Loving Nature to Learn from It

Loving Nature to Learn from It
My personality was such that I had to know about everything
that I could see. I couldn’t just pass over something
superficially. I would start thinking, “I wonder what the
name of that mountain is. I wonder what’s up there.” I had to go see for
myself. While still a child, I climbed to the tops of all the mountains
that were in a five-mile radius of our home. I went everywhere, even
beyond the mountains. That way, when I saw a mountain shining in
the morning sunlight, I could have an image in my mind of what was
on that mountain and I could gaze at it in comfort. I hated even to look
at places I didn’t know. I had to know about everything I could see,
and even what was beyond. Otherwise, my mind was so restless that I
couldn’t endure it.
When I went to the mountains, I would touch all the flowers and
trees. I wasn’t satisfied just to look at things with my eyes; I had to touch
the flowers, smell them, and even put them in my mouth and chew on
them. I enjoyed the fragrances, the touch, and the tastes so much that
I wouldn’t have minded if someone had told me to stick my nose in
the brush and keep it there the whole day. I loved nature so much that
anytime I went outside, I would spend the day roaming the hills and
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fields and forget about having to go home. When my older sisters would
go into the hills to gather wild vegetables, I would lead the way up the
hill and pick the plants. Thanks to this experience, I know a lot about
many kinds of wild vegetables that taste good and are high in nutrition.
I was particularly fond of a member of the sunflower family called
sseum-ba-gwi (scientific name Ixeris dentata). You could mix it with
seasoned bean paste and put it in a dish of gochujang bibimbap, and it
would have a wonderful flavor. When you eat sseum-ba-gwi, you need
to put it in your mouth and then hold your breath for a few seconds.
This is the time it takes for the bitter taste to go away and for a different,
sweet taste to come out. It’s important to get the correct rhythm to enjoy
the wonderful flavor of sseum-ba-gwi.
I used to enjoy climbing trees as well. Mainly I climbed up and down
a huge, two-hundred-year-old chestnut tree that was in our yard. I liked
the view from the upper branches of that tree. I could see even beyond
the entrance to the village. Once I was up there, I wouldn’t want to come
down. Sometimes, I would be up in the tree until late at night, and the
youngest of my older sisters would come out of the house and make a
fuss over how dangerous it was and try to get me to come down.
“Yong Myung, please come down,” she would say. “It’s late, and you
need to come in and go to bed.”
“If I get sleepy, I can sleep up here.”
It didn’t matter what she said; I wouldn’t budge from my branch in
the chestnut tree. Finally, she would lose her temper, and shout at me,
“Hey, monkey! Get down here now!”
Maybe it’s because I was born in the Year of the Monkey that I enjoyed
climbing trees so much. When chestnut burrs hung in clusters
from the branches, I would take a broken branch and jump up and
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down to knock them down. I remember this being a lot of fun. I feel
sorry for children these days who don’t grow up in the countryside and
don’t experience this kind of enjoyment.
The birds flying free in the sky were also objects of my curiosity.
Once in a while some particularly pretty birds would come by, and I
would study everything I could about them, noticing what the male
looked like and what the female looked like. There were no books back
then to tell me about the various kinds of trees, shrubs, and birds, so
I had to examine each myself. Often I would miss my meals because
I would be hiking around the mountains looking for the places where
migratory birds went.
Once I climbed up and down a tree every morning and evening for
several days to check on a magpie nest. I wanted to see how a magpie
lays its eggs. I finally got to witness the magpie lay its eggs, and I became
friends with the bird as well. The first few times it saw me, the magpie
let out a loud squawk and made a big fuss when it saw me approach.
Later, though, I could get close and it would remain still.
The insects in that area were also my friends. Every year, in late
summer, a clear-toned cicada would sing in the upper branches of a
persimmon tree that was right outside my room. Each summer, I would
be grateful when the loud, irritating sounds of the other types of cicada
that made noise all summer would suddenly stop and be replaced by
the song of the clear-toned cicada. Its song let me know that the humid
summer season would soon pass, with the cool autumn to follow.
Their sound went something like this: “Sulu Sulululululu!”
