Church elder’s view of current events

Columnist for The Korea Herald and the Elders Press of Korea, Kim Myong-sik has released “All in the Same Boat,” a compilation of 140 columns that he wrote for the Elders Press of Korea from March 2017 to July 2020.

This is a second compilation of his columns. “Jongno Square,” containing three year‘s worth of columns, was published in 2013.

In journalism for more than 40 years, Kim has served as a correspondent for Reuters, managing editor of the Korea Times and CEO of Arirang TV. He also served as the head of Korean Culture and Information Service and taught at KAIST and Hallym University. He is a retired elder of Somang Church, a megachurch with over 80,000 registered members located in Seoul.

In his columns, Kim discusses a wide range of topics from the perspective of a journalist and conservative Christian.

“I write for the the Elders Press of Korea, which is a press by church elders for church elders. I was asked to write columns not only as someone who‘s been in the press for a long time, but as a church elder, and share my thoughts about all sorts of topics such as policies and recent events,” said Kim.

The book is a journey through the major events of the last three years. Kim shares his take on the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics, inter-Korea summit at the Joint Security Area and COVID-19 pandemic, among other hot topics.

Kim’s two goals for the book are to show the conservative stance of the church to the public and empathize with church elders.

The title of the book, which comes from one of his columns, shows his desire to unify a divided society.

The book closes with an appendix that features the three-line journal kept by Kim’s wife for the past year, showing another perspective to the same events.

By Lim Jang-won (ljw@heraldcorp.com)