Moon began talking about the return of Christ. As he warmed to his theme, he began to speak energetically and at such volume that the young Christian lady began to feel embarrassed. She leaned away from him against the wall and looked at his face. His eyes seemed to be blazing and he kept taking swigs of water from a bottle.
"The messiah will come from Korea," Moon said. "It would be a wonderful idea," Kang said. "Korea is a very poor country with so many troubles. Also, it would be so fortunate if the messiah were to come with a fleshly body like ours. But it is impossible to believe that kind of thing."
After three hours Moon stopped. Kang relieved, rose to leave but Moon insisted she stay for dinner. He presented a meal of barley, sour kimchee and bean curd on a small pine table.
"Would you pray?" Moon asked before they ate. Kang, still unable to collect her thoughts after the three-hour bombardment, declined. Exhausted and irritated, she had dropped any idea of converting this heretic. Moon closed his eyes to say grace. He began a prayer of consolation to a suffering God and, as he did so, he began to cry. "I would like to solve your grief. I would like to console you. Heavenly Father, you have been longing to find someone who can fulfill your will. I want to fulfill your will and bring the world back to you."
Kang was startled. In these words, she saw a stark contrast between his attitude to God and hers. She had been praying for hours every day, for the congregation and for Korea, but her fundamental approach was an appeal to God to help her and give her what she needed. But this strange man on the hillside was saying to God, "Don't worry, I will take care of you." She had never come across such an attitude to God. She was profoundly moved. She realized that he was the one who should be teaching her about faith, not the other way around.
"Have you said everything you want to say to me?" she asked him after they had eaten.
"If I want to really speak to you, it will take all day and all night for several days," he said. "Everything I am talking about is new."
"Then I have to come back again," Kang said. "Even though this room is so shabby and unpresentable, I am opening this door for all mankind. I know that so many people have lost their way and don't know what to do. So many people are suffering. We have to help them. So I keep my door open twenty-four hours a day." Moon accompanied her back to her church in the dark.
Kang returned the following week and Moon explained his views on the purpose of God's creation.
On her third visit, Kang was so absorbed in Moon's talk that she stayed until 3.45 a.m., which was quite improper for a young woman of her age in Korean society. She hurried back to her church to lead the daily 4 a.m. prayer meeting, worried that she had prepared nothing for the congregation. She addressed the meeting spontaneously and was quite taken aback when people began crying, thumping their chests and repenting their sins. The experience with Moon had filled her with inspiration and new zeal, but she could still not figure where it was leading. She asked Moon, expecting him to tell her that she should just believe what he was telling her or she would go to hell.
"Don't you want to know whether this teaching comes from God or man? You should find out," he said. "But how can I get the answer?" she asked. "God loves you so much. He will give you the answer," he said.
She began to pray every morning for the answer. At first, she began to have doubts about Moon. There have been a lot of theological theories through history she thought, but nothing has really changed. This teaching is logical and reasonable, but it's probably just a passing fad. As she pursued this train of thought, she felt blocked from God, unable to pray. She developed headaches and chest pains. "This is hell," she thought. "Hell is not a place, but the lack of communication with God."
On the fourth day of this torment, a Bible verse dropped into her mind:
"If anyone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen."[4]
She began to repent her lack of trust in Moon and felt her heart open once again to God's spirit.
"Where have you been?" Moon asked when she went to see him. "Actually, I have been to hell," she replied angrily.
"What do you mean?" he asked. Kang recounted her experiences. "Before I met you, I had no problems," she said. "Everything was O.K. But now I have pains and headaches. My heart is confused and filled with troubles. I have never been unable to pray before. You have to repay me in some way for the damage you are doing me." Moon looked at her sadly. Her complaints troubled him and he went off to pray, leaving Mrs. Ok to counsel her.
"He is really a great man. God loves him so much,'' Ok said. "Why do you always brag about him? He is just a man," Kang snapped. "I understood who he is through a revelation from God," Ok said.
