INTERVIEW Korean Forest Gump's race for Vietnam
Ven. Jino, right, runs the 2,200-kilometer charity marathon with the Buddhist association president Thich Nguyen Thanh from Thai Nguyen Province in Vietnam, front in center, the association director Thich Truc Tiep, behind on left, and other Korean and Vietnamese teammates through Cao Bang Province and the cities of Ca Mau and Da Nang in Vietnam in 2015-16. Every kilometer he ran moved donors to offer 100 won. Photos provided by Making Dreams Come True
Ven. Jino's mission ― building 108 toilets in Vietnam ― includes Manhattan as charity marathon destination in 2020
By Ko Dong-hwan
GUMI, North Gyeongsang ― Buddhist monk Ven. Jino is sorry for the atrocities South Korean soldiers committed against Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War.
South Korea sent about 320,000 soldiers to the war, the second-most following the United States. Some murdered and raped civilians and destroyed their houses.
The U.S. government paid the soldiers $236 million in appreciation of their “efforts,” which also included neutralizing part of the Viet Cong presence in southern Vietnam.
More than 40 years after the war's end in 1975, a very different picture reflecting the bilateral relation can be seen across Korea. Instead of the Korean infantry divisions and Marine Corps dispatched to Vietnam, the Southeast Asian country's men and women, with non-professional working visas in hand, have moved to Seoul to escape poverty.
Ven. Jino, as one with remorse for his own country that didn't hold back from slaughtering innocent people for the good of its biggest ally, feels touched whenever he sees Vietnamese migrant workers in hardship. The 55-year-old monk's particular sympathy for the ethnic group has seen him dedicate his life to supporting them and their country.
“There are Vietnamese who are from the regions that had witnessed Korean soldiers' atrocities during the war,” Ven. Jino told The Korea Times at Making Dreams Come True, a private establishment in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province, that has been supporting migrants of various nationalities since 2000. “I reserve a special heart for them.”
The center has three houses: one for unemployed workers without a home; one for women who fled harassing Korean husbands; and one for women with children who unexpectedly became single mothers. To support the center, Ven. Jino runs charity marathons. He has run about 15,000 kilometers across Korea, Vietnam, Germany, Nepal, Ecuador, Cambodia and Sri Lanka, 50 kilometers a day, since 2011. So far he has collected about 400 million won ($358,000).
Korea's Hyundai Motors supported his overseas challenges five times, providing a 12-person minivan and a 21-person mini-bus for crew and equipment.
“If I didn't commit to running and only had words coming out of my mouth to promote my charity mission, that wouldn't have impressed donors,” said Ven. Jino, whose soul-searching cause prompts images of Hollywood masterpiece “Forest Gump.”
Ven. Jino runs a 500-kilometer charity marathon on roads in Vietnam in 2012. In 2020, he envisions taking on over 5,000 kilometers of roads in the United States, with a final destination of New York City.
The monk asks for 100 won (nine cents) for each kilometer he runs ― 330 kilometers from Kandy to Matara in Sri Lanka in 2018, 330 kilometers from Angkor Wat to Phnom Penh in Cambodia in 2017, 300 kilometers from Kathmandu to Lumbini in Nepal in 2016, and 300 kilometers around Ecuador the same year. The longest he travelled was 2,200 kilometers in Vietnam over two runs in 2015-16, first from Cao Bang Province to Da Nang, followed by Ca Mau to Da Nang.
With the money, he bought houses for the compound on mortgages, food for the residents who are all staying for free, paid wages for his seven helpers at the compound, and built a four-story temple. Whenever contacted by the faithful wishing to meet him, he isn't shy in encouraging them to bring some money with them.
“I tell the faithful wishing to meet me to seek other monks because I am busy looking after the compound and all,” Ven. Jino said. “If they insist, I make appointments with them for meet-ups and remind them to bring an offering, say, 100,000 won.”
Ven. Jino also needs money for a charity business he started after his first marathon challenge in Vietnam ― building 108 new toilets in the country. The idea came to him when he visited an elementary school in Tien Giang Province attended by a Vietnamese man named Mai Van Toan, who he helped recover from a severe car accident in Gumi in 2010.
The migrant worker in Korea, with almost half of his skeleton destroyed, received surgeries thanks to the monk who collected a charity fund worth 5 million won by running 108 kilometers non-stop for 16 hours in March 2011. After Toan recovered, the pair travelled to Toan's hometown in the province.
