Soul Survivors : A Korean minister finds a congregation among the homeless, preaching to them to help atone for a fatal car accident. : Hearts of the City / Exploring attitudes and issues behind the news

At 7 in the morning, a handsome man with a clerical collar stands in the shadows of Downtown skyscrapers and leads a bedraggled group of Skid Row residents in reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. . . . “

The Rev. Ye Yn Chun’s accent stands out in the chorus of three dozen men and women. These denizens of Boyd Street have come to expect their day to begin with a visit by the Korean minister to the neighborhood shunned by almost everyone.

When the motley group completes the prayer, the minister walks over to his white van and removes large containers of food and clothing. On this July morning, breakfast consists of doughnuts and coffee. Volunteers from among the group make sure recipients form an orderly line.

When Chun began ministering to the street people in 1990, he tried to maintain order by himself. But the 5-foot, 4-inch preacher quickly learned that he needed help. “I got spat upon, struck in the face and had coffee thrown at me,” he said.

It was a tragic car accident that led him to Skid Row in a most improbable way.

“Sometimes, God has a shocking way of changing the course of your life,” he said.

A decade ago, after Chun was ordained, the Presbyterian General Assembly in Seoul assigned him to serve a congregation in Sumter, S.C., outside Shaw Air Force Base.

Korean wives of U.S. servicemen had appealed to the Korean Presbyterian headquarters because they couldn’t get a minister.

Chun answered the call to minister to the lonely group shunned by their own people--Korean women married to American enlisted men are often treated as social outcasts.

During his first week, however, while learning to drive, he stepped on the accelerator instead of the brake in front of the church, killing a member of the congregation and injuring two others.

Try as he did, he could not understand why God let the nightmare befall him. The incident caused a bitter division in the church. Many members demanded that he leave. “I nearly lost my mind,” Chun said.

Amid his own depression and guilt, Chun made up his mind to return to Korea. But his older brother in Los Angeles prevailed upon him to come to California.

Moving here with his wife and three children, Chun found work as an assistant pastor in Korean churches. In 1989, he founded an organization to help the handicapped in Koreatown as his personal way of atoning for the accident.

But in the months after he opened the door, only two disabled Koreans came. So he kept praying for guidance and waited.

On one cold night in January, 1990, while driving west of Downtown, he was drawn to a group of men huddled around a fire at MacArthur Park.

Seeing that they were handicapped, he asked: “Is there something I can do for you?”

“Bring us hot water,” one said.

When he returned with hot coffee on the next day, he saw only two disabled men but more than 20 homeless people.

From then on Chun came to the park at 6 every morning with coffee and doughnuts he collected from Korean shopkeepers.

In May, 1990, when subway construction forced him to relocate, he moved his “Church of the Street” to Downtown.

For Chun, 54, feeding the hungry is a means to a bigger goal.

“My mission is to help liberate them from their homelessness by bringing Christ into their lives,” he said. That’s why the Bible study and quiz he gives after the breakfast is central to his mission. Only half stay for it. Chun’s quiz covers the gamut--from naming three minor prophets in the Old Testament to identifying what he calls the “love and faith” chapters.

Sometimes when Chun mispronounces English words, John Meneth, known as “the Walking Encyclopedia,” corrects him.

A right answer merits one or two items of clothing, depending on the day’s supply.

But the emphasis on Christianity doesn’t always go over well with everyone.

Once, a man came up to Chun and demanded: “Why don’t you quote from the Koran, too?”

Apparently he didn’t like it when Chun told him, “Have you ever heard a [Christian] minister quote from the Koran?” The man returned the next morning for breakfast, then punched the minister in the chin and left.

Chun’s ministry is supported by 70 Korean churches of all denominations from throughout Southern California, the home to 500,000 ethnic Koreans.

One church elder donated the $27,000 van that Chun is using. Businessman Young Keun Kim has offered to buy a building for Chun’s mission.

Chun spends hours every day collecting donated food and clothes from throughout Los Angeles and Orange counties.

He says he will continue the work as long as God wills it.

“This is where I belong--I’m happiest when I’m on the street with the homeless,” he said.

He baptizes about 100 people a year. He has also helped find work for some, such as Johanes, who works at a pharmacy in Hollywood, and Nicholas, who is employed at a Los Angeles hospital.

He is training a group of men and women, such as Charles and Barbette Jordan, to set them up in shoeshine businesses.

But his big dream is to find a piece of land where the street people can live and grow their own food and discover the joys of harvesting their own crops.

The Jordans, whose quarters is a cardboard box with a gray tarp in a parking lot on Boyd, have known Chun for several years. Chun married them three years ago.

“It’s been tough trying to get back into the swing of things,” Charles Jordan said. But he’s hopeful that he and his wife will get back on their feet with the help of God and Chun.

“I love him,” she said of Chun. “He is strict and stern. But he has a good heart.”

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The Beat

Today’s centerpiece focuses on a Korean minister who feeds, clothes and preaches to the homeless in Downtown’s Skid Row. Anyone interested in assisting the homeless can contact:

The Rev. Ye Yn Chun’s Church of the Street, (213) 382-2233 Zion Gospel Mission (213) 387-7514