The Words of the Kim Family after 2009
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The Words of the Kim Family after 2009 |
Won
Jong Kim
The Korean War broke out the year I turned sixteen. I lost my one and only older brother in combat in the Battle of White Horse Hill. My brother was ten years older than I; as a result, I was usually afraid of him, but as we grew, I began to grow fond of him. When I heard the sad news that my brother had been killed, I felt, for the first time in my life, a bitter and painful sadness.
The shock of my brother being killed was so great that at the time I began to ask myself "Why are we alive?" and "What happens at the end of life's journey?" I was gripped with feelings of doubt and a sense of futility. In the midst of not being able to find an answer that could relieve me from my questions, I chanced to read "A Critique of Das Kapital" published in Monthly Thoughts and felt that communism was the absolute truth. According to the principle that "truth conquers all," I was convinced that capitalism would collapse and communism would reign supreme. After developing this notion, I thought that my brother had died in vain, and I evaded compulsory military service for seven years. I also had prepared my heart to join the communist movement if given the chance.
One day, my mother was so grief-stricken about my brother's death that she went to a medium who told her, "Your son is being held as a prisoner of war in North Korea. You can see him again if you go to a Buddhist temple and offer many Buddhist prayers." I went immediately to a Buddhist temple and asked a Buddhist monk, "If I offer Buddhist prayers, will I be able to see my brother again?" to which he replied, "Man has essentially fallen and is born with sin. Mankind has lost all good fortune. Therefore, if you chant the Amitabha and the Bodhisattva Buddhist mantra, evil will leave your body and you will naturally be engaged with good fortune." tie added that if I did so I could see my brother again.
I recited the Amitabha and the Bodhisattva Buddhist mantras for seven years. I started seeing strange visions and hearing voices. When walking along the street, I could look at people and tell what their fate was. I would then actually try to find the background of the person and would discover it was exactly what I had thought. I felt insecure, thinking, "Am I turning into a face physiognomist or some kind of astrologer?" Thus, I stopped reciting the Buddhist prayers and limited my visits to the Buddhist temple to three times a year. Nevertheless, I was so taken by Buddhism that I thought of dedicating myself by becoming a monk in the future. If that did not work out, I considered getting involved in the communist movement or killing myself.
August
1967, Won Jong Kim among people in his hometown (seated, center
right)
I was spiritually confused and wandering, when one day in October 1960, I had the opportunity to listen to the Unification Church Divine Principle, day and night for a week from a friend named Bok Hyeon Kim. It felt as though I were dreaming and possessed by a spirit, because these teachings were ones that I had never heard before.
Following this, I tried to read Explanation of the Divine Principle but could not finish it. One day, I was determined to read the entire book on that same day. I read one page after the other, and I repeatedly read each page until I understood everything. I finally finished reading it at 2 am. While reading the book, I felt deep in my heart that it was a book that could not be written with human skills. I turned the last page thinking, I did not believe in God, who is alive, because of my ignorance.
The moment I thought of that, I saw a light spark so brightly in front of me and suddenly my body grew hot and began to shake. To stop the shaking, I grabbed onto the desk, but the desk began shaking and it would not stop. At the same time, tears were streaming from my eyes for no reason and the words, "God, God," kept coming from my mouth. After what seemed like about thirty minutes of that, I was concerned and afraid that something might be wrong with me mentally. I sat with my head lying flush against the desk.
One night, I was lying down with my eyes closed, when I saw a white airplane flying about twenty centimeters above my face and from the plane dropped a white cloth. As it unfolded, I saw "Unification Church" in large type written on it. It was so vivid that I wasn't sure if it was a dream or reality. After dreaming, I felt that the Unification Church was the true church.
On a different night when I was in bed, a snake as thick as a pillar appeared and after reaching my ankle, it started climbing up my leg. It flicked a spatula shaped tongue and when it tried to bite my face, I grabbed its upper and lower jaws trying to rip its jaws apart. As the snake's jaws grew more apart, I looked down the cave-like innards of the snake. At that point, I awoke to find my blankets all wet.
