The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established in 1995. Its stated purpose was to forster reconciliation by revealing the truth about killings and other gross violation of human rights committed between March 1960 and May 1994. The Commission's founding legislation requires that the TRC provide a factual, comprehensive and even-handed account of the gross violations committed on all sides in the conflicts of the past. It mandates the commission to identify the perpetrators of violations and hold them accountable. It also requires the TRC to place all violations in context by explaining the motives and perspectives of perpetrators as well as any prior provocation that might have influenced their actions. The central purpose of this article is to provide ways of grasping what reconciliation involves for us. The hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was well known to the world. They are not intended as an ordeal for those guilty of violating others' lives or a test for those questioned about the abuse of human rights. Nor should these hearings be simply a replay of people's pain when they recount what was done to themselves or their loved ones. Reconciliation should be taking place within and among the life of human who have a painful history. The fruitfulness of the term 'reconciliation' derives from the interplay possible between its use as describing an action, naming a process of which various actions are moments and providing a perspective in which to move from present realities into an unknown future. Without some experience of reconciliation effected in an action, we would have no idea how it as a perspective can throw light upon individual actions and bring hope to people's efforts.

• 김대용(Th.D 선교신학, 한일장신대 등 출강)