Presentation
Confronted with One´s Own History

Remembering the martyrers of Tokwon

Under the centuries-old motto "ora et labora" (pray and work) more than 70 monks work in various workshops. The history of the abbey, however, is quite recent. The roots of Waegwan were in a Benedictine Abbey first in Seoul and then in Tokwon near Wonsan, today in North Korea, founded by German Benedictine Missionaries from St. Ottilien Monastery in Bavaria. After the Korean war, when 28 monks died as Martyrs, the survivors started the now thriving Abbey of St. Maurus and Placidus in Waegwan.

Dr Bernhard Seliger from the Hanns Seidel Foundation in deep conversation with monks of the Waegwan Abbey

Here, late April a group of 25 members of the German-language Catholic Parish of Seoul went for a retreat. Dr. Bernhard Seliger of Hanns-Seidel-Foundation Korea gave a lecture on current North Korea and the chances for peace on the Korean Peninsula. Waegwan Abbey supports among many other social projects also a hospital which was built with the aid of the monks in Rason, North Korea and is the most important and largest hospital in the region. The old abbey of Tokwon near Wonsan now became a University of Agriculture, but many of the old monastic buildings still survived.