First Months Back in Korea
September 30, 1943 - May 4, 1944
I had gone to Tokyo to study, but they graduated us six months early so
students could do military service. Under the Japanese, students of subjects
related with engineering were graduated six months early. By the time I
graduated, the war in East Asia was in full swing. Because Japan needed people
to support the military effort, they graduated us in September rather than in March.
A ferry that was sunk
After I graduated, I bought a ticket on the ferry from Shimonoseki to
Busan. From Busan I was to travel overland to Seoul. I would have boarded the
Konlin Maru ferryboat on October 4. En route to Busan, the Konlin Maru, which I
should have been on, was sunk. [The New York Times reported on October 8 that
an Allied submarine had sunk the ship at 1:00 am on October 5 and that
broadcasts intercepted from Tokyo indicated only 72 of 616 of those on board
survived.]
I had gone to the bus stop to catch a bus for Shimonoseki, but my legs
wouldn't move. If I had been on board that boat, I would have been killed, but
Heaven stopped me from catching it. I know about such happenings. My mind told
me to go back to my lodgings.
I didn't telegraph home saying I wasn't coming. I went off to the
mountains with my friends. It was autumn. I told my friends, "Let's go to
Busa Mountain," and we went hiking in the mountains. Our trip lasted
several days, and we finally arrived back after a week... My whole family was
in a panic, especially my parents. Their son, who had said which boat he would
be on and on which date and at what time he would arrive, hadn't arrived. You
can imagine what an uproar my house was in. There was absolute pandemonium. My
family spent two days in and out of the Chongju Police Station in North
Pyong-an Province trying to find out what had happened.
It's about eight kilometers from my village to the town of Chongju. My
mother ran those eight kilometers barefoot. Do you think she was of a mind to
worry about what clothes or shoes she was wearing? She thought, my son has been
killed! She ran barefoot to Chongju and then traveled immediately down to the
Maritime Police Station in Busan for information.
She couldn't find my name on the list -- what could she do? She had
thought her son was dead. Her heart propelled her toward the police station
barefoot; she didn't even notice when acacia thorns pierced her feet. She
didn't realize thorns were in her feet until they festered and burst. When I
arrived home ten or fifteen days later and heard what had happened, I realized
that I had made a mistake.
My mother had gone the 230 km from Chongju to Seoul, which took ten
hours by train. From there, she traveled on to Busan. Imagine how frantic with
worry she must have been. She is truly a great mother. I was not able to
demonstrate filial piety toward her. I believe my mother loved me more than any
other mother ever loved a son. I was unable to show her the proper respect. Why
was that? I had to love you first...
Thoughts of Japan
When I had returned to my home in Korea, I thought of Japan; I will
surely return there in twenty years. "Let's meet again then. I left not
yet having evened the score with the Japanese Emperor, still unable to relieve
the bitter pain of the Korean people, but the time will come when I will teach
and lead the young men and women of Japan. Let us meet again then."
I did return to Japan twenty years later. On my return, I wondered most
about the number of young men and women attending the Unification Church I
visited. There were about five hundred young people gathered there. They had
all come from wealthy families. I asked them what they wanted to do in the
future and they all said they would go wherever I guided them. This was quite
moving for me. They don't worry about the Japanese emperor; they just need the
Unification Church and Rev. Moon to succeed. I asked those members if they were
willing to be guided by me, and they said they would.
Sung-Jin Nim's mother
I married Sung-jin's mother [Choi Sun-gil], in accordance with Heaven's
will. [Choi Sun-gil is the grandmother of Shin-mi nim, Shin-il nim and
Shin-sook nim. Shin-mi nim was blessed in 2000; Shin-il nim and Shinsook nim
were blessed in 2006, in a blessing ceremony for members of the third
generation of the True Family.] I did not marry her just of my own free will. I
receive the command from the spirit world. She was also following instructions
from the spirit world when she met me. Her name was Choi Sun-gil. The meaning
of the Chinese character for choi is "high." Sun means
"first," and gil means "happy." It's like a boy's name. Why
did they name a girl Sun-gil? It was something, the spirit world instructed
them to do. Her name meant she was to be the first person to be happy. She was
to be the first happy woman. It meant she would be more blessed than anyone
else connected with God's providence.
Sung-jin's mother is a very smart lady. She's extremely good, and she is
good around the house as well. The Choi clan was quite a famous clan in the
Chongju district. She was the daughter of the head family. She was thrifty as
well and being extremely strong-willed. She didn't like to be indebted to
anybody. She graduated from elementary school, with only seven or eight years
of schooling in all.
It was Heaven's will that we met. Even from the worldly point of view,
Sung-jin's mother should have realized that there was nothing more important
than her husband. Despite her shortcomings in every area she needed to adapt to
the situation. She should have willingly accepted any sacrifice that might have
resulted from her husband's working for the larger purpose. From the individual
point of view, I chose Sung-jin's mother to be my bride because I thought the
greater our differences, the more God's will would benefit.
