Ok I’ve been burning to get this off my chest! and since this is my blog and my opinion I will do this! Firstly Cambodia is very much part of my 7 year identity of who I am since living here, and the whole ecumenical movement has shaped me to come to some understanding of this. Since working and living in Cambodia I have made many, and, lost many friends. Over the course of these years we have worked on several projects to bring about the ideas, thoughts, and needs of the students from Cambodia. Of course we have made some mistakes along the way but we have also learnt a lot too.
One of the major mistakes we made was going into a relationship with a Korean Missionary partner from an ecumenical church! (I won’t say the actual denomination) At first it seemed okay and eventh0ugh there were many criticism for us to be very careful when working with Korean Missionaries we had to find out the hard way. This in turn brought us to make the most devastating mistake of our development as a small student group! We were used as pawns as an opening to all the work that we had achieved previously.
I was approached by the now Director of Korean Ecumenical Mission Work to see if our small student group could establish some partnership with the hope of it bringing help and resources that we needed at the time. Although the idea sounded okay we were cautious that we were going too fast into this relationship because from the day that we agreed to this we were then told to find a house to buy within a period of 4 to 5 months. Now for anyone who knows Cambodia this request was too fast and I was sure that something might go wrong. And from the start it did go wrong!
It was like asking the poor to look after 1 million dollars and not spend it! We certainly did make a big mistake then. And although this is all in the past the results of this has made our student group poorer and without an office! And the developments of a Korean Ecumenical Church grow stronger and continue to force all the Cambodian staff to attend church or they will loose their jobs. The old church that was once our office!
In my last sermon with this Korean Church (because that’s what it is! it is not Cambodian and it is not ecumenical! it is a Korean Colonial Product in Cambodia!) I mentioned that our relationship was once in friendship and now it is in slavery. Our students were happy to help and now they are slaves to their Christian doctrine! When we travelled in the province to provide water wells for the villages, the villagers were only used for a media floor show of Korean super stars, and Korean Water Companies, trying to get Korean money to come to Cambodia. When the villages provided the best of their food the Korean Missionaries refused to eat their food!
To date this continues to be the case! Although we have completely severed our ties with the Korean Missionary I still have friends who have no choice but to remain with them as a means of employment. If they were offered a better job they would take it without any regrets. Now the Korean Missionary Church is a registered International NGO and continues to receive funds from prominent organizations and companies in Korea. All the Cambodian staff are forced into attending the Church every Sunday without any excuse or they will loose their jobs! (I am sure they have breached a human rights labor law by forcing people to attend church on Sunday)
I am writing about this because it is my hope that both my friends will finally be able to leave their jobs and not be obliged to continue their work with the Korean Missionary Church, and that this kind of behavior is uncovered for what it really is! Both the Pastor is the director and his wife is the accountant and control the central finances. In the CCC International NGO Code of Conduct it is a conflict of interest to have staff of the same family (especially Husband and Wife) in the same organization. The INGO was initiated and founded without any participatory approach from its partners at the time and it was just another way of money laundering funds from Korea to Cambodia without the Government knowing about it! So what was once a supposed Cambodian Ecumenical Church is now an International NGO, this was in conflict with who we are as a student group and decided to leave.
I fear for my friends and I have told them to leave and to call all the staff to walk out and find a better job. As easy as this sounds this is the only income they are receiving and it has been difficult for them to find a suitable job other than the one they are stuck in. I also heard recently that we (the student group) were used as pawns for a much bigger motive based in Korea! Peoples careers, jobs, money, resources were all made on the backs of all our members both old and new! And if there is some justice in this world (I hope to think there is!) my friends should leave their jobs! and hopefully have a better job! And Korean Missionaries and their fundamental Korean colonial habits should cease!
Finally to all our student friends who helped us in the very early stages of our development and in which this Korean Missionary INGO now exists we would like to apologize for putting you through this. Unfortunately this was a big mistake and an unforeseeable development of who we were at the time.
I am writing this article to celebrate 2 years of severing our ties and struggling to find our feet again amidst uncertainty, no money, no resource but we continue to keep the spirit of who we are and what we are all about.