"What do you mean, a revelation from God? Did God actually speak to you?" "Yes, I heard the voice of God talking to me," Ok said. "What does it sound like, the voice of God?" Kang asked. "Well, it sounds similar to a man's voice," Ok said. "I have been a Christian for a long time, and I have never heard the voice of God. So next time you hear him, why don't you invite me," she said. "When God speaks to a person, it is a spiritual experience for that person," said Ok. "At the time only that person can hear it." "How can I hear the voice of God then?" asked Kang. "If you throw away your selfish thoughts and pray with a sincere heart and just open yourself up to God, then he can speak to you," Ok answered.
After several days' prayer, Kang was startled to hear a loud voice saying a line from the Bible: "But our commonwealth is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ."[5]
She was in her church, alone, when she heard the voice. The verse was repeated three times. She looked around for the source of the voice but could see no one.
"Are you going crazy?" Moon asked when she told him. "What do you mean? I'm just trying to understand," she said. "Don't worry," he teased her. "If you're going crazy for God, that's OK."
One day, she was sitting in the dingy house with Moon. She looked around at the walls, stained by leaks, and at the scraps of canvas covering the floor and said, "Here we are sitting in this little, dirty hut and you are talking about unifying Christianity and all religions and building God's kingdom on earth. Before you start talking about that, don't you think you should get a decent house, where you can invite people?"
"Open your Bible, he said. "Anywhere."
Before she could see which page she had opened, he said, "It's Matthew 14.31. Read it." Amazed, she read:
"Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, 'O man of little faith, why did you doubt?'"
"Why did you doubt?" Moon repeated the lines in a loud voice. Kang felt God was talking to her.
Another day, Moon asked her to start witnessing. "You are going to meet somebody tomorrow he said.
"I cannot witness. I don't know how to teach your Principle. With the Bible, it was very easy, but this is very complicated," she protested.
"Just talk," Moon said. "Say anything."
The next day, after the dawn prayer service, Kang invited Kim Je San, the leading evangelist at her church, to her home.[6] Unlike Kang, Kim Je San had a wide experience of spiritual phenomena. When she was very young, she thought that God was like the sun and had once sneaked out of her house before dawn to meet him. The whole village came out to search for her. In her twenties, her husband once beat her for tithing to her church, and she was in a coma for three days, during which time, she said, she met angels, Saint Peter and Jesus, and asked them where she could find God. For five years, she prayed from midnight to 5 a.m. for Korea's liberation from Japanese rule. She had a vision of World War II before its outbreak and later, before the Korean War, had an experience in which Jesus appeared in front of her and told her to move her family from Seoul to Pusan. There she joined the same church as Kang Hyun Shil.
"We both believe in Jesus, but our purpose is to meet the Lord when he returns," Kang said. "Let's pray about it."
After they had prayed, Kim said she had seen three light bulbs, then three rose of Sharon flowers (the Korean national flower), and then the face of Jesus.
"This means the light will come to Korea," she announced.
The following day, they prayed together again, and Kim Je San had another spiritual experience. In her prayer, she said, she saw Jesus beckoning her from a hilltop. She climbed up the hill and an angel appeared, holding scales on which was a pear which turned into a sun. He appeared to be trying to tell her something. "There is only one sun," she said to the angel. "And it's in heaven. It's God. Is there another on earth?"
The angel put the sun down and led her down the hill to a house. "Perhaps Satan is trying to trick me," she thought. She opened the door a little and saw a man in the house.
"Today my prayer was not successful," she told Kang. "I saw an angel, a house and a person, but it didn't make sense."
On the third day, Kang took her to meet Moon. As she approached Moon's house, Kim said she recognized it as the one she had almost entered in her vision. She stepped inside and saw Moon in the small room and burst into tears.
"How was it possible for you to come here?" Moon asked.
"I'm sorry?" said Kim, not catching his meaning.
"Your ancestral heritage enables you. You gave life to many people who were dead," he said.
"It was Jesus, not me," Kim said.
"You have suffered so much," Moon said, his voice thick with emotion. When she explained the recent visions which led her, Moon said that they were for Kang's, not for her own benefit. "It is so difficult for Hyun Shil to trust anything," he said.
