Author: Yuechen Hua
My week in Seoul transformed abstractions into lived experiences. Arriving from China, I carried preconceptions about Korean society—neighboring yet foreign, historically intertwined yet culturally distinct. "Service" and "faith," concepts I had encountered primarily in textbooks, materialized as I stepped into spaces where they shaped daily realities. This account traces what I discovered through volunteering at BabFor, a non-profit addressing urban poverty, and through conversations with Monk Won-o, whose 23-year Buddhist practice illuminates approaches to human suffering that parallel, yet diverge from, the Christian tradition I also encountered. As an outsider observing Korea's social fabric, I found myself constantly triangulating: comparing what I witnessed to China's approaches, to Western models, to my own emerging understanding of how communities address collective suffering.
BabFor: Beyond Sustenance
I initially conceived BabFor as merely a soup kitchen—a familiar concept even in China, where similar initiatives address urban poverty, though typically organized through different mechanisms. The kitchen manager's breakdown of their clientele revealed a more complex picture: approximately 30% homeless, 50% elderly living in solitary confinement within Seoul's infamous goshiwon cubicles (smaller even than Shanghai's most cramped apartments), and 20% housed but economically marginal—individuals navigating what the manager termed "loneliness" as much as hunger.
Established in 1988 by the Dail Community—a Christian organization whose reach now extends to Cambodia, Nepal, and Uganda—BabFor serves roughly 400 elderly individuals daily. The organization has garnered sufficient recognition that multiple South Korean presidents have visited the facility. This governmental acknowledgment fascinated me; in China, such NGO work often operates under stricter state oversight, creating different dynamics between civil society and authority. Yet despite BabFor's institutional legitimacy, its most profound innovation emerged not from administrative planning but from a patron's assertion of dignity.
The Economics of Dignity
Several years ago, an elderly man objected to charity's implicit hierarchy: "We're not beggars. I have pride too." His 100 won payment—less than ten cents—inaugurated what the manager calls a "dignity maintenance fee." The practice is voluntary, the amount unspecified, but the symbolic transaction transforms recipients into customers, passive charity into active exchange. This resonated deeply with me; my grandmother in China, devoutly Buddhist, often speaks of maintaining 'face' even amid adversity. The Korean concept seemed to operate similarly—allowing economic precarity without requiring total surrender of social standing.
These accumulated coins, pooled from Seoul's economically precarious elderly, now fund meals for impoverished children in the Philippines. The circularity struck me as remarkable: pride money from one marginalized population nourishing another continent's youth, dignity fueling compassion across borders. Watching elderly Korean men and women carefully placing their coins in the collection box, I thought of similar gestures I'd witnessed in Chinese temples—small acts investing material transactions with spiritual significance.
Intersecting Worlds: Patrons and International Witnesses
My interview attempts with BabFor's patrons proved challenging—language barriers compounded the inherent awkwardness of a foreign teenager soliciting personal narratives. Yet several individuals engaged meaningfully. One regular visitor described coming here to "buy and eat food," linguistic framing that repositioned the transaction as commerce rather than charity. His insistence on this terminology reminded me of how my own relatives speak about receiving help—always emphasizing reciprocity, never admitting complete dependence.
A Shanghai native, fluent in Korean, identified as Buddhist, though his religiosity seemed more cultural inheritance than active practice—a phenomenon I recognized from China, where religious identity often functions as ethnic marker rather than theological commitment. When I mentioned my own Chinese background, his face brightened; we discussed Shanghai's transformation over decades, the displacement of elderly populations from traditional neighborhoods to high-rises. His presence here, I realized, represented broader East Asian patterns: rapid urbanization producing social atomization, traditional family structures fracturing under economic pressure.
