Based on extracts from his speeches throughout his life
Earlier installments are available for reading.
Father a War Refugee in Busan
Father had arrived in Busan, on Korea’s south coast, on January 27, 1951, in the middle of winter. It was here that, after experiencing the same challenges as every refugee faced, he made a new beginning. In this installment Father relates how he built a small hut on a hillside above the city.
Part 48
I prepared for a new beginning by living alone in a hole in Beom-il District, Busan. It was a stoney depression in the ground near a public cemetery. I lived there until I built a temporary home the size of a hog pen. When I later went back and visited the area, the memory of building that house—carrying loaded boxes on my back, carrying stones, shaping the mud—was still fresh.
It was the worst house in Busan. The worst! I didn’t have a decent shovel to build it with. No one would lend me a shovel. Refugees wouldn’t lend shovels because they were selling such items for money. No one would lend me one even if they had one; instead they’d hide it in their kitchen. So, I had to do the work with a fireplace shovel. It was small and it was already broken and mangled. I built the house with tools like that.
I didn’t have a pickax, either. So I leveled the ground with the fireplace shovel. Again, there was no machine available to make brick. So, I got ration boxes from the United States Army. I would tear off the edges, flatten and shape the box, then pile earth onto it; it could hold quite a lot of earth.
Was anyone willing to give us a piece of land? No. So I leveled a place on the slope of a hill. When it rained, water soaked through into the room. So, I next dug out a channel lined with stones for the water to run underneath, above which I put an under-floor heating pipe. You could hear the sound of running water right under the floor. The water would flow under the simple heating system. The house gained notoriety. It was a shabby place made of mud and rocks. That’s how I constructed that hut on that slope with a roof made of old boxes.
It was the most ramshackle of shacks. Inside, you could see a bolder[1]—since I had built the house against it. There was a small table and canvas for doing paintings on. Those were our treasures; there was nothing else. It was actually a pitiful place.
However, even when I was sleeping inside the house, I was following the main path to becoming a more devoted son to God than anyone enjoying glory in any palace on earth. I wished to reach a stage of deep inner heart that no one could duplicate. Whether I stayed under a building’s eaves or in the hut, I thought I must attend God there—yet my efforts were still inadequate.
When winter came, life became more difficult and inconvenient; it rained, the wind blew, and I caught a cold and sniffles from being in a cold room. What’s more, I bore a huge responsibility, yet had a hungry stomach, and no proper clothing. It was a most difficult time. Still, one shouldn’t be despondent, because it is the same trail that the great teachers have blazed. I upheld God’s will, so you should also continue on from the point of unity in heart.
At one time, I missed that one room so much. I longed for that one room, thinking that though it was crumbling like an old farm shack, I would live in that room, loving it more than anywhere else and treating it as if it were more valuable than a royal palace. By that, I mean that I hoped to offer my sincere, dedicated effort in the land God had chosen. I didn’t want to do that in the satanic world’s land. You will never know how much effort I exerted.
A time of living rough
I was wearing the same rags for four months because there was nowhere to wash them. I was the king of beggars, the quintessential beggar at that time. I didn’t have extra clothes, so I turned my pants inside out again. I wore green U.S. military fatigues and Japanese shoes. Still, I told myself all of it was part of the indemnity providence. That is why I walked around wearing rags from America, Korea and Japan. I was not ashamed of myself for wearing clothes like that.
From outward appearances, I was a nobody at that time. I looked like a person of no importance at all. I was badly in need of a shave; my face was as darkly tanned as it could be, and my attire was a mixture of Eastern and Western. Yet that story has great power today.
Prayer looking over Busan harbor
I went up the hill in Busan’s Beom-il District and prayed. I had many serious spiritual battles with Satan, grabbing him by the collar and slashing him in the belly. I fought, saying, “As long as you don’t defeat me in this fight, the day will come when you’ll kneel down.” I began in this way.
In that most wretched situation, I shed blood, tears, sweat—all of these. What was to be done at that critical point, in that miserable era where the nation’s ideology had no direction to move? I pioneered that lonely road by myself with the heart that I was praying as a representative of the Korean people.
It seems only yesterday that I looked at all the ships that sailed into port, blowing out smoke as if to say, “Here, look at me!” I would pray, “A time will come when I too can make such a ship with my own hands and come into Busan port as a person returning home with honors.”
As I would sit and look on, I would think to myself, “I will cross the great ocean, go to other countries and sow the seeds of the heart-to-heart relationships that I have long yearned for.” I offered such a prayer as I gazed upon the Busan coastline.
God is really fond of fun, so at such times He would console me by telling me, “Look here. The world will become like this in the future,” and He’d show me a vision of Heaven’s great trading vessel carrying me at its stern and a great multitude of people cheering.
Do you know the holy ground at Beomnaetgol in Busan? You need to know how I grieved bitterly in my heart on the rock there. Do you know what kind of a prayer I offered to God at the time of the Korean War as I looked at Busan port filled with freight vessels carrying weapons? You need to understand that. Everything I prayed for has come to pass.
The Korean War was still going on. In those days, fleets of ships delivering U.S. military ordnance filled the port. Every morning when I woke up, I made it a rule to count the ships. Usually, there were fifty; sometimes I counted more than a hundred. In this way, I could see how the war was developing…. This seems like yesterday to me.
Closeness in heart
Won-pil suggested he go out to make money, and I told him to do so. At that time, I was writing the first Principle[2] text and being with a friend was precious. So, I never failed to walk with him for about a kilometer whenever he went out to work. About the time he was to come back at night, I would go out to meet him. The emotion of the meeting was beyond description. The quality of a person’s heart is what matters, I am saying. When you have heart, your yearning never stops; it never ends. The time when I lived with Won-pil at Beomnaetgol was good, so my impressions of that time are still in my mind. Mr. Kim is also on my mind. I was grateful to him for the days when, out of loneliness and sorrow, as refugees, we would gaze at the moon together. Those impressions are indelible. At that time, he used to find coming home from work more exciting than visiting a sweetheart. Even though I asked him to rest at home, he wouldn’t and instead he followed me around. If I sat on the toilet for thirty minutes, he would be knocking on the door. I often used to fall asleep on the toilet. We were so close that even when we left North Korea, he left his own mother and home to follow me, though I asked him to stay with his family.
To be continued.
[1] That bolder is preserved, in the place it always stood, inside the museum that our church built in Japan to commemorate Father’s time there. Alas, no trace of the small cardboard hut remains.
[2] What we now know as Wolli Wonbon – the original text of Divine Principle. Father will say more on this in a later installment.