Chung Pyung Lake Workshops

Chung Pyung Lake Park

A story about Chung Pyung Lake, maybe somehow connected to the problems of the New Eden Farm in Brazil:

In June 1997 my wife and I participated in a 10-day workshop at Chung Pyung Lake. After three or four days all the participants of the 10-days workshop were asked to help dig out about one hundred newly planted trees and replant them in a different location.

The trees that needed to be moved were part of a literal cover-up. They had been planted in soil that was covering a concrete road which lead up to the area where the spring (with the Water of Life) and three of the prayer trees (Tree of Heart, Tree of Loyalty, Tree of All Things; I think) were located. This concrete road had been built without government permission, and for this reason needed to be covered up with dirt at some point.

Why then did we have to move these trees? Well, apparently it wasn't only the concrete road that was illegal, but all the landscaping that had been done to turn the area around the spring and the three trees mentioned above into a kind of park. Large areas of hilly land had been flattened and covered with gravel, and lots of decorative shrubs and grass had been planted where there once used to be rice fields. This agricultural land had been changed without government permission.

Road covered with dirt or not, somehow the government had learned about this illegal landscaping and now refused to give the Chung Pyung Lake management a building permit for the cultural hall. First the illegal changes had to be undone.

Once we had removed all the trees from the soil on top of the concrete road a caterpillar drove up to the altered landscape and tore up all the ground around the spring and the three trees. (Not before we had unearthed hundreds of shrubs and bushels of grass and replanted them in a different place, though).

A few days later we were recruited once again, and this time we were planting corn and Soya beans in the area newly returned to agricultural usage.

One Chung Pyung Lake staff members explained to us that land management at Chung Pyung Lake was very challenging because Father many times gave directions that were not taking into account the Korean laws. The staff was left to figure out how to unite with Father without breaking any laws, and obviously they didn't always succeed.

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