My prison life - history and tradition

Step into Freedom an Cataclysmic War

My prison life - history and tradition

Do you know about my lifestyle in prison? A tradition of visiting these holy sites should be established... How precious is the feeling of self-confidence and liberation people would have as they fulfill their promise to follow in my footsteps through the historical tradition I have established! It is for this reason that I asked Kim Il-sung to open my hometown to visitors. I asked him to open both my hometown and the Hungnam labor camp; these sites will become educational facilities with training courses designed to correspond to the number of years I spent at each.

My imprisonment at Hungnam was not a setback for me. God has worked through my life course to turn the experience at Hungnam into a powerful source of inspiration that brings new life to the hearts of young people who study the Unification Church doctrine as it spreads to all parts of the world...

There is no better place than a prison to learn about what one is really worth and to recreate one's character. If we are to train young leaders to take on the task of world unification, I think we might need an official survival-training course.

Determined to make a fresh start

You feel quite young when you turn thirty. When I compare that time to now, it really was the era of my youth.

Leaving prison at that age, I resolved to make a fresh start, a new beginning in my life. It did not matter how hard and bitter my experience in North Korea had been up to that point. My mind was set on forgetting all the hardships and thinking of what had happened not as an impediment or loss but as stimulation for that fresh start on the road to accomplishing my historic mission. I was adamant, knowing I was responsible to accomplish my mission at any cost. I made this strong resolution in my thirties while my body was still in its prime. My release from prison was equivalent to resurrection and marked the starting point of proclaiming the truth of Divine Principle.

Those who followed me from Hungnam

At the time of my release, several people clung to me, crying desperately, asking permission to follow me. In fact, four people left their parents and wives behind to accompany me after I emerged from the labor camp in North Korea. Among them one was a man from the Moon clan, in which he thus came to represent Cain.

This man, Mr. Moon Jeong-bin, had worked as a department head in the South Hamgyong provincial office in Hamhung. He was sentenced to Hungnam prison because of a mistake committed by one of his subordinates. He spent some time with me in the prison cell, and from the spirit world, he was guided to become my follower. He later followed me as I traveled from Hungnam to Pyongyang.

Despite being a family man with a wife and two sons, he was very devoted to me and after his release kept visiting me in prison, hoping for my release. After my release, I set out in a hurry to reach Pyongyang, but since I was passing his house, I felt obliged to stop by and greet his family. After we exchanged some greetings and said our goodbyes, I left to continue my journey. Suddenly, he ran out of his house and started following me. "Why are you coming with me?" I asked. He replied that he felt compelled to follow me. So he came along.

A bundle of tattered prison clothes

The clothes I had worn in the labor camp, my shirts and underwear, were all made of cotton. When prisoners worked in the factory, the fertilizer ingredients -- ammonia and sulfuric acid -- would often stain their clothes. Both substances are caustic; their chemical action destroys an organic fabric such as cotton. If you pull on cotton clothes, they easily rip apart. After long use, our clothes were full of holes and began to rot... A beggar wearing such clothes would look even more miserable. Those clothes looked and smelled horrible. If you pulled on or scratched any part of that cotton cloth, it would practically disintegrate into shreds. Since I could not throw those clothes away, I stuffed them all into my bedding, which I spread on the floor and used as a mattress in the prison cell.

I pulled out the stuffing and replaced it with all these ragged clothes to preserve them throughout my three-year term.

What possessions do you leave prison with? I carried a bundle of those old clothes with me as I travelled from Hamhung to Pyongyang over a period of ten days. In Pyongyang, I asked a member to look after the bundle, saying, "Even if you have to throw away your silk jacket, skirt or a blanket made of foreign satin, keep this bundle safe and make sure you return it to me." Nevertheless, he threw my bundle out at the first opportunity and kept his family's stuff... It was lost.

If I only had those clothes with me today, I would not need to explain anything. They would have been too valuable to exchange for the whole universe. The material could speak for itself and stir more profound emotions than any talented orator's speech could ever do. I still have no words to express my disappointment about this loss. Where am I going to find a substitute for this? Is one for sale somewhere? No. Ordinary things such as a small piece of paper or a fragment of a newspaper article become precious historical relics if they are related to your public mission. Even if you are totally impoverished and starving on a single piece of dried radish leaf, you should first think of preserving it as historical evidence by filing it or taking a picture of it. These things will allow your children to inherit the very essence of our tradition without you preaching a word to them.

Evidence of war preparations

I observed things clearly when I came out of prison in Hungnam. I was very interested in all the changes that had taken place around me. From the very beginning, when the North Koreans laid a new bridge, it was designed so that the road could be widened up to two lanes each way. They built roads like highways. Since cement was abundant in the North, they paved the roads with a thick layer of concrete, a strong construction material. None of this escaped my attention.

It was obvious that the roads had been built to withstand the weight of heavy tanks moving, and the bridges had also been constructed so that thirty-ton tanks could cross them.

Since the road from Hungnam was strategically important to the East Sea coast, it had already been prepared for military purposes. All things considered, it was clear that the North had prepared for war ahead of time.

I understood that war preparations were implemented by the KGB as soon as the government was established in the North. It was in line with the Soviet policy in the Far East, which is why all the fertilizer produced by the Hungnam factory was sent off to the Soviet Union. They used to send several loads per day, which they bartered for ten- or twenty-year-old Soviet weapons. Since these weapons were so cheap, they got most of the old Soviet cache. They used them to train soldiers along the thirty-eighth parallel in order to prepare for the invasion of the South. They did not need state-of-the-art heavy equipment there and managed very well with the outdated weapons.

I was aware of all of this at that time. Based on my personal observations, it was clear that North Korea was readying itself for war. Everything was prepared by 1950.