HONG KONG (SE): The World Council of Churches called on all Christian organisations and Churches to observe a Sunday of Prayer for the Peaceful Reunification of the Korean Peninsula on August 13, basing their prayer around the theme from Romans 14:19, “Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.”
 

BANGKOK (SE): "A rare Catholic leader in Asia, South Korea's new President Moon Jae-in is a very faithful man, in a Catholic sense," Michael Sainsbury says in pointing to the great appeal he had to many people who hope he can break the dominance of big corporations over government.
 
However, while he won an overwhelming majority of the popular vote in the capital of Seoul, as many a prophet of good tidings, he was not nearly as welcome in his home town of Busan.
 

SEOUL (UCAN): The 90th anniversary of the foundation of the diocese of Pyongyang in North Korea was marked on March 18 at a Mass celebrated in Seoul’s Myeongdong cathedral in the presence of some 500 people who had lived in the northern city prior to the division of the country by the war that ran from 1950 to 1953.

SEOUL (UCAN): An American student, David Sneddon, who went missing while hiking in China is believed to still be in North Korea and still alive by Choi Sung-ryong, a Seoul-based representative of the families of people abducted to North Korea.

Choi said he has information on the Sneddon’s whereabouts.

HONG KONG (SE): A statement from the bishops of Japan in commemoration of 70 years since the cessation of the hostilities of World War II released on August 29 this year takes on new meaning in the light of the nuclear test carried out by North Korea on September 9.

SEOUL (SE): The government in Pyongyang is using military personnel as contract workers on construction sites in the Middle East run by companies from the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea as a way of avoiding paying their salaries.

Radio Free Asia reported on June 13 that the soldiers are told to grow their hair so that they will look like civilians and not to mention where they have been when they return home.

SEOUL (UCAN): Two Korean dioceses announced on May 20 that they have entered into a formal agreement to provide formation for priests and seminarians to work in North Korea in the eventuality of a reunification of the north-south Korean divide.

Hamhung, which is theoretically in the north, has signed an agreement with Chunchon diocese to receive some candidates selected from among its seminarians and educate them with the view of working as priests on the northern side of the Demilitarised Zone in the future.