Chaplains for the ROKs

On the basis of prewar army records, Korean soldiers do not bear much resemblance to a field that is white unto a chaplain's harvest. About 1.6% are Confucianists, 1.2% Buddhists, 4.6% Christians (mostly Presbyterians), and 92.6% are without any religious affiliation at all. But with the war came demands for the consolations of religion, and no chaplains to fill them. It was 1951 before a ROK chaplaincy corps was organized under the guidance of two veteran missionaries, Methodist Dr. William E. Shaw and Roman Catholic Monsignor George M. Carroll.

Last week the new chaplaincy corps shipped 113 Korean civilian chaplains out to ROK units, the largest group yet to graduate from its training school in Taegu. But the demand is still so far ahead of supply that many of the Catholics have had to be rushed through before ordination, hence may not hear confessions or say Mass. Chief of the ROK chaplains, Catholic Father Cho In Won, 46, is encouraged. "We can now reach people we could never reach before," he says. "In its own way, the war has given us a spiritual revival."

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