The volunteer contingent revealed poverty's international dimensions differently. Laura, a Belgian undergraduate fulfilling community service requirements, observed that Seoul's metropolitan intensity and surprisingly affordable services contrasted sharply with her quieter hometown. Her comparison between Belgian state welfare and Korea's NGO-heavy approach illuminated how different societies address similar problems—elderly isolation persisting regardless of systemic design. What struck me most in our exchange was recognizing that we international volunteers weren't charity tourists but comparative witnesses: I brought Chinese frameworks, Laura European ones, each of us learning localized responses to suffering that transcended national boundaries. Korea's approach—lower state intervention but higher communal mobilization—offered a third model between China's state-managed systems and Western social democracies.
Two Traditions, One Peninsula: Religious Plurality as Cultural Asset
My encounters with Korean religious life bifurcated along Buddhism and Christianity—a duality that itself fascinated me. In China, despite Buddhism's ancient presence, state secularism shapes religious expression differently. Korea's religious marketplace, where Buddhism and Christianity coexist as roughly equal competitors (each claiming around 20-30% of the population), creates dynamics I'd never witnessed firsthand.
At Saemoonan Church—established 1887 by American missionary Horace Grant Underwood, often termed the "mother church" of Korean Protestantism—I observed Christianity's institutional manifestation. The church, located in Gwanghwamun, has witnessed Korea's tumultuous modern history: Japanese colonization, the Korean War, rapid democratization and industrialization. Prominent independence activists like Ahn Chang-ho worshipped there; the YWCA was founded within its walls. Standing in that space, I contemplated how Chinese Christianity developed along parallel yet distinct trajectories—both arriving via Western missions, both intertwining with nationalist movements, yet producing different contemporary landscapes.
Christianity's Korean trajectory differs markedly from Buddhism's. Where Buddhism arrived via China over a millennium ago, becoming interwoven with Korean cultural identity through the Three Kingdoms period, Christianity represents a more recent implant—one that nonetheless took explosive root. This rapid adoption within barely a century created extensive infrastructure: churches, seminaries, mission organizations like Dail Community that now address social welfare gaps. The contrast illuminated how religions function differently depending on historical depth: Buddhism operates as cultural substrate, Christianity as modernizing force.
Buddhism: Familiar Yet Foreign
Meeting Monk Won-o, I expected familiarity—Buddhism formed part of my childhood landscape through my grandmother's devotions, temple visits during Chinese holidays, the ambient presence of Buddhist concepts in daily language. Yet Korean Buddhism's expression differed subtly from what I knew. Monk Won-o articulated Buddhism's social role with elegant simplicity:
This instrumentalist framing—religion as practical tool rather than metaphysical truth—resonated with Chinese pragmatism yet emphasized individual agency differently. The monk insisted: "If people's minds are peaceful, society becomes peaceful. Most social problems arise when people suffer. When their minds find satisfaction, social peace follows." This causal chain echoed Confucian social harmony ideals, yet Buddhism's mechanisms—meditation, mindfulness, attachment dissolution—offered more individualized paths than the relational ethics I'd grown up with.
Generational Rupture as Universal Challenge
Both traditions confront modernity's challenge: youth disengagement. Monk Won-o identified this as religion's paramount difficulty. "The thinking gap has grown too large. What young people and elderly prefer diverges completely—culture, learned lifestyles, cognitive frameworks." I recognized this immediately from China, where my generation navigates smartphones and global culture while grandparents maintain traditional practices. The monk positioned this not as youth failure but institutional inadequacy: "Religion must develop methods to communicate with young people, making Buddhism accessible in addressing contemporary problems, stress, difficulties."
Saemoonan's architectural redesign (completed 2019) and multiple daily services represent similar accommodation efforts. Observing these adaptive strategies, I wondered whether Chinese religious institutions faced equivalent pressures or whether state regulation created different evolutionary pressures. Korea's religious marketplace seemed to demand constant innovation—institutions competing for adherents rather than enjoying state protection or historical inertia.
Meditation: Personal Struggle, Universal Practice
On suffering's treatment, Monk Won-o emphasized meditation's pragmatic function. "Meditation and Zen practice trains returning to this moment. Thoughts arise—you observe: 'ah, I see.' You develop capacity not to dwell. Becoming aware—'this thought arose'—without fighting thoughts and emotions. Like clouds passing—sometimes appearing, sometimes not. Simply observe, become aware, watch."