Meanwhile, Moon learned that Kim Baek Moon, the leader of the Israel Jesus Church whose services he had attended in Seoul in 1946, had escaped to Pusan with some followers. Moon sent him a gift of rice and went to see him, but was rebuffed. Kim's large and influential following disintegrated during the war and he would later rebuild the group, although it never regained its former stature.[7] Four or five of Kim's followers came to see Moon. One was Lee Kee Hwan whom Moon had known when he was a student.[8] A deeply faithful woman, she was surprised when Moon asked her to pray about him.[9] That night in her prayers, she felt God telling her that he loved Moon more than the rest of mankind. When she told Moon, he said she should ask God whom he loved more, Jesus or Moon. As a devout Christian, she was reluctant to pray in such a blasphemous manner. But, recalling the answer to the first prayer, she went ahead. By way of response, she received a vision in which Jesus and Moon appeared before her, with God standing, in spirit, between them. God moved toward Moon and faded into him. On the basis of this profound experience, she became a follower.
Another of Kim Baek Moon's followers was Pak Kyong Do, one of Moon's former Sunday school charges from Seoul. He was now a translator for the US 2nd Infantry. For the next seven or eight months, Pak was a regular visitor and sometimes stayed overnight.[10] He took Moon to visit Rev. Pak Song San, who had led the Pentecostal Church in Heuksok-dong, Seoul, and asked him if they could hold a joint revival meeting. Moon explained that, as his house was not an official church, his services were beginning to attract attention. The minister refused.
One day in Pusan, Pak Kyong Do saw an American soldier handing out leaflets in English and Korean, inviting people to a local church. Pak stopped to talk to the man and invited him to Pomne-gol. The soldier accepted, evidently with a view to proselytize.[11]. By the 1980s, Kim Baek Moon still had a small following of about fifty people, who met in a church called the Songsu Church in the Chongnung district of Seoul. He died in 1990. His theology is contained in three works:Songshin Shinhak (Theology of the Holy Spirit), 1954; Kumbon Wonri (The Fundamental Principle),1958; andShinang Inkyoron ('Theory of the Nature of Faith), 1970 - all published by the Daeji Publishing Co., Seoul. According to theologian Pak Sang Ne (see ch.5, note 19), the two men's teachings, although superficially similar in categories, are very different in content. Critics later claimed that Moon stole Kim's teaching, a charge which Pak Sang Ne rejected. He introduced himself as Clayton O. Wadsworth and said he worked in the administration of the army hospital in Pusan. With Pak interpreting, Moon spoke to him about his views on God's purpose for the creation and about the fall of man.
Ok Se Hyun urged Pak to tell the American that Moon was the Messiah. Although not convinced of the fact himself, Pak did so when Wadsworth visited Moon's home for the third time. Wadsworth visited on two more occasions, but then said he didn't want to come any more.
"Please pray about it," Pak asked.
"I don't need to," Wadsworth said. "There are many people like that in America too."[12]
In December 1952, Moon had a visit from a thirty-six year old Christian evangelist called Lee Yo Han. Lee was from Sonchon, a few miles from Moon's own home in North Pyong-an Province. He had attended seminary in Japan and been expelled for refusing to participate in Shinto ceremonies. He had first heard of Moon four years earlier, in October 1948 when he was in Seoul and Moon was in prison in Hungnam. Some of Moon's followers, including Mrs. Ok, had come to Seoul and talked about the young preacher, who said that all churches should become united.[13]
When the Korean War broke out, Lee went with a group of Presbyterian refugees to Pusan and later to Cheju, a large island between Japan and Korea. Lee tried to persuade fellow Christians that belief in salvation was not enough. "We should use the Bible to develop our personality and overcome our fallen nature and bad habits," he said.[14] It was also his view that they were living in the last Days, the prophesied time of the return of Christ, and that Christ would return as a man. For this, Lee was denounced from the pulpit in front of four hundred refugee worshippers, as a heretic. One of his Christian neighbors noticed that the pages of Lee's Bible were heavily underlined, which was unusual. He was also considered strange because he prayed with his eyes open. The neighbor wondered if Lee was a Communist but was stopped from reporting him to the police by his wife.[15] The peril of such a suspicion should not be underestimated. Cheju Island had been the site of the worst anti-Communist brutality in modem Korean history, when a popular, Communist led rebellion broke out in 1948 and was mercilessly suppressed. By various estimates, from ten to twenty-five per cent of the island's three hundred thousand inhabitants were killed by police and militias of anti-Communist youth groups from North Korea.