Two months after that episode, on February 2, 1962, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon came to Daegu on a tour. He spoke for six hours. He said, "To know what was in the mind of the snake when he tempted Eve six thousand years ago, grab the upper and lower jaws of the snake and shout, 'Snake! Let's have a look at your innards ' and unless you can see everything that is inside the snake, you cannot know the snake's mind."
I suddenly felt dizzy upon hearing this and my head just went numb. Obviously, I once again felt that Father knew all the secrets of heaven.
After acknowledging the presence of both the truth and the Holy Spirit, I could not just sit back and watch. I could not stop speaking for even an hour wherever I was. Everyone seemed pathetic in my eyes and seeing how they were living frustrated me. Knowing that they would end up following the path of death if I did not inform them about the Unification Church, I randomly visited any place with an on-going big event whenever I could; I would gather an audience in a room and convey the word for a whole day. When I was finished, however, I could not remember what I had said.
While I actively went around conveying the word, I also performed ancestral rites for my deceased father and I placed rice on an altar every morning and evening and wailed. However, when my father appeared in my dreams, family discord and accidents always would take place. After reading the chapter Resurrection in depth, I learned that I could dedicate myself to Heaven because of my father. Hence, I put away the altar and stopped performing ancestral rites. After doing so, my neighbors, relatives and siblings came and asked, "Death is a sorrowful matter in itself, do you have to do that?" and asked if I could continue the ancestral rites and maintain my faith in the Unification Church at the same time. I drove them out roaring, "My life is my problem and my family's problems are up to me to resolve, so everyone please leave." After that, no one came to our house. I altered the table where I had placed a photograph of my late father into a holy altar, around which the people I witnessed to each night would gather for service. 'was not sure about how others gave services, but I had the guests offer silent prayers, we would read key parts from the Divine Principle and they would take notes on those important parts.
Once I could understand the Principle intimately, a desire to serve my country formed within me; I joined the army in May 1962. At boot camp, I would go to the front and lecture every time we had a five-minute break. I gladly took on punishments and thought of it as indemnity. When we were assigned to our units after boot camp, I prayed hard that I would be able to go to the headquarters church.
Fortunately, I was assigned to a camp where I could take a day off in Seoul on the very first week of my assignment to the unit. The unit I was in was assigned all night watch duties; I stood watch from 4:00 AM to 5:00 AM. While on night watch, I would go to the cafeteria, light a candle, study and pray. Being able to do that was a blessed grace given by God. One day, the unit commander said, "Those that believe that there is a God and those that believe there isn't one, come up and have a debate," upon which I promptly came to the front and lectured for an hour about the existence of God.
After a few days, the unit commander called me, and we spoke until 3:00 AM. Upon returning to the barracks the following day, the veteran soldiers said they could not sleep because of all my talking with the unit commander. They threatened to beat me to death, but they could not do that because the unit commander and I were close. Soon after, the unit commander was replaced. The new unit commander came and asked to see me first. Upon meeting him, he told me that he, too, was religious, a Methodist, and complimented me. He then called me "Private First Class Kim." One day, I gave the unit commander a copy of Explanations of the Divine Principle to read. He looked at it for a long time and said, "That book has the power to carry me away; I am too afraid to read it."
I gave many lectures to the unit commander and to the unit. At times, after I gave a lecture, the unit would be inspired and would say, "Let us all drive to the Unification Church with our army vehicles next week." However, once training began, this spirit would fade out again.
I began a seven-day fast to show them that God is alive. After the third day of standing guard during meal times, the unit commander found out and spoke to me holding my hands, "You've shown us enough by fasting for three days. Please eat." I told him I must do this. He replied, "Hey, this is the army" and his treatment of me completely changed. Faced with no other choice, I told him I would eat and then went ahead and completed my seven-day fast. When I went to eat, the unit commander found me and asked, "Are religious people permitted to tell lies?" He expressed his concern and left.
I brought many soldiers from my unit to the headquarters church, but not one of them became a complete member.
