Once-Deported Missionary Returns to South Korea for Honor

November 20, 2002
by Amy Green

The Rev. George Ogle left South Korea in tears some 30 years ago, deported by the country's dictatorship for his work on behalf of poor factory workers and eight men facing execution because of false accusations they were communists.

The country now has welcomed back the United Methodist missionary and honored him. Ogle returned to South Korea in September to receive the Korean Human Rights Award, given annually to both a Korean and foreigner by the country's Institute for Human Rights. A Korean attorney who specializes in human rights cases also received the award.

Ogle also was among some 70 people from five countries who gathered two weeks later in South Korea to commemorate the struggle for a Korean democracy in the 1970s and ‘80s. The gathering was organized by the Korea Democracy Foundation, established to preserve the memory of the fight.

It was not the first time Ogle had returned to the country since he was deported, but this trip was very different. The memories it evoked were troubling, but the honor was overwhelming, he said.

"I'm somewhat humble because I did a couple of things, but many Korean brothers and sisters suffered and did a lot more for human rights than me," said Ogle, 73, who lives in Atlanta. "They probably deserve recognition more than I do."

Ogle had been a missionary in South Korea with his wife, Dorothy, for nearly a decade when the country's rapid industrialization and oppression of factory workers in the 1960s encouraged him to help found the Urban Industrial Mission. Ogle and a few Korean colleagues taught laborers about their rights and how to organize into unions. But Ogle was ordered deported and his colleagues arrested once Park Chung Hee's military regime, which took control in the early ‘70s, sought to prevent laborers from organizing.

At about the same time, Ogle had become an advocate for eight Korean men accused of being communists. Ogle publicly prayed for the men and called for a public trial instead of a secret military trial that would give them no chance to defend themselves. But the government arrested Ogle, accused him of being a communist and threatened jail time.

Ogle eventually left South Korea, a country where he had spent 20 years raising four children, and the men later were executed. In September, a commission appointed by President Kim Dae-Jung to investigate suspicious deaths during Park's regime determined the accusations against the men were false, and their confessions were induced by torture.

The former missionary remembers sitting next to a Catholic priest on the flight out of South Korea.

"He sort of held my hand while I cried my whole way to Japan," he said.

Back in the United States, Ogle addressed Congress about the struggle for a Korean democracy. He taught at Emory University's Candler School of Theology and traveled the country with his wife speaking to academic and human rights groups. He later was a Washington lobbyist for the United Methodist Church on health and poverty issues and wrote three books about his experiences in South Korea, including one published this summer, How Long, O Lord? Stories of Twentieth Century Korea.

Fellow missionary Walter Durst said Ogle's work was important at a time when factory workers endured terribly long hours for little compensation. He credited Ogle for his courage, especially when he spoke out on behalf of the eight condemned men.

"He didn't have to raise that issue. He could have said something else," said Durst, now a database manager for the United Methodist Church's information service in Nashville, Tenn. "He has a very deep concern for those who are poor and oppressed."

Ogle said he knew the risk he was taking by speaking out on behalf of the eight men – he had been arrested twice before – but he felt the men needed more than one man's prayers.

"What we needed was to have many people praying for them because this was a social problem that needed to be addressed," he said. "There are times when the value of human rights and social justice outweighs the decision not to break laws."

During their visit in September, Ogle and his wife met with Kim and other South Korean lawmakers, and they visited a memorial cemetery in GwangJu honoring the hundreds killed during a 1980 uprising against Park's regime. They also visited the schools and churches where Ogle had worked 30 years ago and caught up with old friends and colleagues.

Ogle said he now plans to turn his attention back to writing. He has been busy writing poetry and has a few ideas for short stories. He said the theme of his first book, Liberty to the Captives, is especially timely now that North Korea has acknowledged its secret nuclear bomb program.

"We need to work for a peace treaty among North Korea and South Korea and the United States," he said. "Now is the time when those past hates have to be put aside, and we need to search for ways for emphasizing the unity of the Korean people in order to make one peaceful country again."

United Methodist News Service
Amy Green is a free-lance writer in Nashville, Tenn. She formerly covered religion for the Associated Press.