Shincheonji Volunteers, Colombia, and a Saturday I Didn't Expect to Remember

I hadn't planned on doing anything meaningful that Saturday. I just wanted to get out of the apartment, walk off my coffee, maybe pick up something cheap at the flea market a neighbor had mentioned was happening at Sinyong Bitgoeul Neighborhood Park. That was the whole plan.

I didn't expect to leave thinking about Colombia.

The market looked ordinary enough from a distance — twenty or so tables spread across the grass, people sorting through clothes and shoes and secondhand toys, the usual weekend hum. It was the banner overhead that made me slow down: "Colombia Hope-Sharing Flea Market." I hadn't heard the news, or maybe I had and it hadn't really landed. A 7.4-magnitude earthquake had hit western Colombia on August 10. By the time I was standing there on September 12, more than 330 people had died and nearly 466,000 had been affected, according to the figures posted on an information board near the entrance. I read it twice. It's strange how a number that big can feel abstract until you're standing in a park reading it off a laminated sign.

I started walking the rows of tables differently after that. Everything for sale — the kids' shoes, the secondhand jackets, a little collection of potted plants someone had brought — every purchase was going to earthquake relief. I ended up buying a used tote bag I didn't really need, mostly because I wanted my few thousand won to go somewhere that mattered.

Near the middle of the park, a group of teenagers had set up a table making friendship bracelets, and beside them, a corkboard covered in handwritten notes. I stood there longer than I meant to, reading them. Stay strong, Colombia. We're far away, but we're rooting for you. We hope this reaches you somehow. Before I could talk myself out of it, I picked up a marker and a scrap of paper and left one of my own. It felt small. It also felt like the only thing I could actually do, standing in a park on the other side of the world from the people I was writing to.

I got to talking with a high schooler helping run one of the tables. She told me she'd learned something that day she hadn't known before — that Colombia was the only Latin American country to send combat troops to help South Korea during the Korean War. I hadn't known that either, if I'm honest. She said 213 Colombian soldiers died here, 448 more were wounded, fighting for a country that had nothing to do with them. She said she wanted to remember that and give something back now that it was Colombia's turn to be struggling. I didn't have much to add. I just stood there thinking about how easy it is to forget things like that until someone hands you a reason to remember.

By the time I left, the tables were still half full, but I'd heard that all twenty seller teams were planning to donate everything they made — organizers later said the total came to just over 4.6 million won, headed to Colombia's earthquake-affected communities through the Gwangju branch of the Shincheonji Volunteer Group and the Central Federation for Conservation of Nature, who'd put the whole thing together.

I walked home with a used tote bag I didn't need and a strange, quiet feeling I hadn't expected from a Saturday errand. I hadn't donated much. I hadn't done anything dramatic. But for a couple of hours, a park near my apartment had connected me to a country I'd never thought twice about — and to a debt, decades old, that a bunch of ordinary people decided was worth remembering out loud.

I think I'll go back next time.

You can read more about the event here: 전남인터넷신문