I have very small eyes. I am told that when I was born, my motherwondered, “Does my baby have eyes, or not?” and spread my eyelids
apart with her fingers. Then when I blinked, she said with joy,
“Oh my, yes. He does have eyes, after all!” My eyes were so small that
people often called me “Osan’s Little Tiny-Eyes,” because my mother
was from the village of Osan.
I cannot remember anyone saying, though, that my small eyes make
me any less attractive. In fact, people who know something about
physiognomy, the art of understanding a person’s characteristics and
fortune by studying facial features, say my small eyes give me the right
disposition to be a religious leader. I think it is similar to the way a
camera is able to focus on objects farther away as the aperture of its iris
diaphragm is reduced. A religious leader needs to be able to see farther
into the future than do other people, and perhaps small eyes are an
indication of such a quality. My nose is rather unusual as well. Just one
look and it is obvious that this is the nose of a stubborn and determined
man. There must be something to physiognomy, because when I look
back on my life, these features of my face seem to parallel the way I have
lived my life.
I was born at 2221 Sang-sa Ri (village), Deok-eon District, Jeong-ju
Township, Pyong-an Province, as the second son of Kyung Yu Moon
of the Nam Pyung Moon clan and Kyung Gye Kim of the Yeon An
Kim clan. I was born on the sixth day of the first lunar month in 1920,
the year after the 1919 independence movement. I was told that our
family settled in the village of Sang-sa Ri during the life of my greatgrandfather.
My paternal great-grandfather worked the farm himself,
produced thousands of bushels of rice, and built the family fortune with
his own hands. He never smoked or drank liquor, preferring instead to
use that money to buy food to give to those in need. When he died, his
last words were, “If you feed people from all the regions of Korea, then
you will receive blessings from all those regions.” So the guest room in
our home was always full of people. Even people from other villages
knew that if they came to our home, they could always count on being
fed a good meal. My mother carried out her role of preparing food for
all those people without ever complaining.
My great-grandfather was so active, he never wanted to rest. If he
had some spare time he would use it to make pairs of straw footwear
that he would then sell in the marketplace. When he grew old, in his
merciful ways, he would buy several geese, let them go in the wild, and
pray that all would be well with his descendants. He hired a teacher of
Chinese characters to sit in the guest room of his home and provide
free literacy lessons to the young people of the village. The villagers gave
him the honorific title “Sun Ok” (Jewel of Goodness) and referred to
our home as “a home that will be blessed.”
By the time I was born and was growing up, much of the wealth that
my great-grandfather had accumulated was gone, and our family had
just enough to get by. The family tradition of feeding others was still
alive, however, and we would feed others even if it meant there wouldn’t
be enough to feed our family members. The first thing I learned after I
learned to walk was how to serve food to others.
During the Japanese occupation, many Koreans had their homes and
land confiscated. As they escaped the country to Manchuria, where they
hoped to build new lives for themselves, they would pass by our home
on the main road that led to Seon-cheon in North Pyong-an Province.
My mother would always prepare food for the passersby, who came
from all parts of Korea. If a beggar came to our home asking for food
and my mother didn’t react quickly enough, my grandfather would pick
up his meal and take it to the beggar. Perhaps because I was born into
such a family, I too have spent much of my life feeding people. To me,
giving people food is the most precious work. When I am eating and
I see someone who has nothing to eat, it pains my heart and I cannot
continue eating.
I will tell you something that happened when I was about eleven
years old. It was toward the last day of the year, and everyone in the
village was busy preparing rice cakes for the New Year’s feast. There was
one neighbor family, though, that was so poor they had nothing to eat.
I kept seeing their faces in my mind, and it made me so restless that I
was walking around the house, wondering what to do. Finally, I picked
up an eight-kilogram (17.6-pound) bag of rice and ran out of the house.
I was in such a hurry to get the bag of rice out of the house that I didn’t
even tie the bag closed. I hoisted the bag onto my shoulders and held it
tight as I ran along a steep, uphill path for about eight kilometers (five
miles) to get to the neighbor’s home. I was excited to think how good it
would feel to give those people enough food so they could eat as much
as they wanted.
The village mill was next to our house. The four walls of the millhouse
were well built, so that the crushed rice could not fall through the
cracks. This meant that in the winter it was a good place to escape the
wind and stay warm. If someone took some kindling from our home’s
furnace and started a small fire in the millhouse, it became warmer than
an ondol-heated room. Some of the beggars who would travel around
the country would decide to spend the winter in that millhouse. I was
fascinated by the stories they had to tell about the world outside, and I
found myself spending time with them every chance I got. My mother
would bring my meals to the millhouse, and she would always bring
enough for my beggar friends to eat as well. We would eat from the
same dishes and share the same blankets at night. This is how I spent
the winter. When spring came, they would leave for faraway places,
and I could not wait for winter to come again so they would return to
our home. Just because their bodies were poorly clothed did not mean
that their hearts were ragged as well. They had a deep and warm love
that showed. I gave them food, and they shared their love with me. The
deep friendship and warmth they showed me back then continue to be
a source of strength for me today.
As I go around the world and witness children suffering from hunger,
I am always reminded of how my grandfather never missed a chance to
share food with others.
