Island Missionary

Competently but without any heart for it, Father Edward J. Moffett worked in a suburban New York office, contributing to the Roman Catholic Foreign Mission Society's Maryknoll Magazine. Writing accounts of missionary work constantly sharpened a question in his mind: What spot on earth might most desperately need the help of a selfless missionary? As an old China hand (he spent almost a year in a Communist jail in 1950-51), Moffett knew what part of the globe to study. At length he chose the barren, wind-whipped Paeng Yong Islands, South Korea's farthest outpost in the Yellow Sea. lying a hairline south of the 38th parallel and only 7,000 yds. from Communist shore batteries.

Throwing up his job, he went to the islands. Last week he rounded out his second year of a mission that has transformed sick and heartsick farmers and fishermen into a people with food, shelter, and hope for the future.

Death & Disease. Swollen by 6,000 North Korean refugees, the population of 14,000 on the islands was so near starvation that some were surviving by eating seaweed and small crabs. Infant mortality was 40%. Not long after he arrived, Moffett saw islanders bury in the beach 53 children who had died of diphtheria. Rice, barley, cabbage and sweet potatoes could be grown only four months a year. For the remaining eight months, the islands depended on the catch brought back by 23 fishing boats.

Moffett, 39, a burly (220 lbs.) former professional boxer turned priest, decided to postpone preaching the Gospel and concentrate on trying to improve living conditions. "What would hungry, sick and suffering people think of a new and beautiful church being built?" he asked himself as he set up a tent to live in. "They would probably hate it," he decided.

For a while his appeals for funds--addressed to friends in the U.S. and to a 150-man U.S. Air Force radar team on the island--produced no results. Then he got the ear of the U.N. commander in chief in Korea, General Carter B. Magruder, and with it his first break: Magruder found funds to build 26 new fishing boats and a 36-bed hospital. A few months later the first boats were launched, and the hospital, staffed by a former Korean navy surgeon and six Catholic nursing sisters from Seoul, was treating 50 to 100 patients a day.

Future Rewards. Others began to contribute, and the pace of recovery quickened. As food, clothing and other supplies arrived, Father Moffett began running a program of bigger scope: the U.S.-aid mission started a reforestation program on the rocky islands; a 4-H club was formed, taught better farming methods, improved supplies of well water; a five-year project was started to double the islands' rice supply by draining salt water from a mile-square paddy.

Having propped up Paeng Yong's economy and welfare almost singlehanded, Father Moffett turned to matters of the spirit. He built a Quonset chapel, and church members built 13 other small churches on the three main islands, donating land and labor. Catholic membership rose from 417 to 3,100. (There are 1,000 Protestants, 5,000 Buddhists.)

Last week Moffett and his islanders faced a new peril. Communist North Korea boosted troop levels along the nearby shoreline, stepped up the pace of gunnery practice, and ringed the islands with armed speedboats that patrolled the ocean day and night, harassing fishermen. Their catch was reduced by half, threatening a new food shortage. The pressure seemed aimed at breaking Paeng Yong, but the initial effect was only to stiffen its spirit: the islanders now feel that they have something worth preserving.

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