True Father’s public mission began in 1945. In the late spring of 1946, Father received the instruction to go to North Korea.
Since that time, many members have willingly gone to challenging mission countries, but Father was, in a sense, the first missionary. He had to lay a special kind of foundation at great personal cost. That story begins with this installment.
Crossing into the North (1946)
I decided now that I had to move on, so I thought to go to Munsan and visit Kim Baek-moon’s retreat where he was holding a special meeting, and say my farewells.
Despite everything, it was the proper thing to do. In meeting and parting from people, you offer a greeting.
Thereafter, I was here in Seoul. The house in Sangdo-dong is still there, isn’t it?
There was a company called the Kashima-gumi Construction Company. It was a big electrical company from Japan …. At that time, I was working at the company and was responsible for a church.
We had no rice because it was just after the liberation. I bought some rice in Baekcheon, Hwanghae Province. I put it in the truck. On the way home I received the command from Heaven saying, “Cross the 38th parallel.”
I received the command on May 27, and I immediately went. It was morning, and I left abruptly. Sung-jin was born on April 2; I left on May 27. He was just over a month old. I arrived in Pyongyang on June 6.
It was difficult to cross the 38th parallel, but God guided me in everything. There was a rainbow. You wouldn’t believe everything I could say, and so I won’t tell you everything.
I was guided to the point where to cross the 38th parallel, and I entered North Korea. A rainbow led me across. It directly led me for 120 li.
Following only God’s command and will
I gave up everything to follow God’s will. I already knew what I had to do. Furthermore, I knew that God would surely command me in some way. Would I go the way of my family, or would I go God’s public way?
I firmly separated the two and said, “I will go the way of Heaven.” I went to North Korea by God’s command. Such a critical peak exists—you cannot do both. You have to choose between the two. I gave up a comfortable home and decided on the path of death.
There was no backup plan. It is a small thing to sacrifice one’s family for God and the world. “I can’t go because of my sons and daughters” is not acceptable.
If it were possible at that time, I wouldn’t have cast aside my family and gone to North Korea. Only God’s ideal for the restoration of Canaan was engraved in my heart. All I wanted to do was find the people and the land that could receive God’s blessing. To this day, I have been doing my utmost to accomplish this.
In the lowest position, Satan’s headquarters
When you go down, you have to go down to the lowest place. That’s why I had to go to North Korea and start working my way up again. When King Herod was after Jesus, the people of Israel and Judaism should have joined forces and supported Jesus, opposing King Herod. They didn’t fulfill their God-given mission, however, so Jesus had to go to Egypt. I had to follow a similar course.
Even when I went to North Korea, there was no one I could talk to. I was always alone. I put on my backpack. Furthermore, I still can’t forget my prayer then, “My loving wife and child, I have to leave you and go. I have no choice but to go.”
The features of that young man, who was traveling on the path of a wanderer in search of Heaven’s way, were like those of a lamb that was being pursued and chased.
My going to North Korea meant that I was going into Satan’s headquarters. North Korea was the world-class Satan. I went into the communist realm resolved to die.
I had gone into the enemy’s headquarters. Because the foundation of the will centering on Korean Christianity had gone over to Satan, I had to go north into Satan’s den to recover it. God is sorrowful over not being able to relate to Cain, not being able to like Cain, and not being able to receive Cain’s offering.
That’s why I had to put Sung-jin aside and cross the Thirty-Eighth Parallel into North Korea. It meant I had to discard my child, in the spiritual sense, and love the people across the 38th Parallel in North Korea.
Sacrificing my family for seven years
I had a family because it was God’s will for me to connect my family with the church and with the country, but I was unable to connect my family with the nation or the church. I had to start from the beginning again. Furthermore, I had to establish all the indemnity conditions until I could recover everything that had been lost.
If a letter came, I used to send it back or tear it up at the front gate. I treated any kind of news as my enemy. Sung-jin’s mother had to make a living selling apples with Sung-jin strapped on her back. She was even chased by the police. Even though I heard this news, my heart was unmoved.
After having realized this, Sung-jin’s mother should have passed over the peak and come back to me. She had to go through a seven-year course. The mother should have cooperated with the child.