Whenever I would hear the clear-toned cicada sing like this, I would
look up into the persimmon tree and think, “Of course, as long as it’s
going to sing, it has to sing from a high place so that everyone in the
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village can hear it and be glad. Who could hear it if it went into a pit
and sang?”
I soon realized that both the summer cicadas and the clear-toned
cicadas were making sounds for love.
Whether they were singing, “Mem mem mem” or “Suluk sulu,” they
were making sounds in order to attract their mates. Once I realized this,
I couldn’t help but laugh every time I heard an insect start singing.
“Oh, you want love, don’t you? Go ahead and sing, and find yourself
a good mate.”
Gradually I learned how to be friends with everything in nature in a
way that we could share our hearts with each other.
The Yellow Sea coast was only about two and a half miles from our
home. It was near enough that I could easily see it from any high place
near our home. There was a series of water pools along the path to the
sea, and a creek flowed between them. I would often dig around one
of those pools smelling of stale water to catch eel and freshwater mud
crab. I would poke around in all sorts of places to catch different kinds
of water life, so I came to know where each kind lived. Eels, by nature,
do not like to be visible, so they hide their long bodies in crab holes and
other similar places. Often, though, they can’t quite fit all of their bodies
in the holes, so the ends of their tails remain sticking out. I could easily
catch them, simply by grabbing the tail and pulling the eel out of its
hole. If we had company in our home and they wanted to eat steamed
eel, then it was nothing for me to run the three and a half miles roundtrip
to the water pools and bring back about five eels. During summer
vacations, I would often catch more than forty eels in a day.
There was one chore I didn’t like doing. This was to feed the cow.
Often, when my father would tell me to feed the cow, I would take it to
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the meadow of the neighboring village, where I would tie it up and run
away. But after a while, I would start to worry about the cow. When I
looked back, I could see it was still there, right where I had tied it. It just
stayed there, half the day or more, mooing and waiting for someone to
come feed it. Hearing the cow mooing in the distance, I would feel sorry
for it and think, “That cow! What am I going to do with it?” Maybe you
can imagine how I felt to ignore the cow’s mooing. Still, when I would
go back to it late in the evening, it wouldn’t be angry or try to gore me
with its horns. Instead it seemed happy to see me. This made me realize
that a person’s perspective on a major objective in life should be like
that of a cow. Bide your time with patience, and something good will
come to you.
There was a dog in our home that I loved very much. It was so smart
that when it came time for me to come home from school, it would run
to meet me when I was still a long distance from home. Whenever it
saw me, it acted happy. I would always pet it with my right hand. So,
even if it happened to be on my left side, it would go around to my right
side and rub its face against me, begging to be petted. Then I would take
my right hand and pet it on its head and back. If I didn’t, the dog would
whine and run circles around me as I walked down the road.
“You rascal,” I would say. “You know about love, don’t you? Do you
like love?”
Animals know about love. Have you ever seen a mother hen sitting
on her eggs until they hatch? The hen will keep her eyes open and stamp
her foot on the ground so no one can go near it. I would go in and out of
the chicken coop, knowing it would make the hen angry. When I would
go into the coop, the hen would straighten its neck and try to threaten
me. Instead of backing away, I would also act in a threatening manner
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toward the hen. After I went into the coop a few times, the hen would just
pretend not to see me. But she would keep herself bristled up and her claws
long and sharp. She looked like she wanted to swoosh over and attack me,
but she couldn’t move because of the eggs. So she just sat there in anguish.
I would go near and touch her feathers, but she wouldn’t budge. It seemed
that it was determined not to move from that spot until her eggs had
hatched, even if it meant letting someone pluck all the feathers from her
bosom. Because it is so steadfastly attached to its eggs through love, the hen
has an authority that keeps even the rooster from doing whatever it wants.
The hen commands complete authority over everything under heaven, as if
to say, “I don’t care who you are. You had better not disturb these eggs!”
There is also a demonstration of love when a pig gives birth to piglets.
I followed a mother pig around so I could watch it give birth to its
litter. At the moment of birth, the mother pig gives a push with a loud
grunt and a piglet slips out onto the ground. The pig lets out another
loud grunt and a second piglet comes out. It was similar with cats and
dogs. It made me very happy to see these little baby animals that hadn’t
even opened their eyes come into the world. I couldn’t help but laugh
with joy.
