vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #596 / Special reports / Reading article...

“I love Russia as I love my homeland, S. Korea. Russia for me is home,” shared Bek Guen Seok, a S. Korean Christian missionary woman who arrived in Russia in the late 90s, started a Presbyterian church for the deaf in Vladivostok, was admitted to Russian citizenship and married a Russian man.

Bek, 49, now going under the adopted name of Teresa, grew up with her seven brothers and sisters in a well-off family in South Korea. She first came to Russia in 1997, where she spent her three-month missionary service in Primorye’s town of Ussurisk.

“I returned home, but I had an unsettled heart – I wanted to come back to Russia,” said Teresa, an active and friendly woman who radiates energy and optimism.

According to her, the first period she spent in Russia was not easy. “But apparently it was pleasing to God that I stayed,” she said. “I married a wonderful Russian man. My parents long did not give consent to the marriage, but later they understood that it was my destiny.”

The Presbyterian Church for the deaf and partially deaf, which was officially started by Teresa in 1999, is located on the ground floor of a residential building on Vladivostok’s Kotelnikova Street. The premises have a kitchen, a computer-equipped room and a hall, where Teresa holds services, preaches and gives Bible lessons to the parishioners.

Along with leading the church, she also teaches Korean in Vladivostok’s elementary school for seeing-impaired children and at the Rodnik School in the town of Arseniev.

Still, she stressed, her chief mission in Russia is helping deaf and hard-of-hearing people. Every Sunday, she visits Vladivostok’s boarding-school for hearing-impaired children and brings them small presents. Currently, she is seeking sponsors to support the disabled.

According to Bek, Russians’ lack of respect towards each other is what she finds the biggest drawback in the country. “In Korea you go, for instance, to the post office or the bank, and there you are greeted with a smile,” she said. In Russia people are rude to each other, they may throw sunflower seeds and cigarette butts beneath their feet and they litter, she added.

When asked what she liked the most about Russia, she answered: “The nature. In Korea, for example, everything is tidy and beautiful, but it is made by human hands. Here, it all is natural.” “And the country has a lot of good people as well”, she concluded.