I confessed my own meditation struggles—intrusive thoughts, inability to quiet mental chatter, the frustration of a mind refusing stillness. The monk smiled knowingly. "Everyone experiences that. This body lives, so thoughts and emotions flow naturally. People simply don't know when to stop, becoming attached, following thoughts, unable to escape. This is practice in returning to the present moment." My grandmother had told me similar things, but hearing it in Korean, in a Seoul temple rather than a Chinese one, somehow made the teaching penetrate differently. Perhaps distance from one's own culture allows clearer perception of shared wisdom.
The monk's 23-year practice manifested not in mystical pronouncements but accessible wisdom, consistently anchoring abstract concepts in quotidian experience. This practical orientation—Buddhism as lived technique rather than doctrinal system—resonated with BabFor's ethos: addressing immediate need while acknowledging deeper significance. Both spaces, I realized, rejected false dichotomies between spiritual and material, individual and collective, local and universal.
Convergence: What Seoul Taught a Chinese Teenager
BabFor and Korean Buddhism, though employing divergent methodologies, address fundamentally similar conditions: isolation, suffering, existential unmooring. BabFor tackles physical hunger and social atomization; Buddhism confronts psychological attachment and cognitive distortion. Yet as Monk Won-o emphasized, "Apart from people, religion holds no meaning"—echoing the kitchen manager's observation that patrons arrive because "their minds are lonely or stomachs empty."
Korean society's rapid transformation—compressed development producing within decades what other nations experienced across centuries—has generated acute dislocation. The elderly face economic precarity (Korea maintains the OECD's highest elderly poverty rate at nearly 40%) and social marginalization. Youth increasingly distance themselves from traditional institutions. I recognized these tensions from China's own rapid development, yet Korea's smaller scale and democratic openness created different expressions. Where Chinese development often subsumes individual suffering within collective progress narratives, Korea's civil society creates spaces like BabFor and temples—locations acknowledging pain while working toward amelioration.
Both Christianity's institutional infrastructure and Buddhism's contemplative practices offer resources for navigating modernity's discontents. Christianity provides community and moral framework; Buddhism cultivates psychological resilience and present-moment awareness. As an outsider observing both, I appreciated their complementarity—different tools addressing different dimensions of the same fundamental human condition. The question becomes not which tradition offers superior solutions, but how diverse approaches might work in concert.
My week in Seoul illuminated transformation's fundamental scale: not grand policy interventions but accumulated micro-practices. One meal. One 100 won coin. One meditation session. One conversation between Chinese and Korean elderly men comparing Shanghai's changes. One exchange between Belgian and Chinese teenagers discovering parallel patterns in different societies. These granular interactions, repeated and multiplied, constitute the actual mechanism of social change.
What Seoul taught me, ultimately, was how to see familiar problems through unfamiliar lenses. The elderly man's insistence on paying for his meal. The monk's patient explanation of watching thoughts like passing clouds. The Shanghai native finding community in Seoul. Laura recognizing her hometown's isolation in Korea's metropolis. My own grandmother's Buddhist devotions suddenly visible in new context. These moments crystallized a realization: meaningful engagement with social issues requires both intimate proximity and analytical distance—close enough to feel suffering's weight, far enough to perceive patterns transcending individual cases.
Returning from Seoul, I carry not solutions but expanded frameworks—Korean models alongside Chinese experiences alongside Western approaches, each illuminating the others' strengths and limitations. BabFor's dignity-preserving charity, Korean Buddhism's accessible meditation, Christianity's institutional mobilization—these aren't uniquely Korean innovations but localized expressions of universal human capacities for compassion, wisdom, and collective action. Seoul taught me that the warm hearts generating social warmth aren't confined by national borders; they're portable insights, adaptable practices, transferable wisdom. The challenge becomes not importing specific models wholesale but understanding underlying principles applicable across contexts—how communities anywhere might better address suffering, preserve dignity, cultivate peace.