In September 1952, Lee returned to Pusan, and formed a group with Christians who had received revelations about the return of Christ. In November, he met Mrs. Ok, who told him again about Moon. She said he was teaching about the Last Days and that his services were very inspired. The day he came to Pomne-gol, Lee was given some money by Moon and asked to go out and buy some groceries.[6] Given customary Korean sensitivities about status, Lee might have taken offence and walked out, there and then. After all, he was an evangelist with followers of his own not an errand boy. But, if Lee felt any slight, he did not let it get in the way of his reason for visiting Moon. What would later be interpreted by other Unificationists as a 'test' of his humility was, for the self-effacing Lee himself, probably no more than what it was -- a request to buy groceries. Lee was inspired by Moon's talks on the fall of man and the life of Jesus. But it was his teaching on the patterns of God's providential history that convinced him it was true. He joined and moved in with Moon.
He was struck by Moon's uncanny insight and even detailed knowledge of a person's past.
"You refused to worship at the Shinto shrine, didn't you?" Moon asked one day.
"Yes. I was kicked out of the seminary for it. How did you know?" Lee asked. If it was because Mrs. Ok had told him, Moon didn't say. Lee assumed God had told him.
Moon now faced a new and painfully personal struggle from an unexpected source -- his family. In November 1952, he finally found his wife, Choi Sun Kil again. She had never given up hope that they would be reunited, and had remained faithful during the years of separation caused by prison and war. But tragically, her agony was not over.
Their first meeting set the tone of what was to follow. She had met one of Moon's cousins and been given the address of the Pomne-gol house. One day she stormed in angrily while he was talking with some followers, among them Mrs. Ok and Kang Hyun Shil.[17] Choi was wearing purple trousers, a gray sweater and sports shoes. Their son Sung Jin, who was by now six years old, was dressed in baggy trousers and a multi-colored striped shirt.
"You're alive," she yelled. "Why didn't you say anything for all these years? I've suffered so much. I had to eat barley and give the good rice to the baby and take care of him as well as I could." Moon sat there, saying nothing. Slowly, the others in the room stood up and left.
Mrs. Choi had been working in the international market in Pusan.[18] When Moon had left for North Korea, his company had paid his salary to her for three months and then stopped the payments. After that, she worked in Seoul's Dongdaemoon market, selling fruit and other items. She had tried several times to go to North Korea to join Moon, but had been stopped at the border by Soviet soldiers. In 1946, she was grabbed by South Korean border guards who, suspecting she might be a Communist, detained her and tortured her with cigarette butts before letting her go.[19]
She moved in to the Pomne-gol house, but was unable to find time alone with her husband to rebuild their relationship and unburden herself of the painful loneliness and bitterness of the last few years. People were there, all the time, even at night. Kim Won Pil was so innocent and unworldly that it did not occur to him that Moon and his wife might like to spend their nights alone. In later talks with Unificationists about this period, Kim would anguish over his ignorance, partially blaming himself for the failure of the marriage. Moon, he has explained, could not ask him to leave, nor ask other followers to give him free time to be with his family, because it would have meant putting himself before his followers' spiritual needs. It was therefore Kim's own responsibility to leave and perhaps find lodgings elsewhere. This he failed to do.[20]
Choi's past resentment soon began to be replaced by annoyance at Moon's present life as a pastor. Educated and capable, he would have been able, even in wartime Korea, to find work which would bring in more money and enable them to build a normal life together. Why was he choosing to live in poverty and keeping his door open to so many people? She could not understand. Every day it seemed, she would burst into fits of yelling. Moon would try to reason with her.