On the other hand, it gave me much anguish to witness the death
of an animal. There was a slaughterhouse a little ways from the village.
Once a cow was inside the slaughterhouse, a butcher would appear out
of nowhere and strike the cow with an iron hammer about the size of a
person’s forearm. The cow would fall over. In the next moment, it would
be stripped of its hide and its legs would be cut off. Life hangs on so
desperately that the stumps remaining on the cow after its legs were cut
off would continue to quiver. It brought tears to my eyes to watch this,
and I cried out loud.
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From when I was a child, I have had a certain peculiarity. I could
know things that others didn’t, as if I had some natural paranormal
ability. If I said it was going to rain, then it would rain. I might be sitting
in our home and say, “The old man Mr. So-and-So in the next village
doesn’t feel well today.” And it would always be right. From the time
I was eight I was well known as a champion matchmaker. I only had
to see photographs of a prospective bride and groom and I could tell
everything. If I said, “This marriage is bad,” and they went ahead and
married anyway, they would inevitably break up later. I’ve been doing
this until I’ve turned 90, and now I can tell much about a person just
seeing the way he sits or the way he laughs.
If I focused my thoughts, I could tell what my older sisters were
doing at a particular moment. So, although my older sisters liked
me, they also feared me. They felt that I knew all their secrets. It may
seem like I have some incredible paranormal power, but actually
it isn’t anything to be surprised about. Even ants, which we often
think of as insignificant creatures, can tell when the rainy season is
coming, and they go to where they can stay dry. People in tune with
nature should be able to tell what is ahead for them. It’s not such a
difficult thing.
You can tell which way the wind is going to blow by carefully
examining a magpie’s nest. A magpie will put the entrance to its
nest on the opposite side from the direction where the wind is going
to blow. It will take twigs in its beak and weave them together in a
complex fashion, and then pick up mud with its beak and plaster the
top and bottom of the nest so that the rain doesn’t get in. It arranges
the ends of the twigs so that they all face the same direction. Like
a gutter on a roof, this makes the rain flow toward one place. Even
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magpies have such wisdom to help them survive, so wouldn’t it be
natural for people to have this type of ability as well?
If I were at a cow market with my father, I might say, “Father, don’t
buy this cow. A good cow should look good on the nape of its neck and
have strong front hooves. It should have a firm buttocks and back. This
cow isn’t like that.” Sure enough, that cow would not sell. My father
would say, “How do you know all this?” and I would reply, “I’ve known
that since I was in mother’s womb.” Of course, I wasn’t serious.
If you love cows, you can tell a lot about them. The most powerful
force in the world is love, and the most fearful thing is a mind and body
united. If you quiet yourself and focus your mind, there is a place deep
down where the mind is able to settle. You need to let your mind go to
that place. When you put your mind in that place and go to sleep, then
when you awake you will be extremely sensitive. That is the moment
when you should turn away all extraneous thoughts and focus your
consciousness. Then you will be able to communicate with everything.
If you don’t believe me, try it right now. Each life form in the world seeks
to connect itself with that which gives it the most love. So if you have
something that you don’t truly love, then your possession or dominion
is false and you will be forced to give it up.

Stubborn Child Who Never Gives Up

Stubborn Child Who Never Gives Up
My father was not good at collecting debts, but if he borrowed
money, he would honor the pledge to repay, even
if it meant selling the family cow or even removing one
of the pillars from our home and selling it at market. He always said,
“You can’t change the truth with trickery. Anything that is true will
not be dominated by a small trick. Anything that is the result of
trickery won’t go more than a few years before it is exposed.”
My father had a large stature. He was so strong that he had no
difficulty walking up a flight of stairs carrying a bag of rice on his
shoulders. The fact that at age ninety I’m still able to travel around
the world and carry on my work is a result of the physical strength I
inherited from my father.
My mother, whose favorite Christian hymn was “Higher
Ground,” was also quite a strong woman. I take after her not only
for her wide forehead and round face but for her straightforward
and high-spirited personality as well. I have a stubborn streak,
and there is no doubt I am my mother’s child.