She had a strong Christian faith. She was a model Christian. From that
point of view, she represented the world and Korea, not in the position of a
male John the Baptist but in the position of a female John the Baptist. The
mission of Christianity was to prepare the bride for presentation, connecting
her to God's will.
Sung-jin's mother even spent some time in prison because she refused to
bow to the Japanese Emperor's shrine. I had found that kind of woman, that kind
of virginal woman.
I was the twenty-fourth person to be suggested to her as a potential
husband. The person trying to find her a husband had searched throughout the
whole district for a suitable man. Sung-jin's mother's family was also
spiritually open. They had prayed with my photograph and had been taught by the
spirit world. They received many revelations at that time.
They saw two mirrors appear, in the east and in the west. In the center
of heaven they became one; from its center, the sun rose and shone its light
all over the world, and the moon and all the stars in the cosmos from the east,
west, south, and north surrounded it. Under the light shining from the moon,
all of creation was transformed into a flower garden. They received many
incredible revelations like that.
After praying, they were taught all these things. In light of this, do
you think she had some other man in mind? No, she was determined to marry me.
A woman -- a distant aunt twice removed or so -- just appeared one day
because she felt determined to find a match for her nephew. She was quite a
famous matchmaker. I like joking and I used to like teasing her. [Laughter] If
I was hungry she would buy noodles for me. So I said to her, "If you are
such a good matchmaker, why don't you go ahead and try?"
Soon after that, I left my hometown. Somehow or other, with this and
that, it was a year and eight months before I returned. I thought that since I
had been out of town, enough time had passed that the lady might have married
someone else; she might not be interested in me. On the contrary, when I
arrived home, my aunt yelled at me and said the lady was so charmed by me she
had resisted marrying another man. She only wanted to marry me. [Laughter] As
soon as I arrived my aunt said, "Let's go," and walked ahead of me.
My mother came, too... I became a topic of conversation in my town. As I
recall, about five of us, including my uncle, went to the lady's house...
Meeting the prospective in-laws
We arrived from Seoul at night and walked twenty-eight kilometers
without sleeping. The road was not even paved; there was a lot of gravel on it.
It was horrible to walk twenty- eight kilometers in shoes. When the sun rose,
we could see an inn. We went there and asked where such and such a person lived
and the innkeeper said her house was the one right in front of his building.
The house was a good, tile-roofed house. It was the biggest house in the
village.
I offered a bright greeting to the owner of the house, "Please
forgive our rude intrusion as passers-by." Can you imagine my being so
cheeky? Can you be so bold if you have walked all night long? "Could you
please give us a room? I have not slept for three nights." My mother and aunt
slept in one room and the others slept in a room in another part of the house.
Because I was a prospective groom, they allowed me a room to myself.
However, we hadn't even woken up by noon the next day. [Laughter] The
owner of the house had already prepared breakfast. What could she do? We
finally got up around one-thirty or one-forty. I folded my bedclothes and
washed myself, since it was someone else's house and she had already prepared a
bowl of water and some salt to clean my teeth. By the time I finished washing,
it was already two-thirty, so I had no choice but to eat something. I quickly
ate everything they had prepared for me. I didn't leave a thing. I asked her
for some water and even some fruit for dessert, which they had not prepared.
A rumor began circulating. News that a prospective groom had come to see
and interview the potential bride spread quickly all over the Choi village,
which had about a hundred and fifty houses. The villagers talked about all
kinds of things, such as how long the candidate-groom had slept...
I wanted to know how magnanimous they were, so I asked them to cook a
chicken for me. They had to catch and cook all the hens they had. They even
caught a distant relative's hens for my family. They probably caught about
fifty hens in all! So many people came to visit and eat with us. One ate and
left; then another ate and left. [Laughter]
Then we had dinner. I had gone there to meet the prospective bride but I
didn't say anything about meeting her. What kind of person acts in that way?
[Laughter] I just told some interesting stories. [Laughter] I told them how
Tokyo was and how the Japanese lived. I told them everything. I spoke until two
o'clock. I mean two o'clock in the morning.
Engagement
(December 1943)
It was past three in the morning. Past three! I thought that I should
not wait to take some action. So, I said, "Though it's very late, please
let me meet your daughter." I may have been the first prospective groom to
ask to see the bridal candidate at three o'clock in the morning on the issue of
marriage. I asked her to come in and had her sit down. I asked everyone else
not to leave. Then I led them into a pleasant mood. I spoke about how school
is, and other things...
Then I arranged to meet them the next day, when I would test them in
earnest. If I stayed with them for two days, which became three days... If
someone stays for more than three days, he is sure to be spoken ill of.
[Laughter] So, I asked them detailed questions, and told them I would go the
road of the Unification Church. I went as far as telling her that she may have
to live alone for five years after the marriage and that it might end in five
years or seven years. Even at that time, I told her she should be prepared to
live alone. Knowing her own situation at that time, she was in the position
where she had to accept everything -- that was the price, wasn't it? She had to
meet whatever this other person asked. She said she would do anything. In this
way, we married. After the engagement ceremony, I returned home.
