Oahu’s Korean Catholics have a new chaplain. On Feb. 8, Bishop Larry Silva announced the appointment of Father Peter Young Kyo Kim, a priest of the Diocese of Daejeon in central South Korea, as the new chaplain of the diocese’s Korean Catholic Community which operates at St. Pius X Parish in Manoa.

He replaces Father Hyoin Simone Choi.

Father Kim, 64, was ordained on Dec. 18, 1968, in Daejeon. He has served in his diocese as an associate pastor or pastor of eight parishes and in several administrative and educational positions until 2004. For eight years, from 1991 to 1999, he was rector of the Daejeon Diocesan Major Seminary.

He studied sociology at the Gregorian University in Rome from 1971 to 1974 and spent the following year as pastor of the Korean Catholic Community in Germany.

For the past four years, Father Kim has been pastor of a Korean Catholic Parish in Richmond, Va.

Besides the Korean Catholic Community, the diocese has a Hispanic Ministry on three islands, a Vietnamese Catholic Community and a Samoan Ministry, plus services for Filipinos, Chinese, Tongans, Micronesians and Japanese.

The Koreans make up one of the strongest ethnic Catholic communities in Hawaii, with its own religious educational, evangelization and sacramental programs. It also has by far every year the largest number of converts to the Catholic faith of any ethnic community or parish in Hawaii.