South Korean Monk Tends Souls of Dead Enemy Soldiers

Along the SFX1 Highway that runs from Seoul to the barbed wire fences of the demilitarized zone lies an all-but-forgotten cemetery. Here rest the bodies of 769 North Korean soldiers who came to fight the South. But Muk-gai, a South Korean Buddhist monk, does not consider them enemies. Once they are dead, we should forgive everything they did in life, he said. He sees it as his spiritual duty to care for their souls. It is an old Eastern tradition. The 56-year-old monk, with a...

© La Voix de l'Amérique - vendredi 7 novembre 2014