And so we were engaged in December. Sung-jin's mother was nineteen.
Change of plans for Manchuria
North of the city of Harbin there is a place called Hailar. At that
time, I was accepted to a job at an electric company in Jonup, and I planned to
live there when I returned from school in Japan. Why did I want to go to
Hailar? To learn Russian, Chinese and Mongolian. I planned to go there with the
intention of later creating a continental base in Asia, and to spend three
years learning the languages.
Jonup was in Andong-hyun in Manchuria. However, while I was planning to
visit the branch of the electric company I was to work for, I saw the situation
was not favorable and I decided it was not a good idea to go to Manchuria. So I
went there to return everything related to the job I had gotten in Andong. I
went there with a letter of resignation and all the necessary expenses and met
the head of the branch.
A visit to Kwaksan
(February 1944 - 4 Kwaksan is Choi
Sun-gil's hometown.)
Kwaksan is a city between Chongju and Sunchon. I remember it was around
February. This time I was visiting in order to set the wedding date. Because of
the bus schedule, I couldn't get there until it was already evening. It was
about six when I got off at Kwaksan. The sun was already setting slowly. It was
a fifteen li [a li is equal to approximately 0.4 km] from Miss Choi Sun-gil's
house. It was early February and there was snow. It snows until March in
Pyong-an Province.
My oldest brother-in-law came out and said to me: "In our family,
there is no such thing as a bridegroom-to-be coming and behaving like this
before the wedding." He meant his family couldn't welcome me, and I had to
go back home. This shows that his family was a good one, because what he said
was based on the traditional standard. So, I had to go back down the seventy-li
(twenty-eight-kilometer) road to Chongju with the snow coming down in large
flakes. It was a poetic scene.
After I left, my mother-in-law-to-be returned and an uproar ensued. From
her viewpoint this had created a big problem. Thinking the engagement might be
broken off, she criticized her son. "How in the world could you do
that?"
That was the situation, and Sung-jin's mother heard about it while
visiting her uncle's house. She got dressed and left the house immediately. She
caught up with me and insisted that I go back to her house, asking me how I
could have just left. She said that she would take responsibility for whatever
was happening in the house. I came to understand her character at that time.
Oh, this woman was unusual -- most unusual. Nevertheless, how could I possibly
return to her house under those circumstances? So I told her I wouldn't go. She
insisted she would go with me the remaining twenty kilometers to Chongju. She
thus traveled with me the whole night, all the way to Chongju, telling me about
her life on the way.
My uncle lived in the rural town of Chongju. We went there and I asked
for breakfast for her. My intention was to send her back by bus. Still, she
would not go back on any account. She asked my uncle's mother to be a witness
and take her along to my father's brother's house, would you believe. There was
no choice, so my uncle's mother took her to my house, where she stayed for a
week. During that time, my father and mother saw her as affable, sensible and
broad-minded. So, everybody including my parents, older sister and younger
brother were taken with her. In that way, she mapped out her plan.
Kashima-gumi Construction Co., Seoul
(Around March
1944)
Kashima is a big Japanese construction company. I got a job working in
their Electrical Department. I was the earliest to arrive in the office in the
morning, and I worked the latest, too. In this way, I trained myself. It's
pleasant to be the first one in the office. In the long run, it is a valuable
experience. A person who works in that way becomes a successor and a master.
Likewise, a person who gets up early in the morning because of Heaven's will
and continues to do so all throughout his or her life is a master. That person
becomes a master of the heavenly nation.
Marriage
(May 4, 1944)
I married prior to Korea's liberation from Japan. I did so in response
to Heaven's command. As you know, my bride became Sung-jin's mother.
Since the marriage was sudden, my mother and father had to prepare more
than ten rolls of cotton cloth within two months. There are many stories I
could tell about all the preparations. My whole life was pioneering. Everything
I had done up to the time of getting married was pioneering. Even finding a
horse... Taxis were not available at that time.
In order to fetch a wife living seventy li [28 kilometers] away, one had
to go by horse. That was prohibited at the time of Japanese rule, but as I
couldn't do that on foot, I got the horse myself.
We arranged the wedding date, but then my father-in-law passed away a
week before the marriage...
We had observed Easter on April 17. On May 4, the wedding day, it poured
with rain! As you can see, there was a great deal of difficulty in everything.
It was a road of indemnity, full of twists and turns.
I knew many famous Christian ministers very well, including Rev. Lee
Ho-bin, Han Jun-myung and Park Jae-bong. They were quite close to me. So before
I married Sung-jin's mother, I went to the New Jesus Church and got Rev. Lee to
officiate for us. We were that close to each other. We were close because every
time I dropped by his church in Pyongyang,, which had a Sunday School
membership of about a thousand, I taught that Sunday School. The Sunday School
students thought I was famous. Since I had become close to ministers in that
way, Rev. Lee Ho-bin was well known to me too. That is why he officiated at the wedding.
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