Mai Van Toan, left, received operations in Korea with money raised by Ven. Jino's charity marathon. He stayed at Making Dreams Come True until he recovered and left for his hometown in Vietnam.
“I excused myself to use a washroom in the school and saw the facility in a horrific condition,” Ven. Jino said. “That got me thinking after I returned to Korea.” The pondering led him to launch the toilets project, with the first completed in 2012 at Toan's old school, and 44 so far. Each toilet costs 4 million won to build.
“Buddhism holds a toilet as 'a place where one empties worries',” Ven. Jino said. “I hope my toilet project contributes to improving the South Korea-Vietnam tie damaged by the Vietnamese animus from the Vietnam War.”
That animus was evident, according to Ven. Jino, from the South Korean flags ripped from poles at schools the Korean government built in Vietnam as a token of apology for what had happened during the war.
Vietnam had maintained a low-key attitude to the wartime atrocities, not demanding an official apology. But when South Korea and Japan in 2015 made a pact over Korean sex slaves forced to serve Japanese soldiers during WWII, and the Japanese government paid over 1 billion yen to Korea, that provoked the Vietnamese to rekindle their pent-up bitterness and recognize their need for an apology from the Korean government. The monk said a group of Vietnamese actually held a protest in the Gwanghwamun district in Seoul in 2016.
Ven. Jino plans to run 5,130 kilometers from California to Manhattan for 120 days, starting June 2020. His biggest charity marathon challenge aims to draw donations needed for toilets No. 55 and on.
“There are Vietnamese people who migrated to the U.S. during the war and also Koreans,” Ven. Jino said. “I don't expect Americans to help me with the marathon because I heard they usually don't contribute unless it's for sick people and other causes. But at least I can move hearts of Vietnamese communities there and encourage Koreans to bear burdens for what their country had done during the war.”
One of the toilets Ven. Jino built in Vietnam. He wants to construct 108 new toilets across the country.
Making Dreams Come True
In one of the rooms at the shelter for homeless migrant workers at Making Dreams Come True, some 12 Asian women of different nationalities stay with barely space to lie down. Ven. Jino admits the room isn't big enough for 12 but says that if it weren't for this room the women would be out on the street.
“We are not a job agency trying to get these people employed,” the monk said inside the shelter that strictly segregates males in the basement and females on the second floor. They only see each other during a prayer gathering in front of Buddha's shrine on the top floor of the house. “They are on their own. We instead provide them with basic necessities and information to help them get a job again.”
Committed as a trainee monk at the age of 19 and becoming a Buddhist acolyte four years later, Ven. Jino started helping migrant workers in 2000, bringing food to them at a bus terminal and train station in the city. Making Dreams Come True was officially opened in 2007 and helps clients with issues involving unpaid wages, harsh working environments, medical assistance and other difficulties in their daily lives.
Whether the visitors are from China, Vietnam, Sri Lanka or Cambodia, the monk isn't concerned about their religious backgrounds. He also pities the nation's authoritative group of Korean Buddhists supported by millions of followers for having a “dull sense of reality.”
“The Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism teaches to embrace migrants but they lack practical measures to actually help them,” Ven. Jino said. “Whenever we meet for regular gatherings, they talk about how to self-indulge themselves. I abhor those talks and leave the gatherings soon as they are over.”
Five migrant worker couples staying at Making Dreams Come True received an official joint wedding reception in June 2018. Ven. Jino, who prepared the ceremony, sought to encourage foreigners with non-professional working visas through the event.
Five migrant couples ― from Vietnam, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and China ― were congratulated in a joint wedding ceremony in front of the facility in June this year. Ven. Jino wanted to support the cash-strapped foreigners who had no means to pronounce their engagement. Gumi city office's welfare and environment department chief Kim Hyu-jin presided over the weddings and people from business groups and religious communities offered wedding gifts, makeup services and taxi rides to Gimcheon for the couples' honeymoons.
Ven. Jino said Korean public workers need to leave their desks and visit places where jobless migrant workers face hard times, like his shelter where almost 30 people are crammed.
“Because the workers don't care to visit my facility, I go to them,” the monk said.
Ven. Jino also has been filing complaints over police patrols around the facility that scare residents who fear deportation, and urging more alien-friendly test materials so migrant women can get a driver's license.
“Whether they are the justice ministry or immigration service, those handling immigration policies must start their tenure by spending six months at migrant centers like here,” the monk said. “They need to see the reality and learn about human rights being neglected by the country's slack system for migrant workers. That would be a real motif for them.”