S. Koreans Nurture Spirit of Sharing With Rice Offerings

PUPYONG, South Korea —  Jong Young Ja doesn’t have much: An accident last year left her husband unable to walk and out of work. Still, the homemaker puts aside a few grains of dry rice before each meal and, by the time Sunday rolls around, she’s able to dump about a pound into a rust-colored plastic barrel at her church.

She and other parishioners bring whatever rice they can spare to deposit into the vat, marked simply “love rice.” Anyone can “withdraw” as much as they need, no questions asked.

“There are a lot of people having more difficulties than me, so I want to contribute,” Jong said as she made her donation just before Mass on a recent Sunday.

The love rice idea came from Father Ho In Soo, the priest at Pupyong Roman Catholic Church on Seoul’s western outskirts. He sought a way to alleviate the growing hunger problem he saw creeping into his lower-middle-class congregation without having to ask for money.

So he exhorted his parishioners--most of them struggling through a withering recession themselves--to sacrifice a small bit from each meal to help the needy “in the spirit of sharing.”

Nearly as soon as the vat--which holds about 175 pounds of rice--fills up, it empties again. Once word of the love rice spread, hungry people began arriving at the church from as far away as downtown Seoul, a cheap 85-minute train ride away. That so many proud South Koreans partake of the free rice indicates just how bad things have become in this once prospering country, where until recently hunger was a distant memory.

Since the crumbling of the miracle economy late last year, hundreds of South Korean businesses have gone bust, leaving tens of thousands of people without jobs. City park benches and train stations now hold thousands who have been left homeless. Some parents have left their children at orphanages because they can no longer afford to feed them.

Even Middle Class Going Hungry

Now, even that most basic staple in the Korean economy, rice--small bowls of which are eaten at virtually every meal--is becoming difficult to come by. Sales are down by one-third at the Hyunde Rice store down the street from the church; the owner blames dwindling incomes as well as recent floods that washed away hundreds of rice paddies, diminishing supplies and inflating prices. In the last year, the price of rice has shot up about 15% to about 75 cents a pound, a substantial premium considering most parishioners’ families earn less than $8,000 a year.

“I didn’t realize things were this bad until we started the [love rice] program,” church manager Kim Dok Ho said.

Although there are few reports of starvation, people are going hungry, social welfare organizations and churches say. South Korea’s First Lady Lee Hee Ho recently established a group to help raise money for the estimated 120,000 schoolchildren nationwide whose parents cannot afford to give them lunch money or even a brown bag.

Indeed, across much of Asia, hunger has been creeping from the poorest classes into what was once the middle class.

“Families are being swallowed up again into the ranks of the poor,” Philippine President Joseph Estrada said at a conference in Singapore last month. “For the first time in two decades, the war against poverty is in danger of being lost in many parts of the region.”

Dipping Into ‘Love Rice’ Vat

The hungry include people like So Myung Ja, 77, who showed up on a recent Sunday morning at the Pupyong church to heap about a pound of rice into her bag.

She scrapes by on the small change her niece can occasionally afford to part with. She eats just one meal a day at a government health care center and has no rice at home, other than what she takes from the church. Still, she hangs back, shy about taking a handout. “I’m ashamed of myself,” she says, bowing to the statue of the Virgin Mary as she walks out.

Though most of the churchgoers have little to spare, they still manage to donate what they can. Before each meal, Ko Sun Hee puts aside a tablespoon of rice from each of her four family members’ portions.

Her children, ages 9 and 12, are “happy to contribute,” she says. “They say, ‘Mom, did you cut back one spoon for me?’ ”

Ko’s husband, a civil servant, is still employed, but his salary and bonus have been cut. “Everybody is suffering, but we’re better off than others,” she says, echoing the sentiments of many other donors.

On a recent rainy Sunday, parishioners began streaming into the simple brick church about 40 minutes before the 11 a.m. Mass. By the time the service began, about 100 pounds of rice had been deposited into the vat.

During the homily, Father Ho related an amusing tale about a priest who encounters a leopard on a visit to Africa. The priest prays for God to make the leopard a Christian. The leopard stops and prays, “Oh, thank you God for giving me food,” and eats the priest.

“We are the leopard, selfish and always thankful for our food,” the Korean priest says. “When we’re in church we are very holy, but once we get outside, we are not.”

He says he is saddened to see that the love rice vat stands empty at times. “It should be filled with rice as much as possible,” he says. “This type of activity should be spread to the whole Catholic Church in Korea. This church has just a small effect.”

By the time Mass is over, the rain has given way to sunshine. As the churchgoers stream out through the vestibule, a hunched, elderly woman in a black shirt and skirt sidles slowly up to the barrel, pulls out a thin yellow grocery bag and begins heaping rice in.

Oh Choong He, 70, who is suffering from cataracts that have left her blind in one eye and nearly blind in the other, explains that she is trying to support her grandson, who is in the fifth grade, with her $80 monthly government pension. She lives in a tiny, one-room apartment and doesn’t know what’s happened to her son and daughter-in-law. The rice will last the entire week.

“There is no hope, no expectation, but from time to time I get encouragement from the government or the church,” Oh says.

A few others stop by to take their share, and by 12:15, the amount of rice in the vat has shrunk by more than a third.

Inside the rectory, volunteers are counting the money in the offering plate. Recent months have seen the donations drop dramatically.

Though the church’s rice donation campaign has been described by the local media, Ho shuns the press. He declines an interview request, saying he has to “have lunch with the nuns.”

Church administrator Kim says the priest believes that, in charity, you do not advertise.

Not everything about the donation program is divine, Kim notes. Some of the rice-takers become greedy, walking away with both hands full.

“Of course they need it,” he says, when asked if the takers seem hungry. “But they should have a spirit of sharing because others might need it too.”

As the love rice idea has spread, several Catholic churches in South Korea have begun similar campaigns. “What’s heartwarming to watch,” Kim says, “is that whenever there’s a disaster, it’s not the rich that donate but the ordinary people who share.”

Chi Jung Nam of The Times’ Seoul Bureau contributed to this report.