By Gee-Gee O. Torres

We asked our Assistant Editor, Gee-Gee Torres, to visit our Filipino missionaries in Korea. There she stumbled upon our Filipino migrant workers. Here she tells her story (Ed.)

As I sat on the floor Korean style – cross legged on a cushion – at the second floor of the Filipino Center, Fr. Glenn told me about the life of our OFWs in Korea. The term OFWs is not new to me, my eldest is one of them Overseas Filipino Workers. Eight years ago she left for the United States to work as a nurse. She is now married with three children and has settled down in the U.S. she decided to stop working and stay at home. She and her husband felt that this was the best way to take care of their children. But not all of our almost three million OFWs all over the world are as blessed as my sister.

The Moonies

When Fr. Glenn mentioned the word “Moonies”, my eyes grew wide. I heard about them some five years ago. Mass weddings at Luneta hit the headlines of the newspaper in the Philippines. Thousands of Filipino women were married to Koreans whom most had not even met in person, only in photos.

The Moonies are members of the Unification Church, also called the Unification Movement, Messianic leader Rev. San-myong Moon founded this quasi-Christian church in 1954. It is archly conservative and stridently anti-communist. Other than this religious organization Rev. Moon, believed to be the new-age son of God, also heads an associated business empire with a string of companies that deal in everything from food to weapons, chemicals, restaurants, newspapers and banks. Because of the questionable recruitment techniques, financial dealings and unorthodox religious activities, the Unification Movement has a tarnished image abroad.

I learned more about the Moonies when I helped Fr. Glenn in the documentation of the cases of Filipino members of the unification Movement who went to the Center to ask for help. They were among those who were made to believer that joining the movement would man a better life – but these were all promises. When they arrived in Korea they found out that their husbands were neither factory owners nor managers, but were construction workers or farmers. Instead of living a comfortable life in Korea and helping their family in Moonies ended up as battered wives. It was hard to believe these stories until I met Sarah, not her real name.

Biggest Mistake

Sarah sought refuge at the Filipino Center, it took me sometime to get Sarah to talk. She was being maltreated by her husband and members of his family. She was force to work in the farm. No consideration was give into her even if she was three months pregnant. So she escaped from her Korean husband, “Joining Unification Movement was the biggest mistake I had ever made in my life. We own a farmland back home but I was blinded by the false promises of the Unification Movement,” said Sarah. “There may be successful marriages among Moonies but many of them are being physically abused by their husbands and some are even forced to abort their babies.”

Fr. Glenn

Fr. Glenn has been in Korea for almost nine years now. He is from Butuan, Agusan del Norte and the Chaplain of the Filipino Migrant Center in Seoul. The Moonies are only one of the many problems which he faces in Korea. The problems of our OFWs range from illegal recruitment to unpaid salaries to maltreatment of factory workers trafficking of women, illegal drugs. I asked Fr. Glenn how he finds his mission with the Filipino migrant workers. “Mahirap pero masaya.” One time a Korean attacked me with a knife at the Center. His Filipino wife had run away from their home and he was looking for her at the Center. I had to run for my life. Luckily he didn’t catch up with me inside my room,” he said. Despite unforgettable experiences like this Fr. Glenn enjoys working with our OFWs. He’s happy to see them get their proper wages from factory owners. He is happy to be of help to any of our OFWs.

Filipino Center in the making

The history of the Center can be traced back to 1992 when Filipino Sister Mary Ann of the Good Shepherd Sisters invited Filipinos she met on the road to a get together at their convent. Then Filipino she invited would invite another and another and another until the convent was not big enough anymore to accommodate the group. During that time the Archdiocese of Seoul also saw the increasing number of   Filipinos in Korea and the need to cater to their spiritual needs. They invited our MSP Fathers to run a Migrant Center for Filipinos which they gladly accepted because migrant workers are now of their main apostolates.  In 1995 the Center was formally opened.

The Center caters not only toe spiritual needs of the Filipinos but also to their social welfare. Many volunteers help our MSP Fathers in running the Center .they religiously perform their responsibilities and obligations in the various committees which had been set-up like worship, education, Justice and Peace. Some of them would go the Center in the evening straight after work to do the weekly newsletter, hold meetings, or just to say hello.

Ding

Ding is one of our 10, 000 Filipino migrant workers in Korea whom I met at the Filipino Center. He was also a nurse, like my sister, working in one of the hospitals in the Philippines before. But because of his meager income, he was force to leave the country and try his lick as a factory worker in Korea. He looked happy and contented but when I asked him his is Korea he said, “Life here is not easy. As migrant workers our job can be summed up in 3Ds: dirty, difficult, dangerous. Our salary is lower than those of our Korean co-workers. We grab whatever works is available – garments, steel, plastic injections.”

On Sundays you will find the Catholic Church at Hyehwah Dong in Seoul packed with Filipinos – about 800 to 1, 000 people. The Mass in Tagalog and the choir sings beautifully. The Choir is composed mostly of Filipino entertainers working five star hotels. After the Mass, people rush to the Filipino restaurants across the street to eat their favorite Filipino dishes – sinigang, dinuguan, pinakbet, menudo. You can also find many Filipino products for sale outside the Church – sayote, kangkong, bagoong and he like.

You could hardly enter the Center on Sundays because it is packed with our kababayans. This I the day when most of them seine money to there families in the Philippines. If only members of their family back home realize the sacrifices they are making for them – working in factories almost 24-hours a day, without health insurance and social security, not to mention the dangers they face, I am sure they will value every cent they receive.

I admire our migrant workers for all the sacrifices they are doing not only for their families but to our country as well, not to mention the fact that they are missionaries in their own way. Along with our Filipino missionaries they too are bearers for the Good News to many people in the world.

If only members of their family back home realize the sacrifices they are making for them – working in factories almost 24-hours a day, without health insurance and social security, not to mention the dangers they face, I am sure they will value every cent they receive.

Fr. Mars, from Davao, joined Fr. Glenn last year to help in looking after our growing Filipino community in Korea as they go through the difficulties of work and life in a foreign land.