether that's the church, or whether that's being in America, having the privileges that I do. Just the fact that I can speak English, as my heart language, is you know... sad! [laughs] Right? It's sad, and I'm blessed because I can be on a different platform, or have more access to different platforms.

I live with that division, and I live with that dichotomy, wanting to integrate. And I think the best way to do that is to know my story better. And not just my testimony, but to be able to put that in context of history, put that in context of economic push-and-pull and all the social, political, economic forces that shape who I am. I'm very aware that I am also where I am because I am a Woman of Color. We're a rare commodity in a way. And in the beginning I was just like, no, I don't want to be tokenized. And yet, I had long conversations with different Women of Color about this. Ok, maybe that's why they might have chosen me, you know? But, you can do something with that. And that has also empowered me to learn how to be who I am and to just be stretched. I am being stretched all the time. And to not just be in an Asian-American or Korean context, but to put myself out there more, on the national level or in inter-cultural, inter-racial dialogue. So that I can, again, continue learning to narrate my story. And to better understand how I am a product of these struggles, and that I am influenced by all that is going on. That is, I think, the best way to also be a faith witness and a faith leader.

I’m recognizing that all of this is part of my story, and that somehow that call for the ministry of reconciliation is still at the heart of who all of us are called to be, including me.

SM: Mmmm. [nodding]

SPH: Yeah. [pause]

I don't know if that makes sense. [laughs]

SM: Hmmhmm, oh it's incredible, yeah! I mean I just want to sit with it for a while!

SPH: [laughs]

SM: I feel like, without either of us really even bringing up the tagline for this volume that we were going to focus this conversation on, what you just said wove in so deeply the three main themes without really saying or speaking of any of them directly. Decolonization. Incarnation. And Liberation. And each of those words of course are not the same thing. One of the main quotes that has been driving this journal is from Eve Tuck, "Decolonization is not a metaphor." Right? It can't be something else. And it can't be subsumed by the narratives of justice that we have.

SPH: Yeah.

SM: It's just, I mean, I'm here right now because of a relationship with colonization. You know?

SPH: [nodding]

SM: I'm white-skinned and in Korea. And you’re Korean, and on the US West Coast. Our stories--we're trying to live into this Incarnation and Liberation, but...

SPH: That's right.

SM: ...we're at these places because of colonization. What kinds of Incarnation and Liberation are possible without Decolonization?

SPH: Exactly, yeah.
​
SM: How can we be fully where we are not as products of colonization, but as active participants in decolonization, incarnation, and liberation--of the spirit, the body, the land, the narratives?

SPH: I had a deep conversation recently with a friend of mine about enemy love. How do we understand Matthew 5, where Jesus tells us that rather than love our friends and hate our enemies, we are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us? How do we contextualize that in our understanding of our relationship with North Korea, and the work that my husband and I do with ReconciliAsian? How do we understand this language of “enemy” in our relations with North Korea?

Clearly, North Korea is not our enemy. They are our brothers. They are our sisters. They are people who are in pain. And yet, it was so hard for me to really reach that conclusion, and to really clarify it, which was really weird. I’ve been doing this work for so long, but there is still a part of me that has always seen, and has always correlated, North Korea as my enemy. It made me think about who are the ones that have given me this message that North Korea is my enemy. Why is it so hard for me to declare that they are not my enemies? 

They are not my enemies. It made me think about the process of how I’ve been taught, right? How my thoughts have been colonized. And how because of my lack of historical understanding, I cannot understand why these things are as they are. Living in America, as an ethnic Korean, not understanding the depths and complexities of the history I embody. And also the lack of awareness of the US involvement in the Korean War. And the benefits that the US has gained from the division, and the placement of military bases, the proliferation of military bases, the US military industrial complex multiplying after the Korean War. These are things that I had not pieced together until the last 15 years. And so this process of decolonization--in our theology, and in our understanding of history--is critical work. And it is work that I feel called to continue to learn, and to come alongside others who are also in this process of decolonization. And that’s really personal as well. I have three children. I want them to recognize scripture, I want them to recognize their callings, and their understanding of history earlier than what I’ve been taught.  

And so when my oldest son was a senior in high school, four years ago, he went to North Korea with his dad. And when he came back he said, “Mom, before going to North Korea, I just imagined it to be very gray, drab, covered in cement, and everything just lacking color. But when I got there, I saw everything was full of color.” 

The children that he met laughed. There was sound. The kids were in blue, and pink. And even the grass--although it was fake, synthetic grass [laughing]--was green. He was able to see these kids, and the people there, in full color. And I think in a way, my son’s experience was a really vivid example of the process of decolonizing. We are seeing people in full color. 

After my husband’s most recent trip to North Korea, he talked about the importance of laughter as resistance. Laughter as a way to come together. It humanizes us, the fact that we can laugh together. It is an important part of resistance and decolonization--going back to the talk about enemy love--to imagine breaking bread or eating rice together. To eat Naengmyeong together. And in my husband’s experience, to have this incredible opportunity to laugh together with people who are supposed to be our enemy. So much so that the owner of the restaurant came into the room to figure out what was going on. And the minders (they are North Korean officials who monitor the foreign guests) said they haven’t laughed so hard and so much since college. 

Going back to my son, he recalled another time playing soccer by the beach in North Korea. All the men had their jackets and official pins off, and they were all running and playing soccer in the sunset. And my son said, “Mom, I felt like we were in Santa Monica, on the beach playing soccer.” He is imagining a new way to see the future.

Again, I think we must decolonize our minds to envision something completely new and to build a new reality that is closer to the Kingdom of God--that is what excites me, and that is the work that we do. It takes a lot: of understanding scripture in a different way, decolonizing our theology, decolonizing our history, and seeking creative ways to imagine a new future together. And we have to have the freedom to speak, to speak about the past in new ways, to name truth more fully. And as we learn more about that, we also as Korean-Americans hold our identity like Apostle Paul--proclaiming and understanding our history, and speaking to power.  And that is also what we are trying to do: to help people recognize that the US has a huge part in keeping North and South Korea divided, and the ways in which the US resists ending the Korean War and signing the Korean Peace treaty. For us, this is not just a political act. It is a political act, but it isn’t just political. It comes from our conviction and our faith in truth and setting people free with a message of liberation--which is all about Jesus.

2020 has been a really rough year. But I find hope in this time of unveiling. It is helping us to recognize the false power that the US has. In our election, in the way that we have dealt with the pandemic, in the way that we have handled or denied our history of racism--all of these things are unveiling. I think it’s an opportunity for us to decolonize our minds, and to reconsider our history. And I think the real hard work will not only be to deconstruct, but to construct a new way to peace, to envision a future that will bring wholeness and truth, and true reconciliation.  

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Sue Park-Hur

was born in Seoul, Korea but has been an immigrant settler in the land of Hahamong'na, part of the tribe of the Tongva People. She is the Denominational Minister for Transformative Peacemaking of Mennonite Church USA. She is an educator, a church planter, and an ordained pastor who also co-directs a peace center in Los Angeles called ReconciliAsian specializing in conflict transformation, restorative justice, and trauma healing for immigrant churches. With her husband, Hyun, Sue feels most humbled by their three children who remind them that peace begins at home.