When I was a child, I had the nickname “day crier.” I earned this
nickname because once I started to cry, I wouldn’t stop for the entire
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day. When I cried, it would be so loud that people would think something
terrible had happened. People sleeping in bed would come outside to see
what was going on. Also, I didn’t just cry sitting still. I would jump around
the room, injuring myself and creating an uproar. Sometimes I would bleed.
I had this kind of intense personality even when I was young.
Once my mind was made up, I would never back down, not even if
it meant breaking a bone in my body. Of course, this was all before I
became mature. When my mother would scold me for doing something
wrong, I would talk back to her, saying, “No. Absolutely not!” All I had
to do was admit that I was wrong, but I would rather have died than let
those words out of my mouth. My mother, though, had quite a strong
personality as well.
She would strike me, and say, “You think you can get away with not
answering your parent?” Once, she struck me so hard she knocked me
down. Even after I got up, I wouldn’t give in to her. She just stood in front
of me, crying loudly. Even then, I wouldn’t admit that I was wrong.
My competitive spirit was as strong as my stubbornness. I couldn’t
stand to lose in any situation. The adults in the village would say, “Osan’s
Little Tiny-Eyes, once he decides to do something, he does it.”
I don’t remember how old I was when this happened. A boy gave
me a bloody nose and ran away. For a month after that, I would go to
his house every day and stand there, waiting for him to come out. The
village adults were amazed to see me persist until finally his parents
apologized to me. They even gave me a container full of rice cakes.
This doesn’t mean I was always trying to win with stubborn persistence.
I was physically much larger and stronger than other children
my age. No child could beat me in arm wrestling. I once lost a wrestling
match to a boy three years older than I was, and it made me so angry
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that I couldn’t sit still. I went to a nearby mountain, stripped some bark
from an acacia tree, and for the next six months I worked out on this tree
every evening to become strong enough to defeat that child. At the end of
six months, I challenged him to a rematch and managed to beat him.
Each generation in our family has had many children. I had one
older brother, three older sisters, and three younger sisters. I actually
had four other younger siblings who were born after Hyo Seon. Mother
gave birth to thirteen children, but five did not survive. Her heart must
have been deeply tormented. Mother suffered a great deal to raise so
many children in circumstances that were by no means plentiful. As a
child I had many siblings. If these siblings got together with our first and
second cousins, we could do anything. Much time has passed, however,
and now I feel as though I am the only one remaining in the world.
I once visited North Korea for a short while, in 1991. I went to my
hometown for the first time in 48 years and found that my mother and
most of my siblings had passed away. Only one older sister and one
younger sister remained. My older sister, who had been like a mother to
me when I was a child, had become a grandmother of more than seventy
years. My younger sister was older than sixty, and her face was covered
with wrinkles. When we were young, I teased my younger sister a lot.
I would shout, “Hey, Hyo Seon, you’re going to marry a guy with one
eye.” And she would come back with, “What did you say? What makes
you think you know that, Brother?” Then she would run up behind me
and tap me on the back with her tiny fists.
In the year she turned eighteen, Hyo Seon met a man with whom
one of our aunts was trying to arrange her marriage. That morning
she got up early, carefully combed her hair, and powdered her face.
She thoroughly cleaned our home inside and out and waited for her
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prospective groom to arrive. “Hyo Seon,” I teased her, “you must really
want to get married.” This made her blush, and I still remember how
beautiful she looked with the redness in her face showing through the
white powder.
It has been well over ten years since my visit to North Korea. My
older sister, who wept so sorrowfully to see me, has since passed away,
leaving just my younger sister. It fills me with such anguish. I feel as
though my heart may melt away.
I was good with my hands, and I used to make clothes for myself.
When it got cold, I would quickly knit myself a cap to wear. I was better
at it than the women were, and I would give knitting tips to my older
sisters. I once knitted a muffler for Hyo Seon. My hands were as big and
thick as a bear’s paw, but I enjoyed needlework, and I would even make
my own underwear. I would take some cloth off a roll, fold it in half, cut
it to the right design, hem it, sew it up, and put it on. When I made a
pair of traditional Korean socks for my mother this way, she expressed
how much she liked them by saying, “Well, well, I thought Second Son
was just fooling around, but these fit me perfectly.”
