| International News

Korean Central News Agency, North Korea's state-run news agency, announced on Oct. 9 that North Korea conducted a nuclear test safely and successfully. The South Korean government confirmed that a 3.58-magnitude seismic tremor was detected that morning in Hwadae, Hamkyongbuk-do in North Korea's northeast near its border with China.

In an Oct. 13 “Message for Peace and Reconciliation,” the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Korea (CBCK) committees for the Reconciliation of the Korean People and for Justice and Peace questioned the justification of nuclear weapons, even as a means of self-defense.

The statement was signed by Auxiliary Bishop Lucas Kim Woon-hoe of the Archdiocese of Seoul and Bishop Boniface Choi Ki-san of the Diocese of Incheon, president of reconciliation committee and president of the justice and peace committee, respectively.

“The recent announcement of the North Korea's nuclear experiment gave great shock and concern to the Korean people and all those who love peace,” the statement said. “We cannot but feel deep sorrow for the choice of our North Korean brethren who must cooperate with us to maintain the peace.”

“Nuclear weapons cannot be justified in any way,” the committee said, noting that the Korean bishops in 2003 even “explicitly opposed the attack to Iraq conducted by the U.S.A. under the pretense of eliminating weapons of mass destruction.” The bishops’ committees lamented that “North Korea’s nuclear experiment” has set back the mending of fences between the communist country and South Korea.

“For the recent several years, the South and the North have maintained peaceful exchanges, through which the two Koreas came to recognize the other not as an enemy but as one people, the same brethren,” the committees said.

“Hence no one should block the way of reconciliation which the South and the North have paved through all efforts, nor should turn back the streams of the peace and unity running through the Korean peninsula. Furthermore, no one should make use of this situation to provoke hatred and confrontation,” they added.

Peace can only take root, the bishops’ committees said, through dialogue, “incessant forgiveness and reconciliation.”

By contrast, they stressed, “hatred begets hatred and violence begets violence.”

The bishops’ committee called on the international community to “walk the difficult way toward reconciliation and peace.”

But, they pointed to “dialogue and negotiation” as the means to achieve peace and not “through military sanction or blockade.”

On Oct. 14, the U.N. Security Council unanimously approved a resolution to impose sanctions on North Korea, including ship searches for banned weapons, an assets freeze and a travel ban on people related to the nuclear arms program.

“Though the Korean peninsula is shocked at the nuclear experiment by the North Korea, we put our trust in ‘Christ, our peace,’” they said, “without restlessness of mind, and heartly wish that we could bring the real peace in this country with all the people working for peace all together.”