Sr Domenica, a Korean religious sister from North Korea shares her life story.
Recently I visited a group of elderly sisters in a retirement home and heard the most amazing story from one of the sisters. Sr Domenica had come to Seoul from North Korea during the Korean War (1950-1953).
One morning I asked her to share some of her life story with me and three and a half hours later she was still relating the miraculous event of her escape and subsequent life in the South.
Sr Domenica was born in Hamkyoung Province, North Korea, 80 years ago and lived with her parents and an older brother and sister.
“Life was hard at that time. In 1950 I was already in my fourth year in medical school. I had received a scholarship from the Communist Government that supported both male and female students.
In the autumn of 1950 U.N. troops and South Korean soldiers had pushed the North Korean army back deep into North Korea. A battalion of South Korean soldiers camped in our village where they protected us and gave us education on democracy and the real life in the South.
One evening in early December as I was having a meal with family and neighbors the village bell rang.
I grabbed my coat, slipped into my rubbers shoes and ran to the assembly point. The soldiers were loading all the University students on to their trucks and shouting urgently to keep moving. Not one of us knew what was happening; we followed orders and the trucks moved out. I never saw my parents, family or friends again.
We travelled by night for 21 days, hiding by day with the soldiers who cared for us and fed us until we reached a sea port where a U.S. ship was waiting to bring us south. We found out later the reason for the emergency was that the Chinese Army was advancing from the north in droves, over-running every place.
On our way to the ship we saw people who had been killed whilst trying to force their way onto the trucks. Getting on the boat was chaotic with people being pushed off the side, women dropping their babies, people crying and cursing. There were people helping each other and I was fortunate to travel with a soldier’s wife and three children. We protected each other on the ship until we reached Koje Island south of Pusan. The memory is still alive in my head today.
When we arrived on the island, there was confusion and misery. I lived under suspicion because I was a university medical student and the guards in the camp looked on me as a spy or a North Korean agent.
One day I was walking by the sea feeling so miserable and lonely that walking into the sea to end it all seemed attractive. It was then that I remembered some of the Catholic prayers learned as a child from a nurse in the hospital. I went in search of a church and found a small chapel on the island where people were gathered to pray.
After the service I met an old couple who invited me to stay with them. We lived on sweet potatoes and barley rice but I was never hungry, thank God. I stayed with them for two and a half months.
During this time I decided to look for my brother who was in Seoul and I put an advertisement in the paper. After some weeks I couldn’t believe my luck when he turned up. On meeting we embraced, cried and talked all night.
My brother was a policeman and lived in Pusan with his wife. I moved to Pusan and got a part-time job in a pharmacy and later in a hospital with the Benedictine Sisters It was during this time that I was baptised into the Catholic faith and decided to check out religious orders. I wanted a small community where I could pray, reflect and work with the poor and sick. 
In the end I choose the Little Servants of the Holy Family just founded by a French priest in Korea.
The sisters wanted me to be a doctor but I chose to be a nurse so that I could be closer to the sick. When I was young I was surrounded by poverty and sickness and I was able to fulfill my dream through God’s help.
My brother continued to care for me and regularly sent money and gifts to the convent. He died last year
aged 91.
I continued to pray for my parents in the Korean custom of filial piety. The only story we heard about our parents was from a Korean some years back who was living in the United States. From the stories he had heard, the Communist Regime gathered all the families in the area whose children escaped to the South and killed them all.
My parents were dealt the most severe punishment by being buried alive. To imagine my parents being buried alive fills me with anger and hatred of the Communist regime. I will never forgive them.”
Fr Sean Conneely is a Columban missionary serving in Korea.
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