In those days it was necessary to weave cotton cloth as a part of
preparations for the marriage of a son or daughter. Mother would take
cotton wool and place it on a spinning wheel to make the thread. This
was called to-ggaeng-i in the dialect of Pyong-an Province. She would
set the width at twenty threads and make twelve pieces of cotton cloth,
thirteen pieces of cotton cloth, and so on. Each time a child would
marry, cotton cloth as soft and beautiful as processed satin would be created
through Mother’s coarse hands. Her hands were incredibly quick.
Others might weave three or four pieces of to-ggaeng-i fabric in a day,
but Mother could weave as many as twenty. When she was in a hurry
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to complete the marriage preparations for one of my older sisters, she
could weave an entire roll of fabric in a day. Mother had an impatient
personality. Whenever she would set her mind to doing something, she
would work quickly to get it done. I take after her in that way.
Since childhood, I have always enjoyed eating a wide variety of foods.
As a child, I enjoyed eating corn, raw cucumber, raw potato, and raw
beans. On a visit to my maternal relatives who lived about five miles
away from our home, I noticed something round growing in the field.
I asked what it was and was told it was ji-gwa, or “earth fruit.” In that
neighborhood, people referred to sweet potatoes as earth fruit. Someone
dug one up and cooked it for me in steam, so I ate it. It had such a
delectable taste that I took a whole basketful of them and ate them all
myself. From the following year, I couldn’t keep myself away from my
maternal relatives’ home for more than three days. I would shout out,
“Mother, I’m going out for a while,” run the whole distance to where
they lived, and eat sweet potatoes.
Where we lived, we had what we called “potato pass” in May. We
would survive the winter on potatoes, until spring came and we could
start harvesting barley. May was a critical period, because if our store
of potatoes was depleted before the barley could be harvested, people
began to starve. Surviving the time when potato stores were running
low and the barley had not yet been harvested was similar to climbing
to a steep mountain pass, so we called it potato pass.
The barley we ate then was not the tasty, flat-grained barley that we
see today. The grains were more cylindrical in shape, but that was all
right with us. We would soak the barley in water for about two days
before cooking it. When we sat down to eat, I would press down on the
barley with my spoon, trying to make it stick together. It was no use,

though, because when I scooped it up in my spoon, it would just scatter
like so much sand. I would mix it with gochujang (red pepper paste)
and take a mouthful. As I chewed, the grains of barley would keep coming
out between my teeth, so I had to keep my mouth tightly closed.
We also used to catch and eat tree frogs. In those days in rural areas,
children would be fed tree frogs when they caught the measles and their
faces became thin from the weight loss. We would catch three or four
of these frogs that were big and had plenty of flesh on their fat legs. We
would roast them wrapped in squash leaves, and they would be very
tender and tasty, just as though they had been steamed in a rice cooker.
Speaking of tasty, I can’t leave out sparrow and pheasant meat, either.
We would cook the lovely colored eggs of mountain birds and the
waterfowl that would fly over the fields making a loud, gulping call.
As I roamed the hills and fields, this is how I came to understand
that there was an abundance of food in the natural environment
given to us by God.

A Definite Compass for My Life

A Definite Compass for My Life
The Moon clan originated in Nampyung, near Naju, Cholla Province,
a town about 320 miles south of Seoul, in the southwest
region of the country. My great-great-grandfather, Sung Hak
Moon, had three sons. The youngest of these was my great-grandfather,
Jung Heul Moon, who himself had three sons: Chi Guk, Shin Guk, and
Yun Guk. My grandfather, Chi Guk Moon, was the oldest.
Grandfather Chi Guk Moon was illiterate, as he did not attend either
a modern elementary school or the traditional village school. His power
of concentration was so great, however, that he was able to recite the full
text of the Korean translation of San Guo Zhi just by having listened to
others read it to him. And it wasn’t just San Guo Zhi. When he heard
someone tell an interesting story, he could memorize it and retell it in
exactly the same words. He could memorize anything after hearing it just
once. My father took after him in this way; he could sing from memory the
Christian hymnal, consisting of more than four hundred pages.
