| Rev. Anton Trauner during an interview with The Korea Times at his office in Busan on July 17 / Korea Times |
BUSAN — During the first 16 years after his arrival in the port city of Busan on July 5, 1958, missionary Anton Trauner focused on providing the poor with their basic needs. At the time, the pervasive poverty in the war-torn nation left him little time to think about anything else.
The streets of the shanty district of Wooam-dong, where he has been based for nearly six decades, used to be filthy and crowded with orphans, refugees and homeless people. The state of public health was miserable, and those living on the streets and those helping them were at risk for a variety of illnesses. The 93-year-old Trainer himself fell ill with typhoid fever in 1961 and suffered from diarrhea for quite a while.
| People attend a special Mass to commemorate the opening of the Peace of Fatima Cathedral near the Demilitarized Zone on May 6. / Courtesy of World Apostolate of Fatima |
Despite such hardships, he continued to feed orphans and beggars with free meals and trained jobless people with vocational skills to help them get out of the vicious cycle of poverty and unemployment.
As the nation's poverty rate eased significantly in the 1970s, the German priest was finally able to turn his attention to other important goals, such as promoting peace and advocating the unification of the two Koreas.
Trauner, now a local celebrity better known among Busan citizens as "Father Ha," has been keeping his fingers crossed for a unified Korea since presiding over a Mass near the military demarcation line in May 1974. The Mass drew approximately 12,000 Catholics from across the nation.
"Weapons won't help peace," the German priest said in fluent Korean during an interview with The Korea Times on July 17 at his office in Wooam-dong, located in the southern tip of the port city.
"We need a miracle through which North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his deputies can be motivated to repent for their brutal ruling of the people and join hands to achieve the peaceful unification of the two Koreas. I think there are no other means to achieve unification but prayer."
| This photo shows Busan in the late 1950s, after the Korean War. / Courtesy of World Apostolate of Fatima |
The German priest described Kim and the North's ruling elite as "rogues" because they have turned a deaf ear to the outcry of the public, who find it extremely difficult to make ends meet.
Trauner was saying every day, he prays for a miracle on the Korean Peninsula, that the North Korean elite will become an agent of change for peace. All of a sudden, he began humming the Korean song, "Fingers Crossed for Unification."
Trauner believes in the power of prayer. He interpreted the reunification of Germany in 1990 as the outcome of the collective prayers of East and West Germans that began years before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. He thinks such a miracle can happen in Korea, too.
After the 1974 Mass near the borderline, the German priest began to search for his role in the unification of the two Koreas.
The North Korean regime was furious about the gathering. Its state-controlled media criticized it, saying "Mad dogs barked at the moon in the Imjingak Park" on the banks of the namesake river.
The North's reaction reminded Trauner of being held as a prisoner of war in the former Yugoslavia during World War II. While there, he endured hard labor, sleep deprivation and malnutrition. "The first two years were extremely difficult because I was starved and forced to work day and night," he recalled. Because of this experience, Trauner said he knew exactly what it is like to be a citizen of a country at war. Technically, the two Koreas are still at war today, even though a armistice treaty was signed in 1953.
He adopted a gradual approach to help the two states achieve unification. He sought to build a small church near the borderline where people could drop by to pray for unification whenever they want. The church project began in 1983, nine years after the historic mass, with 50 million won ($50,000) donated by two Koreans for the purpose.
In addition, Trauner and like-minded Catholics prayed that the 15,000 former and current members of the North Korean elite would repent and become agents of change for peace. The priest obtained the list of such North Koreans from the Ministry of Unification.
Thousands of people in Korea and abroad joined the prayer campaign after the bimonthly Catholic magazine, Maria, ran the story. Some of them donated money for the church project as well.
The prayer meetings and fundraising were going smoothly, except for one major hurdle. The South Korean military authorities were reluctant to issue a permit for the church project near the borderline.
They were opposed to the presence of a Catholic church in a place where South and North Koreans could face off. They thought such a religious facility would make things worse there.
Trauner was frustrated as the church project made little progress for nearly three decades. Finally, he decided to do something to make it happen. While encouraging believers to continue praying for the project, he wrote a letter to the defense minister, pleading for the military to allow the presence of the Catholic church near the borderline.
In 2012, their prayers were heard. The defense ministry finally gave the green light to the church project, on one condition — the church must be built underground for security reasons.
A small underground church that can accommodate 250 people was completed in May, nearly two and half years after the construction began in November 2013. The Peace of Fatima Cathedral had a grand opening on May 6 with a special Mass.
Trauner said the church project is a small but significant development in the unification campaign.
"Since last year, my health has been declining. I don't know how many days are left in my life," he said. "But I will continue praying for the unification of the two Koreas for as long as I'm living. This is my last prayer, and I hope that my prayer will be heard before I die."
Before working on the church project, Trauner considered poverty reduction as his key mission in Korea. He sponsored free meals for refugees, orphans and homeless people in front of the DongHang Cathedral, where he had served as a priest for 20 years from 1959. He sold his house in Germany to fund the meals for the poor and the retreat center project near the cathedral.
Poverty reduction
Trauner set up a midwifery center after witnessing many women dying in childbirth. At the center, professional nurses help women safely deliver their babies. In 1965, he also established the vocational high school with funds from the German government to help young people find jobs after graduation. Some graduates even went to Germany for further study or vocational training.
"What I like most about my life in Korea is that I was able to build a community through which I, together with other priests and nuns, can sing and pray together for peace," he said.
The German priest was determined to come to Korea after hearing from another priest about the misery that people faced after the war. The other priest had returned to Germany after years of serving at a Catholic church in North Gyeongsang Province.
On May 22, 1958, Trauner boarded a Japanese cargo ship carrying fertilizers for a six-week voyage to South Korea. Nine Japanese farmers who undertook agricultural training in Europe were also on the ship. After passing through Africa, Egypt's Suez Canal, Singapore and Japan, the ship finally arrived in the port of Busan on July 5.
The 36-year-old German priest was unfamiliar to the scenes that stretched out before him. Countless Korean War refugees and orphans ate, slept and begged on the street. He couldn't sleep at night because of the loud voices of vendors selling salt, tofu and rice cakes. "In my early days in Busan, there were lots of difficulties. But I never thought of leaving this country because people were so nice," Trauner said.
Before Korea gained independence in 1945 from imperialist Japan, Wooam-dong was an uninhabited district full of cows and horses that would soon be shipped to Japan. After World War II, a group of Koreans who had been living in Japan moved back to Busan and settled down in the Wooam-dong area. Following the Jan. 4 withdrawal in 1951 during the Korean War, refugees aboard ships flocked to the area again.
The district remains one of the least developed areas in Busan.