Why I fight for Yeouido

Timothy Elder
March 13, 2011

A friend recently shared with me a mailing that is being circulated by the Kwak group. The mailing has the purpose to discourage members from supporting the effort to recover the church's rights with respect to the property in the Yeouido section of Seoul.

Yeouido is an island in the Han River that runs through Seoul. I checked the Internet for the meaning of the name, and apparently it means something like "You can have it." The island had no water source and so was not suitable for agriculture. This made it land that nobody wanted.

Today, it is the location of the National Assembly Building, the Korea Stock Exchange Building and many corporate headquarters. Some of Seoul's most exclusive residential buildings are located on Yeouido. Land on Yeouido is among the most expensive in Seoul.

Before there was an airport in Inchon, Seoul's airport was Kimpo. Before there was an airport in Kimpo, Seoul's airport was on Yeouido. When Dr. Young Oon Kim set out on her mission to spread the Divine Principle to the United States and the rest of the world, her plane took off from Yeouido. This was where the world missions of the Unification Church began.

At the time of the 777 couple blessing in 1970, True Parents asked members to contribute money to purchase a tract of land on Yeouido. At that time, the land was cheap, but True Parents foresaw that it would someday be the ideal place to establish the world headquarters of the Unification Church. Some members who had no other means of raising money sold their own blood for this purpose. (At that time, there were not enough people willing to donate blood, so Korean blood banks would pay people for their blood. This is not the case today.)

Over the years, many attempts were made to build on this land, but we were not successful for a number of reasons. When Seoul established its land use plan for Yeouido, it set aside two tracts of land for religious use. One was our tract and the other was the tract where the Full Gospel Church is now located. They built, but we were not able.

In the 1980s, I remember helping the church fight off an attempt by the city to rezone the land to use it for a school.

Over the years, True Parents invested tremendous prayer and Jeong Seong in the land. Every time Father returned to Korea, this was his first stop. He would go to this land from the airport and offer a prayer. It was only after praying here that he would go to Hannam Dong.

Now the Kwak group wants to sell the land and leave nothing for the church. They may deny this, but this is the clear end result of the project they are not pursuing. They say people loyal to True Parents should not resist their attempts to take this land. They say they have figured out all the angles in terms of the law, and that our resistance is futile and only makes us look ridiculous in the eyes of society.

In my opinion, what they have done is to steal some of the holiest land in God's Providence centering on the Lord of the Second Advent. They appear to think that they have contrived a way using the laws of Korea to take this land from True Parents.

I believe that if we do our best to take it back, God will show us a way to defeat their attempt. In the end we will see who is stronger -- Kwak or God.