Grandfather followed the last words of his father to live his life with a
spirit of giving, but he was not able to maintain the family fortune. This
was because his youngest brother, my Great-Uncle Yun Guk Moon, borrowed
money against the family’s property and lost it all. Following this
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incident, members of the family went through some very hard times,
but my grandfather and father never spoke ill of Great-Uncle Yun Guk.
This was because they knew he had not lost the money gambling or
doing anything of that nature. Instead, he had sent the money to the
Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, based in Shanghai,
China. In those days, seventy thousand won was a large sum, and this
was the amount that my great uncle donated to the independence
movement.
Great-Uncle Yun Guk, a graduate of Pyongyang Seminary and a
minister, was an intellectual who was fluent in English and well versed in
Chinese studies. He served as the responsible pastor for three churches,
including Deok Heung Church in Deok Eon Myeon. He participated
in the drafting of the 1919 Declaration of Independence, together
with Nam Seon Choe. When it was found, however, that three of the
sixteen Christian leaders among the signatories were associated with
Deok Heung Church, Great-Uncle had his name removed from the list.
Seung Heung Lee, one of the remaining signatories who worked with
my great-uncle in establishing the Osan School, asked Great-Uncle Yun
Guk to take care of all his affairs in case the independence movement
failed and he died at the hands of the Japanese colonial authorities.
On returning to our hometown, Great-Uncle Yun Guk printed tens
of thousands of Korean flags and handed them out to the people who
poured into the streets to shout their support for Korean independence.
He was arrested on March 8 as he led a demonstration on the hill behind
the Aipo Myeon administrative office. The demonstration in support
of independence was attended by the principal, faculty, and some two
thousand students of the Osan School, some three thousand Christians,
and some four thousand other residents of the area. He was given a
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two-year prison sentence and was imprisoned in the Eui-ju prison. The
following year he was released as part of a special pardon.
Even after his release, severe persecution by the Japanese police
meant he could never stay long in one place, and he was always on the
run. He carried a large scar where the Japanese police had tortured him
by stabbing him with a bamboo spear and carving out a piece of his
flesh. He was speared in the legs and in the side of his ribs, but he said
that he never gave in. When the Japanese found they couldn’t break
him, they offered him the position of county chief if he would pledge
to stop participating in the independence movement. His response was
to rebuke the Japanese in a loud voice: “Do you think I would take on a
position and work for you thieves?”
When I was about seven or eight years old, Great-Uncle Yun Guk
was staying in our home for a short time and some members of the
Korean independence army came to see him. They were low on funds
and had traveled by night on foot through a heavy snowfall to reach our
house. My father covered the heads of us children with a sleeping quilt
so that we would not be awakened. I was already wide awake, and I lay
there under the quilt, my eyes wide open, listening as best I could to the
sounds of the adults talking. Though it was late, my mother killed a chicken
and boiled some noodles to serve to the independence fighters.
To this day, I cannot forget the words that I heard Great-Uncle Yun
Guk speak as I lay there under the quilt, holding my breath in excitement.
“Even if you die,” he said, “if you die for the sake of our country,
you will be blessed.” He continued, “Right now, we can see only darkness
before us, but the bright morning is sure to come.” Because of the
effects of torture, he did not have full use of his body, but his voice
resonated with strength.
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I also remember thinking to myself then: “Why did such a wonderful
person as Great-Uncle have to go to prison? If only we were stronger
than Japan, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Great-Uncle Yun Guk continued to roam about the country, avoiding
persecution by the Japanese police, and it was not until 1966, while
I was in Seoul, that I received news of him again. Great-Uncle appeared
in a dream to one of my younger cousins and told him, “I am buried
in Jeong-seon, Kang-won Province.” We went to the address he gave in
the dream and found that he had passed away nine years before that.
We found only a grave mound covered with weeds. I had his remains
reburied in Paju, Kyounggi Province, near Seoul.