With the mission of Eve, she should have sought her husband, who had not yet established the vertical standard on earth, and for seven years on earth, she should have embraced the baby and raised him more beautifully than any other prince. I had already explained all of this to her when we got engaged.
Pyongyang (June 1946–February 1948)
There were so many Christians in Pyongyang that it was called the Jerusalem of the East, which is why I went to Pyongyang to begin again.
After the liberation [from Japanese colonial rule], the churches in Pyongyang were being reconstructed to fulfill a new, historic mission. It was into this kind of environment in Pyongyang that I went and began a new Principle movement. At that time, the Christians felt the joy of liberation, and the sorrow of their life of faith had lifted. Their faith had been full of sorrow from oppressive Japanese domination, but now they were full of new hope.
At that time in Pyongyang, a new revolution of faith and church renewal was bringing hope. I was witnessing in Somun and nearby Kyongchang-ri. It was the beginning of the foundation for the Unification Church.
Kyongchang-ri meeting place
I was twenty-six years old when I went to Pyongyang. I was a young man. My way of interpreting the Book of Romans or Revelation in the Bible turned everything upside down.
Everything in the world. If those people were still alive now, they would say, Rev. Moon, you knew everything. How is it that everything you said has come true?
Choose the smart people. Bring them all. Then I will assign them…. If they don’t listen, I will persuade them myself. So I decided all the youth leaders, the good talkers, the enthusiastic deacons and deaconesses, the intelligent people, I picked them all. If I took away five from each of the churches in Pyongyang, the churches would be furious.
The Jangdaejae Church was a large one in Pyongyang. Long ago, Rev. Gil Son-ju held revival meetings there. I prayed there and received a lot of inspiration. The church had a congregation of about one thousand five hundred people.
I took fifteen very bright people from that church, which caused a commotion. Some elders threatened to kill me. There was an absolute uproar. Because I did that kind of thing, I was bound to be cursed at.
I used to pray, “How many people are here that God can use?
In the Bible, it says that Sodom and Gomorrah could have been saved if there had been only five righteous men. How many people might be called righteous? If there aren’t any, please wait a few months, I will raise such people.” You can imagine how busy I was.
Dr. Rhee and Kim Ku, patriots who returned to rebuild their homeland. In an election held throughout South Korea, members of the Korean National Assembly were voted into office on May 10, 1948. On May 31, the assemblymen adopted the new constitution, and on July 20, they elected Dr. Syngman Rhee the Republic of Korea’s first president.
True Father’s public mission began in 1945. In the late spring of 1946, Father received the instruction to go to North Korea. God prepared special religious leaders who could respond to the Father and make the conditions for Christianity to receive the returning Lord. But they would need extraordinary insight and unity among themselves. Otherwise, they, and Father, would pay the price.
A foundation teetering on the edge
I was imprisoned on August 11, 1946, accused of using religion to deceive members of the North Korean Communist Party. For what reason did this happen to me?
You have probably heard of the Inside-the-Belly Church. In June 1946, the Communist Party started to clamp down on new religions, which had sprung up all over North Korea.
These groups could not avoid being censured. When Mrs. Huh Ho-bin’s group was exposed, she was accused of deceiving ordinary people under the cloak of religion.
People had sold their possessions and made clothes for Jesus that would fill several trucks. I was arrested because of Huh Ho-Bin’s spiritual group. And because I had arrived from South Korea, they accused me of being an agent for Syngman Rhee.
According to the principles underlying the providence of restoration, I was unable to seek out the group that was waiting for me and preparing to meet me. If the leader of that prepared group, Mrs. Huh Ho-bin, had prayed to God to ask where the Lord was, God would have told her.
I waited until they came to me. I sent someone to that group to tell Huh Ho-bin that she should pray to find out what kind of group I was leading. But Mrs. Huh was waiting for a large sign from Heaven; she wasn’t expecting one young man, so she sent my messenger away. I then sent a young woman, but there was no response at all from the group.
Nevertheless, because God had to take responsibility for the woman He had prepared, He sent me to prison. While I was in prison from August 11 to 21, 1946, I met the leaders of her group, I met Mrs. Huh’s husband and the president of the group, and I told them the path they should take.
