Not long ago the Korean media carried a story about a Japanese
woman living in Milyang, Korea, who received an
award for her filial service to her family. The article said
that the woman had come to Korea as the wife of a Korean man who
had met her through an introduction by a certain religious group
and married her despite opposition from his family. The Japanese
wife had cared for her Korean mother-in-law, who had difficulty moving
around, and her aged father-in-law with great devotion. The people
in the community then recommended her to be recognized for her filial
actions, the article said.
The mother-in-law was paralyzed from the waist down and classified
by the Korean public health authorities as being in the secondhighest
level of physical handicap. From the first day of her marriage,
the daughter-in-law carried her mother-in-law on her back to differenthospitals so she could be treated. Because she spent so much time devoting
herself to her parents-in-law, she rarely had time to visit her own
family in Japan. When she heard that she was going to be awarded for
her actions, she protested, saying she was merely doing what was right.
This Japanese daughter-in-law in the news is Kazuko Yashima. She
came to Korea through the international and intercultural marriages of
our church. These are marriages where men and women are matched
across religious, national, or racial differences. There are many young
men in Korea’s rural areas who cannot find brides. The brides who
come to Korea in these international and intercultural marriages do so
unconditionally.
They care for their aged parents-in-law, inspire their husbands to
have strength and hope, and bear and raise children. They go to live
in the rural communities that Koreans have left behind because it is
so difficult to live there. What a wonderful and precious thing they are
doing. This program has been going on for more than thirty years.
Thousands of women from other countries have settled in Korea
through such international and intercultural marriages. In rural Korean
communities where the young people have left for the cities and the
sound of a baby’s cry has not been heard for a long time, the old people
are overjoyed to see the birth of babies to these couples, and they treat
the babies as if they were their own grandchildren. In one elementary
school in Choong-cheong Province, more than half the eighty students
are children of the international and intercultural marriages arranged
by our church. The school’s principal has said the school will have to
close if its student body declines any further, and so he prays daily that
our church members will not move away from the community. In Korea
today, some twenty thousand children of international and intercultural
marriages are enrolled in elementary schools around the country.
Every year around the anniversary of Korea’s independence from
Japan, television news programs carry stories about some very special
Japanese who stand before the camera and apologize for the actions of
their country in Korea during the period of occupation. They themselves
did not commit those crimes, but they apologize for the actions
of their ancestors. Most of these people are members of our church who
have torn down the walls separating nations by means of international
and intercultural marriages. Because of their actions, the walls in the
hearts of Koreans who think of the Japanese as our enemies are increasingly
crumbling.
In 1988, a young and well-educated man who had joined our church
wanted to get married and sought to be matched. He was matched with
a Japanese woman. The father of this young man reacted very negatively
to the match.
“Of all the women in the world, you have to marry a Japanese?” he said.
During the Japanese occupation, his father had been one of the Koreans
conscripted into forced labor and taken to a coal mine in Iwate
Prefecture in northwestern Japan. He risked his life to escape the mine
and walked for well over a month to Shimonoseki, where he was able
to board a ship back to Korea. He harbored a tremendous hatred for
Japan. On hearing the news of his son’s match to a Japanese woman, he
threatened to disown him.
“You betray the family,” he said. “I will have your name taken out of
the family register. No woman from that enemy country will ever set
foot in this house, so take her and go away. She is not right for you, so I
don’t care whether you go or whether you die.”
The father was adamant. The young man, however, went ahead and
did what he felt was right. He married the Japanese woman and took
his bride to his hometown in Nagan, Korea. The father would not even
open the front gate for them. Sometime later, he reluctantly accepted
their marriage, but his persecution of his daughter-in-law continued.
Every time she seemed to have difficulty with something, he would say,
“That’s nothing, compared with what your people did to me. You should
have expected this much when you decided to marry into our family.”
Every time the relatives would gather for a major holiday, the fatherin-
law would have her sit near him, and he would tell her all the things
that were done to him in the Iwate coal mine. Each time, the daughterin-
law would respond by saying, “Father, I apologize to you on behalf
of Japan. I am sorry.” She would shed tears and ask for his forgiveness.
For as long as he would vent his anger at her, she would listen to him
tell the same stories over and over until he was finished, and she would
continue to apologize.
This went on for about ten years, and then it stopped. Relatives
noticed that his cold attitude toward the daughter-in-law had become
much warmer and that he even seemed to like her. So they asked him,
“Why are you behaving so kindly toward your daughter-in-law. She’s a
Japanese woman. Don’t you hate her?”
“I don’t hate her anymore,” he said. “All the hatred that had accumulated
in my heart has gone away.
“I never hated her,” he added. “I was just venting on her all the hatred
that was in me for having been conscripted to work in the mine. Because
of her, the hatred has all disappeared. From now, I’m going to be kind to
her, because she’s my daughter-in-law.”
The daughter-in-law paid for the sins of the Japanese. This is an example
of the path of redemption that will lead humankind into a world
of peace.
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