In the years following Korea’s liberation from Japan in 1945, communists
in North Korea killed Christian ministers and independence
fighters indiscriminately. Great-Uncle Yun Guk, fearing his presence
might cause harm to the family, escaped the communists by crossing
south over the 38th parallel and settling in Jeong-seon. No one in our
family was aware of this. He supported himself in that remote mountain
valley by selling calligraphy brushes. Later, we were told that he set up
a traditional village school where he taught Chinese classics. According
to some of his former students, he often enjoyed spontaneously
composing poems in Chinese characters. His students transcribed and
preserved some 130 of these, including the following:
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South North Peace
南北平和
Ten years have passed since I left home to come South
在前十載越南州
The flow of time speeds my hair to turn white
流水光陰催白頭
I would return North, but how can I?
故園欲去安能去
What was intended as a short sojourn has been prolonged
別界薄遊爲久游
Wearing the long-sleeved ko-hemp clothing of summer
袗長着知當夏
I fan myself with a silk fan and consider what the autumn will bring
紈扇動搖畏及秋
Peace between South and North draws near
南北平和今不遠
Children waiting under the eaves,
You needn’t worry so much.
候兒女莫深愁
Though separated from his family and living in Jeong-seon, a land
unfamiliar to him in every way, Great-Uncle Yun Guk’s heart was filled
with concerns for his country. Great-Uncle also left this poetic verse:
“When setting your goal in the beginning, pledge yourself to a high
standard; don’t allow yourself even the least bit of private desire (厥
初立志自期高 私慾未嘗容一毫).” My great-uncle’s contributions to
the independence movement were posthumously recognized by the
Republic of Korea government in 1977 with a Presidential Award and
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. food is love .
in 1990 with the Order of Merit for National Foundation. Even now, I
sometimes recite his poetic verses. They are infused with his steadfast
love for his country, even in the face of extreme adversity.
Recently, as I have grown older, I think about Great-Uncle Yun Guk
more often. Each phrase of his poetry expressing his heart of concern
for his country penetrates into my heart. I have taught our members the
song Daehan Jiri Ga (Song of Korean Geography), whose words were
written by Great-Uncle Yun Guk himself. I enjoy singing this song with
our members. When I sing this song, from Mount Baektu to Mount
Halla, I feel relieved of my burdens.
Song of Korean Geography
The peninsula of Korea in the East
Positioned among three countries.
North, the wide plains of Manchuria
East, the deep and blue East Sea,
South, a sea of many islands,
West, the deep Yellow Sea
Food in the seas on three sides,
Our treasure of all species of fish.
Mighty Mount Paektu stands on the North,
Providing water to the Rivers of Amrok and Tumen.
Flowing into seas east and west,
Marking a clear border with the Soviets
Mount Kumgang shines bright in the center,
A preserve for the world, pride of Korea.
Mount Halla rises above the blue South Sea
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Being a Friend to All

Being a Friend to All
Once I set my mind to do something, I have to put it into
action immediately. Otherwise, I cannot sleep. As a child, I
would sometimes get an idea during the night but be forced
to wait until morning before acting on it. I would stay awake and make
scratches on the wall to pass the time. This happened so often that I
would almost dig a hole in the wall and chunks of dirt would pile up on
the floor. I also couldn’t sleep if I had been treated unfairly during the
day. In such a case, I would get out of bed during the night, go to the
culprit’s home, and challenge him to come out and fight me. I am sure it
must have been very difficult for my parents to raise me.
I could not stand to see someone treated unjustly. Whenever there
was a fight among the children in the village, I would involve myself as
though I were responsible to see that justice was served in every situation.
I would decide which child in the fight was in the wrong and I
would scold that child in a loud voice. Once I went to see the grandfather
of a boy who was a bully in the neighborhood. I said to him, “Your
grandson has done this and that wrong. Please take care of it.”
I could be wild in my actions, but nevertheless I was a child with a
big heart. I would sometimes visit my married older sister in the home
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. food is love .
of her husband’s family and demand that they serve me rice cakes and
chicken. The adults never disliked me for this because they could see
that my heart was filled with a warm love.
I was particularly good at taking care of animals. When birds made a
nest in a tree in front of our house, I dug a small waterhole for them to
drink water. I also scattered some hulled millet from the storeroom on
the ground for the birds to eat. At first, the birds would fly away whenever
someone came close. They soon realized, however, that the person
giving them food was someone who loved them, and they stopped flying
away when I approached.
