“Everything changed overnight when I was 8 years old,” says Kwang-Eel (David) Suh, who was born in what is now known as South Korea.
That was the night the Korean War erupted. It was June 25, 1950.
Before the war, Suh’s family of five lived in Chungju, a small city about 63 miles southeast of Seoul. His father practiced medicine, and the family lived a comfortable life. However, the war left the family with despair.
“My father was taken to North Korea (DPRK; Democratic Republic of Korea), never to return,” Suh says. “Without my father with us, my mother tried hard to piece the family life together.”
Suh worked as a shoe shiner to support the family, but it was not enough.
In January 1958, a rare opportunity arose for Suh. The Mennonite Vocational School, established by Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), was recruiting a limited number of students for the second-year class of middle school. Suh was admitted and started attending the school in March 1958.
“MVS became home and school and community, wrapped in one,” Suh says. “We became a big family.”
They learned together, worked together, studied the Bible and commonly ate MCC’s canned meat for dinner. MCC volunteers canned the meat in the U.S. and shipped it to South Korea. Each year, MCC canned meat nourished over 150 children who attended MVS until 1971.
“We called it Mennonite beef,” Suh says. “I ate a ton of it in my youth, for five years [while attending MVS], in South Korea. That was six decades ago. My palate still remembers the exquisite taste and my nostril the wafting aroma of the beef and kidney bean soup.”
From 1965 to 1968, Suh worked for his alma mater and MCC Korea, and he met his spouse, Yon-Sook (Esther Suh). With the encouragement and blessings from John Zook, a former MCC volunteer in South Korea and principal of MVS (1959-1963), Suh enrolled at Goshen College in 1968 and graduated with a business degree in 1971.
During this time, the Suhs attended Belmont Mennonite Church in Elkhart, Indiana, and heard about MCC meat canning. Suh remembers hoping to witness the meat canning operation someday.
As a certified public accountant, Suh and his family of four followed work opportunities around the country for many years. In 2019, they settled in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and now attend Forest Hills Mennonite Church in Leola.
“My trajectory of connection with Mennonites came to a full circle.… I enjoy fellowship with such a kind and joyous congregation,” Suh says.
In March 2023, Suh reached out to Ken Sensenig, church relations associate for MCC East Coast, hoping to visit an MCC meat canning site in Lancaster County. Sensenig invited him to the New Holland meat canning site.
He saw MCC’s mobile cannery, where the meat is cooked, that had pulled up beside the building where volunteers were prepared to help. Annually more than 30,000 volunteers assist the MCC canning crew at more than 25 locations, producing up to 500,000 cans of meat to send to people in need around the world.
Suh was impressed by the volunteers’ hard work and commitment: “It was an elaborate and time consuming and labor-intensive operation—grinding chicken to smaller pieces, filling, weighing, sealing, boiling, wiping, wrapping, inspecting and packing.”
He says, “While I was wiping water off and affixing labels on cans, I was overwhelmed with emotion. The emotion of utmost gratitude! And my distant memories came flooding, as if it happened only yesterday.”
Now Suh knows the rest of the story about canned meat.
Written by Yujin Kim, communications associate for MCC East Coast.
More about MCC’s work in Korea
In 1951, Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) came to Korea and recognized the urgent needs of the war refugees and began to take steps to establish programs in South Korea. After the ceasefire in 1953, MCC Korea was established in the city of Daegu and the relief, development and peace efforts immediately began: material aid (canned meat, clothing and blankets, hygiene and medical supplies), medical aid and training, a widows’ sewing project, Family Child Assistance (FCA) Program, Christian Child Care Training (CCCT) and Mennonite Vocational School (MVS).
MCC returned to South Korea in 2014 with programs focused on peacebuilding in the northeast Asia region and reconciliation between the two Koreas. Volunteer opportunities for young adults are provided through the Serving and Learning Together (SALT) program, International Volunteer Exchange Program (IVEP) and Young Anabaptist Mennonite Exchange Network (YAMEN).
Mennonite Central Committee is a global, nonprofit organization that strives to share God’s love and compassion for all through relief, development and peace. MCC is committed to relationships with their local partners and churches. As an Anabaptist organization, they strive to make peace a part of everything they do.
