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Lee Young-hoon

“South Korean churches to plan to join forces to build people’s hospitals in all 260 of North Korea’s cities and counties.”

Lee Young-hoon, head pastor of Yoido Full Gospel Church, announced his vision for a North Korea project in a Dec. 11 talk with reporters. Once negotiations finish between North Korea and the US, the church immediately plans to finish construction on Gospel Heart Hospital, which has lain in neglect for over eight years with only structural work completed on the 10,000-pyeong (33,000 square meter) site in central Pyongyang.

A target completion date in late 2019 was set for the general hospital, which is to measure eight stories with 260 sickbeds. The plan also involves South Korean churches joining forces to build “people’s hospitals” across North Korea.

Lee, 64, resumed the North Korea effort in earnest after receiving approval from the Ministry of Unification last month to transport pharmaceuticals and 1,000 tons of flour to North Korea in the name of the LOK foundation, which he serves as president for.

“A list of applicants for medical staff positions in Pyongyang has already been made, including mostly physicians from Severance Hospital,” he said of the Pyongyang hospital’s operation.

“We will have current physicians residing there for periods of six months and retired physicians for periods of one year to provide healthcare services and impart medical techniques,” he explained.

Lee went on to stress, “All of this will only be possible if a North Korea-US summit is held.”

“There will need to be a denuclearization pledge from the North before the North Korea-US summit is concluded,” he predicted.

At the same time, Lee said, “We are also working to see to it that the North Korea-US summit happens through the efforts of people like Paula White, an evangelical advisory committee member for the US who visited South Korea last May for a ceremony to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Yoido Full Gospel Church.”

In a recent interview with one monthly, Lee voiced the opinion that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un should be “welcomed in accordance with diplomatic practice” if he visits Seoul, just as South Korean President Moon Jae-in was welcomed in Pyongyang. This also resulted in him facing protests from representatives of right-wing groups, who demonstrated with signs in front of the church and accused him of being a “member of the Baekdu Praise Committee, a group that is sympathetic to North Korea.”

“If this is what they’re going to do, shouldn’t they have demonstrated when [Chinese President] Xi Jinping visited too?” he asked.

“A lot of hostile countries participated in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, but they didn’t take issue with that. I’m more worried about conflict within the South than between South and North,” he continued.

“The first step needs to be the healing of conflict among South Korea. You can’t make everyone who disagrees with you into ‘the enemy,’” he said. “What message are they sending when they talk about ‘unification’ on one hand while insulting each other on the other?”

“My grandfather refused to worship at shrines during the Japanese occupation and served as an elder at the Church Outside the Gate in Pyongyang, which was the origin of Soongsil University,” Lee explained.

“After liberation, he traveled to the South, while my maternal grandfather remained in the North and is believed to have been martyred,” he added.

“I may have this family history, but we need to be magnanimous in our thoughts toward the North,” he said.

Lee has visited North Korea five times to date.

“In North Korea, they have a slogan that ‘science is the way forward and education is insurance for the future.’ They provide scientists with luxury apartments free of charge, and they’ve built a tremendous natural history of museum that’s like the Smithsonian,” he said.

“There are already something like 5.6 million mobile phones in North Korea, and the slogans attacking the US have gone away,” he noted.

“Things have changed enough that restrictions on merchants crossing provincial boundaries have been lifted, and they’re devoting their full energies to rebuilding the economy. I am certain that they will proceed toward denuclearization and the North Korea-US summit will happen,” he predicted.

By Cho Hyun, religion correspondent

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