Don't you remember I told you when we were engaged that you should be prepared to spend seven years alone and then marry me?" he said, [21] "I told you that you would need to be able to find work and make money, in case something happened to me. So why are you behaving like this now? It turned out as I said it would."
Moon had known that his wife, in the context of her spiritual role as eventual co-leader of the messianic movement with him, would be put through an arduous course of spiritual suffering by God. He understood this would be a seven-year period. But his pleas did little to calm her. The friction became so intense that Moon left his wife in Pomne-gol and moved to another part of the city, called Sujong-dong, in order that he could continue his teaching.
On March 14, 1953, Kang Hyun Shil, who was staying in her home town, Kimchon, North Kyongsang Province, turned up at the house in Pomnegol. Moon had written to invite her to celebrate his birthday. In his letter, he had described the current difficulties with his wife as being a 'family crucifixion.' Kang had been unable to arrange the money for the fare and missed the birthday.[22] She arrived at the train station late at night and police stamped her hand with authorization to be out after curfew.[23] As she did not know the exact location of the new house in Sujong-dong, she went to Pomne-gol where Moon's wife and child were alone. Moon's wife pounced on her.
"Where did you hide my husband?" she demanded, swearing at her. An embarrassed Kang spent the night in a tent which had been erected beside the house for use as the kitchen It was bitterly cold and she sat up all night, pummeling her legs to keep warm. At 4.30 a.m. she left, lugging two suitcases.
When she stepped off the bus at Sujong-dong, she was stopped by police, who thought that she might be a North Korean agent. The men took her to a police station and searched her luggage. Kang slipped the letter with Moon's address into her sock. After she showed them her seminary identity card, they let her go.
At about 10 a.m., Kang saw Lee Yo Han on his way out to evangelize. He told her Moon had left the house at 4 a.m. to go to a nearby hill to pray.
In the late afternoon, Moon's wife and child arrived with Ok Se Hyun's son, the military policeman who had refused to let Moon and his companions on his truck during the evacuation of Pyongyang. He had two colleagues with him. They pushed Kang inside the house. Moon's wife cursed her.
"You said you didn't know where he was," she yelled. She ripped up Moon's Bible and started hurling the crockery and cutlery against the walls. The police agents stood and watched. Outside a crowd of onlookers gathered.
"I'll kill you, you bitch!" she screamed at Kang, who, as the only other young woman there, had become the target of Choi's attack.
"Excuse me, I think I need to go to the toilet," Kang said. A gentle and inoffensive woman, she thought it would be prudent to disappear. She slipped out of the house and down the street, where she met Mrs. Ok and Kim Won Pil, who was on his way back from work.
"We have to get the money before they find it," Kim said. His wages were hidden in the beams of the house. It was a reasonable fear that if the money was discovered, Moon's wife would claim it as her own, or the policeman would simply pocket it. But the police blocked them from entering their home, and the three of them went to stay overnight with a friend in the Yongju-dong district of the city.
Moon, meanwhile, had been watching the scene from the hillside. After some time, he could see that it would not be resolved until he showed up himself. He walked down to the house. When she saw him, his wife began screaming and cursing, startling the crowd in the street with her vulgar language. The police led him away. One follower, a Mrs. Song, accompanied him."[24] By fortunate coincidence, Kim Won Dok, his former.
cell-mate in North Korea and whose house he had stayed at earlier in Pusan, was working at the police station and was able to secure his release the following day.
Mrs. Ok, Mrs. Song, Lee Yo Han, Kim Won Pil, and Kang Hyun Shil returned the next day to the Sujong-dong house.
"Quickly. Hide," Moon said to Kang, as soon as he saw her. "If she sees you, she'll start again." But she was too slow. Moon's wife came out, saw her and thumped her on the arm. Kang ran off and hid in a nearby barley field.
Inside, Moon and his followers tried to reason with his distraught wife. They talked for several hours. Moon tried to explain that he was not just behaving selfishly in wanting to teach his followers. She had great difficulty understanding. Because they had married before Moon had shared his theology with anyone and before he had started his religious ministry, she had no idea what he was teaching these people, nor of his conviction that he had a providential mission given by God.