Once I thought I would try raising fish. So I caught some fish and put
them in the water hole. I also took a fistful of fish food and sprinkled it
over the water. When I got up the next morning, though, I found that all
the fish had died during the night. I was so looking forward to raising
those fish. I stood there in astonishment, looking at them floating on
top of the water. I remember that I cried all day that day.
My father kept many bee colonies. He would take a large hive box
and fasten a basic foundation to the bottom of the hive. Then the bees
would deposit their beeswax there to create a nest and store their honey.
I was a curious child, and I wanted to see just how the bees built the
hive. So I stuck my face into the middle of the hive and got myself stung
severely by the bees, causing my entire face to swell tremendously.
I once took the foundations from the hive boxes and received a
severe scolding from my father. Once the bees had finished building
their hives, my father would take the foundations and stack them to one
side. These foundations were covered with beeswax that could be used
as fuel for lamps in place of oil. I took those expensive foundations,
broke them up, and took them to homes that couldn’t afford to buy oil
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. as a peace-loving global citizen .
for their lamps. It was an act of kindness, but I had done it without my
father’s permission, and so I was harshly reprimanded.
When I was twelve, we had very little in the way of games. The
choices were a Parcheesi-like game called yute, a chesslike game called
jang-gi, and card games. I always enjoyed it when many people would
play together. During the day, I would like to play yute or fly my kite,
and in the evenings I would make the rounds of the card games going
on around the village. They were games where the winner picked up 120
won (Korean monetary unit) after each hand, and I could usually win at
least once every three hands. New Year’s Eve and the first full moon of
the new year were the days when the most gambling went on. On those
days, the police would look the other way and never arrest anyone for
gambling. I went to where grown-ups were gambling, took a nap during
the night, and got them to deal me in for just three hands in the early
morning, just as they were about to call it quits for the night. I took
the money I had won, bought some starch syrup, and took it around
to all my friends to give them each a taste. I didn’t use the money for
myself or to do anything bad. When my older sisters’ husbands visited
our home, I would ask permission and take money from their wallets.
I would then use this money to buy sweets for children in need. I also
bought them starch syrup.
In any village it is natural that there are people who live well and
those who don’t. When I would see a child who had brought boiled
millet to school for lunch, I couldn’t eat my own better lunch of rice. So
I would exchange my rice for his millet. I felt closer to the children from
poor families than to those from rich families, and I wanted somehow
to see to it that they didn’t go hungry. This was a kind of game that I enjoyed
most of all. I was still a child, but I felt that I wanted to be a friend
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. food is love .
to everyone. In fact, I wanted to be more than just friends; I wanted to
have relationships where we could share our deepest hearts.
One of my uncles was a greedy man. His family owned a melon patch near
the middle of the village, and every summer, when the melons were ripe and
giving off a sweet fragrance, the village children would beg him to let them eat
some. My uncle, though, set up a tent on the road next to the melon patch and
sat there keeping guard, refusing to share even a single melon.
One day I went to him and asked, “Uncle, would it be all right if some time
I were to go to your patch and eat all the melon I want?” Uncle willingly answered,
“Sure, that would be fine.”
So I sent word to all the children that anyone wanting to eat melon
should bring a burlap bag and gather in front of my house at midnight. At
midnight I led them to my uncle’s melon patch and told them, “I want all of
you to pick a row of melons, and don’t worry about anything.” The children
shouted with joy and ran into the melon patch. It took only a few minutes
for several rows of melons to be picked clean. That night the hungry children
of the village sat in a clover field and ate melons until their stomachs
almost burst.
The next day there was big trouble. I went to my uncle’s home, and it
was in pandemonium, like a beehive that had been poked. “You rascal,” my
uncle shouted at me. “Was this your doing? Are you the one who ruined my
entire year’s work of raising melons?”
No matter what he said, I was not going to back down. “Uncle,” I said,
“don’t you remember? You told me I could eat all the melons I wanted.
The village children wanted to eat melons, and their desire was my desire.
Was it right for me to give them a melon each, or should I absolutely not
have given them any?” When he heard this, my uncle said, “All right. You’re
right.” That was the end of his anger.
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