In our unit, there was one terrible bully among the veteran soldiers; if you chanced to cross his path, he would swing his stick; he was a source of fear and anxiety. Everyone was afraid of him. However, this same person always came to my side yearning for the word. We would talk and I taught him hymns and took him to the headquarters church where we attended service together. In 1963, he filled a membership application and he never swore at the other soldiers again. If one of the soldiers caused trouble, he would even go as far as saying, "I would have killed such a fool before I came to know the Principle. Now that I know God, I cannot do that anymore." The soldiers were overwhelmingly thankful to me.
I felt pangs of conscience for eating comfortably in the army, so I began skipping a meal a day as a fasting condition for twenty-one days and brought the extra rice to the pioneer members in Beobwon-ri.
One thing I regret in front of Heaven for doing while I served in the army was that I knowingly ate pork from a pig stolen by soldiers from our unit. I was tormented by a guilty conscience, so I begged God saying, "Please allow me to indemnify the pork I had eaten with an equal amount of blood from my body." Soon after, a boil appeared above my ankle and swelled to such an extent that I could not get up and required surgery. I asked the doctor to forego giving me an anesthetic and did not budge an inch even though he cut through the flesh. Later, the unit commander commented, "You're the toughest guy I've ever met in my life," to which I replied, "I thought of it as a condition to remove the contaminated blood of sin, so it did not hurt much." Upon hearing this he said, "That's why faith is a fearful thing" and added, "This is exactly the right military spirit."
In
this March 3, 1974 photograph, the congregation surrounds Pastor Kim
and his wife.
After my discharge from the army in December 1964, I was assigned as a church pastor to Yeongyang. However, just as the saying goes that "a righteous person is not received in his hometown," my activities in my hometown wavered. Yeongyang is a small town made up of six villages and sixty thousand people.
Just as the Israelites marched around the wall surrounding Jericho, I walked around the town several times and chose to walk instead of using transportation even if I had the money. I roughly walked for about six thousand ri a year while conducting activities. Whenever I called for a general meeting in the area, around seventy to eighty people convened. We bought land, built church buildings by ourselves and conducted dedication ceremonies in Subi, Jukpa, Ibam, Gyegan-ri and the local district church headquarters.
Later, I participated in a forty-day workshop conducted by the headquarters. During this workshop, Father's statement, "You must plant fruit trees on all mountains to revive the Garden of Eden," stuck with me. I wanted to take the initiative when the opportunity arose. During the members' general meeting, I suggested that we raise money through farming to build the local district headquarters, which was unanimously passed. So, while looking for land to cultivate, we found an abandoned flat area that was hundreds of thousands of pyeong wide within a forest preserve owned by the government. We chose this land; I took full responsibility as the pastor in charge and we started our cultivation. Four young members formed a team and having brought food for four days, they began working day and night. All the residents in that region created an uproar saying the "Unification Church is stripping the entire mountain," but surprisingly, there was not a stir from the forest management office.
We originally planned to cultivate 4,000 pyeong but later realized that we had cultivated more than 5,000 pyeong. We built a cozy four-room house and a tobacco drying room. Around the beginning of the year, we applied for a tobacco cultivation permit and transplanted tobacco onto 1,300 pyeong of the land.
In March, I attended a local pastors' meeting for three days. Upon my return, I found out that the church general affairs manager, Byeong Seon Choi, and two other members, Gilung Ha and Seong Heon Kim, had been detained. By the time I had finished a local seven-day workshop and had gone to visit them, the prosecutor had already announced his intention to seek a three-year prison sentence with a hefty fine. However, the prosecutor was unable to close the case because all three members confessed that they were each personally responsible. My eyes welled up when I saw the members come out in handcuffs. The two young members seemed embarrassed, but the general affairs manager was composed. The general affairs manager had heard a voice from Heaven when he closed his eyes for a moment during the day that said, "Even your teacher did not stay in prison for over three months in South Korea. Do you think you will?" However, he did not tell the two members in case they considered it a lie. Soon after, the judge concluded that their acts had roots in patriotic intentions; he greatly reduced their sentence to a month in a guardhouse and a fine of w12,000. They were then released with a two-year suspension of indictment. When True Father heard the news, he was glad and said, "These three people have judged Peter's faith." We were able to obtain the cultivated land through which we harvested 150 sacks of potatoes, two sacks of beans, and tobacco that could fill a car in this way. With the revenue from our yearly harvest, we subtracted the costs associated with the sentence and the fines and to our surprise, it matched exactly the total cost; not even a single won was left from it. We just stood there looking at each other. Even if we had tried to make it come out even, we could never be as accurate as this. It was no doubt God's doing.
