Bishop Peter Lee Ki-Heon of Uijeongbu Bishop Peter Lee Ki-heon of Uijeongbu has been waiting years for this moment, with the leaders of the two divided Koreas poised to meet for a historic summit just inside South Korean territory on April 27.
Ucanews.com reported Bishop Lee, president of the Korean bishops’ Committee for the Reconciliation of the Korean People, released a statement at the weekend expressing his belief that the summit would end decades of struggle and open a new era of peace on the peninsula.
“Now the Korean Peninsula is entering an important time of turbulence,” Bishop Lee wrote in the statement titled, “your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
“With the inter-Korean summit, as well as the ensuing summit between North Korea and the US, expectations are growing that the 65-year-long confrontation and struggle will end and a new era of peace will come,” the statement read.
This will be the third major inter-Korean summit, decades after the Korean War ended in a cease-fire. It comes in the wake of former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung meeting former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang in 2000, and former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun following in his predecessor’s footsteps by venturing to the North Korean capital in 2007.
But both of those meetings ultimately went nowhere, with the signs of rapprochement crumbling only to be replaced by threats of war amid occasional volleys of gunfire across the Demilitarised Zone that separates the two countries.
Bishop Lee said he expects the upcoming summit will bear more fruit, aided by the prayers of parishioners.
“Our prayers are making an incredible miracle through God, who makes the impossible possible,” he said.