Advice given but ignored
In prison, Hwang Won-shin, who worked with Mrs. Huh and was responsible for general education and other aspects of the group’s activities, was put into the cell I was in. It was August 11, at about eleven o’clock. The next morning, he bowed to me.
I asked him why he was bowing to me, and he said, “I know about you. I have something to tell you.” He proceeded to tell me everything about his group. The spirit world had ordered him to report everything to me. I told him what his responsibility was and what steps he should take.
I asked him to tell Huh Ho-bin that she must get out of prison quickly. If she did not get out, everything would be lost there. Hwang Won-shin followed my advice and was released from prison. He visited me after I was released and said that, however earnestly he tried to persuade his church members, they wouldn’t listen to him.
After Mr. Hwang was released, Huh Ho-bin’s husband came to the cell I was in. I gave him the same advice I had given Hwang, but he said he would follow his wife. He wasn’t willing to accept my suggestions.
Finally, on the morning of September 18, I wrote a letter to Huh Ho-bin. I had asked one of the people who delivered meals to give it to her for me.
She was going to tear it up and throw it away after reading it, but one of the communist guards discovered it on her. That was because the person who had conveyed the note to her had told the guard. So I was tortured.
This began at two o’clock in the afternoon of September 18, 1946. That was when this molar cracked; they kicked over the chair I was sitting on; I fell onto my face. They accused me of being a spy.
Overcoming torture
Long ago, in the days when the communists were torturing me, I made a firm resolution that no matter how harshly I was whipped, no matter how severely I was beaten, I would endure.
Even if they beat me everywhere, and from all twelve directions, I would endure without saying a word.
There is something called a bull penis stick. You don’t know what that is, do you? It is a weapon made of a bull’s penis. It is like leather, but it is worse than leather. It is this long and it folds inside itself.
If someone is hit with one of those, it deeply cuts into his flesh, and blood flows from the lash marks. When I was being hit with one, I said to myself, “Hit me all you want!”
What would be the value of the sweat I shed in that humiliating situation? It is more valuable than if I had produced beads of sweat through physical exertion, or if I had sweated blood. You need to know this.
It is more valuable than the tears I would have shed. I sat for a week and wept so much that my eyes could not bear to open in the daylight. Why? Because I was realizing for the first time that God was so miserable.
Because I understood this, even when I was in prison being tortured, shedding blood and nearing death, I comforted God, saying, “Heavenly Father, don’t worry. I am not weak. I can prevail over any intimidation from Satan.”
During the Soviet era, I was even tortured by not being allowed to sleep for a week. Thinking, “Hey fellow, will you prevail or will I?” I considered it an exciting challenge.
For most ordinary people, one week without sleep would lead them to give everything away in a state of mindlessness. I kept my eyes open but slept quite well. I discovered a way to do this. Because I trained myself, even if I feel sleepy now, I use this method!
When the communists were investigating me, I was placed in a bright red room without any food for a week. Sitting in a bright red room drives you crazy. You can’t see anything. But I can sleep with my eyes open.
When you look, my eyes are open, but I am sleeping. Rumors spread that I was a shaman. If you lock such a person in a room, he will open the door and come out, so I had seven people watching me 24 hours a day.
An outstretched hand of sympathy
There is something I can’t forget. Many times, I was tortured or forced into a position where I couldn’t move my body. In that state, when I felt God embrace me and even feed me Himself, I could feel how much He loved and dearly cherished me. I know that God, who protected me in that place of death, would do the same for you.
If you start down the road toward death, preparations for a benefactor to appear will have been made. When I went to the communist world, there was one person who would beat me without caring whether I died or not.
Then another person would come with rice snacks and other tasty food. He tried to comfort me, saying, “That policeman beat you too much because that is the kind of person he is.
Please don’t think that all policemen here are like that.” He was quiet and even wanted to run errands for me. When you reach the peak of being treated unfairly, such things happen.
There are two people I can’t forget from that time—the chief investigator, Mr. Hong, and Pak Chan-jeong, who was responsible for everything in the police station. I’ll meet those people again someday.
Sun Myung Moon