"I am not just doing what I want to, and acting humanistically. I am working for God's will," he said. "Just live with me and don't try to stop my work, and I will take care of you and do everything for you." She agreed.
"Now you should apologize to Mrs. Ok," he said. She said she was sorry for having become angry and rude.
Kim Won Pil, who had taken the day off work because of the crisis, came out to find Kang.
"It's all right. She's repented. You can come in," he said.
"What do you mean she's repented? I don't want to go in there." Kang was reluctant at first, but she relented and stepped nervously into the house.
"You should say you are sorry to Kang Hyun Shil, " Moon said to his wife.
"I've already said it once. Do I have to say it to everyone?" she grumbled.
"Yes," Moon said. His wife looked over at Kang.
"I'm sorry. I was wrong," she said.
"From now on, please live in harmony and be like older and younger sister together," Moon said to the two women. Then he prayed and everyone, including his wife, cried. A few days later, Moon's wife went to Seoul to collect her belongings. When she returned, they bought a house in Sujongdong where the group lived communally.
However, Sun Kil's struggle was far from over. She never attended Moon's worship services nor did she sit in on his talks to members or show any interest in the Principle. As a result she could never figure out why people kept coming.
"Why do so many people like my husband?" she said on several occasions. "He's my husband."
It was clear to the followers that she loved Moon with a passion. But, as long as she tried to dissuade him from continuing his religious work, he appeared to keep her at arm's length. The followers noticed that he did not treat her especially as his wife in front of them. In fact, he treated her like everyone else, which added to her frustration and jealousy.
"Why do you follow my husband?" she demanded of Kang Hyun Shil, throwing sticks of firewood at the door. Kang sat in the kitchen, saying nothing and thinking the woman was raving mad. After each outburst, she would apologize.
At this time, Moon was also being hounded by the brother of a recent convert, Kim Song Shil. She was a relative of the Pyongyang Kims, including Kim Won Pil, who had been the main followers in North Korea, and her father-in-law was a prominent educator.[25]
Her brother believed that Moon had wrecked his family and was determined to have him arrested, and his work stopped. The pressure from the families of followers, and from Christian officials, which began in Pyongyang was to gain momentum through the 1950s with the rapid growth of Moon's following in South Korea.
In March 1953, Moon formally changed his name from Yong Myung to Sun Myung. According to Pak Chong Hwa, who actually did the paperwork for Moon's identity documents, the main reason for the name change was because Christians could use the name Yong, which means 'dragon', as evidence that Moon was the antichrist. A more practical reason for the timing may have been to try to avoid the families of members, who were pestering the police to arrest him.[26]
Around this time, two of the women who had attended Moon's services in Pyongyang, Chi Seung Do and Chong Dal Ok, rejoined him.[27] Another visitor was Moon's cousin, Seung Gyun, who was now married, and had learned from his brother-in-law that Moon was in the city.[28] At Moon's suggestion, Seung Gyun worked with Kim Won Pil as a sign-painter at the US 8th Army's 8069 unit, where UN soldiers arriving in Korea were briefed and kitted out before being sent to the front. The two men lived at the base during the week. On weekends Kim would return to the Sujong-dong house.
Kim explained to him about Moon's teaching, and the two men would go to the Yongnak Church, a Presbyterian church established by refugees from northwest Korea. Seung Gun was convinced his cousin was a heretic. He recalled his father's prediction that Sun Myung would either be a great man or a traitor. It was true: Sun Myung had become a traitor to Christianity. He kept his concern to himself. Nevertheless, when he visited, he would be inspired by his cousin's wisdom.
"You know, in studying the Bible, you have to look at the alpha and the omega," Moon told Seung Gyun. "Otherwise it's impossible to interpret the meaning. People try to untie knots in the middle but it doesn't work. You have to go from Genesis to Revelation."
Moon talked about his vision of the future. The world, he said, would be unified by the Principle, centering on Korea, Japan, America and Germany. "We have to learn English," Moon said, telling his cousin that it would take five years to become proficient in the language.