Though we failed to build a local district headquarters with the proceeds from the farming, we later were able to build a thirty-six pyeong church from donations members made and the profits gained from the air gun sales.
When I first understood the Principle, I wished I had waited though I had already married. Upon learning from the Principle that the Fall, involving our human ancestors, was rooted in illicit love, I felt that there would be a new concept of love. Even though I had been married for ten months, I talked my wife into starting a life of separation. We conducted this lifestyle for five years and finally received the married couples blessing in 1965.
Later, with the help of the provincial District Director, Chung Hwan Kwak, we were able to establish a consumers' cooperative and Tongil Pharmacy in Yeongyang. The building was then managed by Yeongyang Town and when Director Kwak realized the necessity of the business, he provided the entire business fund and dispatched a provincial district business director to run it. Basic commodities and agricultural supplies were bought at a high price in fanning villages while middlemen tricked farmers into selling their crop for almost nothing. Under these circumstances, products that went for w30 in the market were sold for just w20 at our consumers' cooperative. Every ten percent, or two won of the purchase, would be saved in the consumer's account. Hence, on market day, customers flocked to our cooperative lining up to buy products. Even though we were barely able to eke out an existence, eating boiled barley and kimchi every day and having difficulties even having radish kimchi, we voluntarily carried out the work.
Members also volunteered their effort to run the Tongil Pharmacy. Then a rumor that the Unification Church was very rich started spreading in Yeongyang and we were asked to purchase the largest pharmacy in town. As the operation scale of the consumers' cooperatives and pharmacy we ran grew in size, the market middlemen would come in front of our store and cry out, "Now, you have to feed our families." However, the business that had grown to such a scale ended up falling into the hands of outsiders after I had to move to another area because my mission had changed. It was then that I experienced what Father meant when he said, "Even though you feel physically sick, you cannot get sick and have no time to get sick." Heaps of work, including anticommunism lectures, farming within reclaimed land, constructing a local headquarters, circuiting in the precincts, revival meetings, public assemblies and others tasks swamp the life of a pastor.
One thing I will never forget about Yeongyang was the time we sold our family's last cow. I remember in 1967 during a pastors' national meeting how Father personally came out holding an air gun and intensely said, "We must sell air guns to support the operation of our Tongil Industries." Just a few days later, each region was ranked by potential and given separate total air gun sales goals they had to reach.
The pastors held prayer conditions all night long and strengthened their determination to accomplish the goal no matter what. I decided, come what may, I would fast and circuit Yeongyang until we met our air gun sales goal. I walked all around Yeongyang pleading to members. After four days of this, I arrived home on the fifth day but did not have the strength to stand.
We had five cows at home and I had given one cow to the church. The family had to sell the cows because I was not at home and they were using the last one to continue the farming. This cow was the lifeline for my sister-in-law, my aging mother, my wife and my young ones. However, I thought I should set a condition to compensate, if possible, even one-millionth of Heaven's pitiable circumstances by selling the last remaining cow. I was also well aware that if I were to do it hastily, God would not grant my wish; hence, I called all the members and told them, "I will fast until I fulfill my responsibilities. If! fail to achieve my responsibilities, I will die. If I die fasting, please use this cow to live well." I then added, "I will give you all air guns equivalent to the price of a cow; if you can sell them, not only would you be helping Heaven but you would also be able to buy a cow. This would be like killing two birds with one stone." Upon seeing me putting my life at risk, they agreed to help. Two days later, I took the cow to the town of Yeongyang, which was 24 km away and sold the cow for w33,300. Combined with the donations from members, I could offer a total payment of w100,000 for the air guns.