As his cousin spoke, usually for four or five hours at a stretch, Seung Gyun was reminded of the claim of Cha Sang Soon, the follower from Pyongyang who had visited Moon's family in the village years earlier, that Moon was the returned Christ.
"It's impossible," thought Seung Gun. "He's my big brother."[29] As Moon talked of unifying the world, Seung Gun remembered their exploits as children. A thoughtful and practical man, Seung Gun did not reject the idea outright as preposterous or blasphemous. He considered it over a period of time, before making his mind up and becoming a follower. From his study of the Principle, he came to believe that contrary to what he had been taught as a Christian, the Christ would have to return in the flesh.
"Where is the law that says your big brother can't be the second coming of Christ" he asked himself.[30]
By now it must have become apparent to Moon that there was little likelihood of his wife assuming the role he expected. But he kept his agony of his failing marriage to himself. In September, 1953, he moved to Seoul and she stayed in Pusan. In her jealous rages, Sun Kil had accused him of adultery with his female followers, which, had it been proven true, would have resulted in his arrest.[31] She later took out divorce proceedings and the marriage was legally ended in 1958.
In the summer of 1953, the international peace talks, which had dragged on for months, finally produced a truce. An armistice was signed on July 27. The Korean War was over - well, almost over, for the South had refused to be a party to the armistice. Furthermore, the rival governments of Kim Il Sung in the North and Syngman Rhee in the South remained intact, which meant that the hot war had merely entered a period of the cold war. The terrible conflict had cemented the division of North and South with a bitterness that would last for decades.
In July, just before the truce, Moon told Kang Hyun Shil he wanted her to go, by herself, to Taegu, a city sixty miles North of Pusan, to teach the Principle. He explained that, as it was the strongest Christian center in South Korea, there would be many people ready to hear God's word. Unlike previous requests to followers to spread the word, this marked a new form of evangelizing.
"You must go for forty days," he said. "Make it forty days exactly. If you come back after thirty-nine days, I won't open the door for you. You have to endure for forty days." One of the members gave Kang two sets of extra clothes, but Moon took one set away, saying, "One is enough." He gave her enough money for a one-way train ticket and only two kilos of rice.
"You will have many lonely and hard times," he advised her. "But whenever you pray and whenever you call on God, he will be there to help you with his love."
She left on July 20. Moon prayed with her before she went: "Please, Father, be with this little daughter, who goes out now, and help her to establish a good foundation in Taegu."
As she walked down the hill from the house, Kang looked back. Moon was standing there, watching her, his eyes filled with tears. To Kang, the thin, poorly dressed figure of Moon looked so miserable and sad. How sad it was that he had so few people, that he had to rely on someone as inexperienced as her, she thought, her heartbreaking.
n August, Moon sent Lee Yo Han to join her in Taegu and their small following started to expand rapidly. During this time, an elderly woman in the Taegu group, Lee Jae Gun, was asked by a Christian which church she belonged to.
"The Unification Church," she said, making the name up on the spot.
In the following year, Moon chose as a legal title for his group, the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity.[32] In creating his association, Moon still hoped that the Principle and his growing following would serve to renew, and have a unifying effect on, Christianity. He did not expect it to be identified as a separate denomination. But in effect, that is what it became for, not surprisingly, the informal name stuck.
NOTES
1. Kang Hyun Shil's story is from her interviews with the author, with additional points from, 'From Evangelist to Disciple', Today's World, Aug. 1982, and an unpublished speech she gave to American Christian clergy in Seoul in 1985.
2. Interview with Mr. Mike Breen
3. Moon used the Korean phrase "Odi-so o-shos-oyo?", which is more of a polite inquiry like the English "How can I help you?" than a direct question.
4. 1 John 4:20.
5. Philippians 3:20.
6. The unusual story which follows was recounted to the author by Kim Je San in an interview. Mrs. Kim's tale was, at times, such a mixture of vision and reality - characteristic of someone who spends the great part of her day in prayer - that the author has relied on Kang Hyun Shil for the basic outline of Kim's experience
7. By the 1980s, Kim Baek Moon still had a small following of about fifty people, who met in a church called the Songsu Church in the Chongnung district of Seoul. He died in 1990. His theology is contained in three works:Songshin Shinhak (Theology of the Holy Spirit), 1954; Kumbon Wonri (The Fundamental Principle),1958; andShinang Inkyoron ('Theory of the Nature of Faith), 1970 - all published by the Daeji Publishing Co., Seoul. According to theologian Pak Sang Ne (see ch.5, note 19), the two men's teachings, although superficially similar in categories, are very different in content. Critics later claimed that Moon stole Kim's teaching, a charge which Pak Sang Ne rejected.
8. Lee Kee Hwan was a sister of Lee Kee Bong and Lee Kee Ha, Moon's landladies in Heuksok-dong, Seoul. This account is from interviews with her daughter, Baek Hee Suk, and with Pak Kyong Do
9. Details according to Kim Won Pil, Today's World, May 1982, p. 15.
10. Pak Kyong Do told the author he felt guilty about leaving Kim Baek Moon, as Kim had paid for his studies. He stayed with Kim's church and joined Moon some years later.
11. This is apparent from a long letter which Wadsworth later wrote to Pak.
12. Wadsworth was pastor of a church in Maine in the mid- 1980s. He declined an invitation by American Unification Church members to visit Korea with other clergy for an introduction to Moon's teachings.
13. These details are from the author's interviews with Lee Yo Han.
14. Lee has a gift for making the biblical stories relevant to the modern individual's life of faith. Some of his lectures have been published in Faith and Life, International One World Crusade, Tokyo, 1977.
15. The neighbor, Lee Bong Eun, later became a Unificationist. See Lee Bong Eun, 'Chookbok' (Blessing), Witness: experiences of Faith, Vol. 2, HSAUWC, Seoul, 1984, p.171. Also, points about Lee Yo Han are from the author's interview with the neighbor's son, Soo Kyung, who became a prominent Unificationist.
16. Kim Won Pil, Today's World, May 1982, P. 14.
17.The account of Moon's wife was told to the author by Kang Hyun Shil.
18.Im Nam Sook, in an interview with the Micheal Breen.
19. This detail from Im Nam Sook's interview with Mrs. Choi.
20. See Kim Won Pil, Fathers Course and Our Life of Faith, HSA-UWC, London, 1982, ch. 21.
21. It is apparent that Moon considered the early period of marriage, during this testing time, in the sense of an engagement. The key 'test' during this time would be for both Moon and his wife to put God's will before their own desires.
22. Moon's Jan. 6 (lunar) birthday fell on February 19 by that year's solar calendar.
23. The curfew was in effect from the start of the guerrilla fighting in 1946 and lasted until 1981, when it was abolished by the new ruler, Chun Doo Hwan. The curfew was mostly from midnight to 4 a.m., although sometimes it ran from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m.
24.Kang, Ok and Kim were told of the events that followed their departure by Mrs. Song. She was the wife of a Salvation Army officer and had been recently introduced to Moon by Lee Yo Han.
25. According to Pak Chong Hwa, the father-in-law, Chang Hee Wook. Was a former president of Seoul National University.
26. This is according to Pak Chong Hwa. Pak also told the author he filled in Moon's age as 44 in order that he could avoid reserve training. Moon was fined for this false claim in 1955. Moon may have informally changed his name as early as 1951. Kang Hyun Shil recalled that when she first met him in July 1952, he was using 'Sun Myung.
27. Chi Seung Do had moved to Seoul after Moon was imprisoned in North Korea. She was in Taegu, when she found out from her son that Moon was in Pusan. Chong Dal Ok later married Kim Won Pil.
28. The following details are from Moon Seung Gyun, in an interview with Micheal Breen.
29. See ch. 3, note 7.
30. Moon Seung Gyun moved to Seoul at the end of 1953. He decided to join the Unification Church in February 1956 and formally joined on January 1, 1957.
31. When Moon was arrested in 1955, prosecutors investigated adultery charges, but failed to uncover evidence.
32. The Unification Church was formally established in 1954 as Se-gye Kido-kyo Tong-il Shilyong Hyop-hae.
