The Great Epic of the Korean People as a Chosen People (The Hyo-jeong of Sim Cheong)

[Summary] Taking as its theme “hyo-jeong (孝情)” — the union of filial duty (hyo, 孝) and heart/love (jeong, 情) that is the distinctive spirit of the Korean people — this message presents it as a core value of the chosen-people ideal and of the Unification culture. It reads the classic novel The Tale of Sim Cheong not as a mere folktale but as a story containing Heaven’s revelation, and sees Sim Cheong’s filial love that transcends life itself as a universal archetype for the salvation of humankind. In particular, through the lives of True Parents, hyo-jeong is shown to be sublimated beyond the duty of an individual into the realm of holiness (seong, 聖) that completes the nation, the world, and ultimately the cosmos. In conclusion, Korea’s culture of filial piety, as the foundation of the Korean Wave (Hallyu) and a light that illumines the world, will become a miraculous power that opens the spiritual eyes of all people.

That the Korean people were chosen as a chosen people is only a beginning. To build Heavenly Parent’s kingdom of heaven on earth, a fitting character must first be the foundation. That foundation is precisely “hyo-jeong (孝情).” Behind the Korean people’s calling as a chosen people lies this very heart of hyo-jeong. Let us read True Parents’ words together.

(From True Mother’s autobiography) When I think of hyo-jeong, there always come to mind my eldest son Hyo-jin and my second son Heung-jin, who remain as a great sorrow in my heart. A filial child is one who agonizes over what to do for the parent and then bravely advances along that path. Because such a filial child treats people with a spirit of service, he is welcomed everywhere and surely accomplishes his purpose. To serve everyone other than oneself — that is why “hyo-jeong” is great. If the distinctive character of our Unification culture were expressed in a single phrase, it would be “a culture of heart grounded in hyo-jeong.” “Hyo-jeong (孝情)” is our devotion and love toward Heavenly Parent.

*[The Meaning of Hyo (孝)]

The character ‘孝’ holds a deep meaning. It is the heart that, in genuine gratitude for the love, life, and lineage given by one’s parents, wishes to attend them voluntarily — not out of a sense of obligation. To give not in expectation of any reward, but because one loves: that is true filial piety.

Today I wish to bring out the story of a girl whom the Korean people have held in their hearts for hundreds of years. It should not be seen merely as an old novel. It is the archetype of hyo-jeong engraved deep in the DNA of the Heaven-chosen Korean people, and one of the reasons Heavenly Parent called the Korean people as a chosen people. It is none other than ‘The Tale of Sim Cheong (沈淸傳).’

The gentle mother, Lady Gwak, devotedly gave birth to Sim Cheong and departed the world after only seven days; so the blind man Sim, holding his newborn daughter, raised her with utmost devotion on begged milk, and when she had reached the age of six—

*[Sim Cheong Sets Out to Beg for Food]

One day Sim Cheong said to her father, “Even a bird like the crow, when evening comes, knows to bring food and feed its young; how then should a person be worse than a bird? Father, with your dark eyes, when you go out to beg you may stumble and be hurt, and on foul days of wind and rain or cold days of snow and frost I worry day and night that you may fall ill. From today let me go out and beg food, and ease our worry about meals.” The blind man said, “Your words are admirable. Such is your kindness, but how could my heart be at ease, sending out a young child like you and sitting to receive food?” Sim Cheong said again, “Zilu carried rice a hundred li to support his parents; are people different now from then? Do not be stubborn.” The blind man thought it right: “Admirable, my daughter; a filial daughter, my daughter,” and consented.

From that day, when Sim Cheong set out to beg, in an unlined jacket without a front panel somehow bound together, barefoot without socks, a worn gourd tied with a cord and held in her hand, on bitter days of deep winter and frost she felt no cold but went door to door, earnestly pleading: “My mother has left this world, and who does not know my father is blind and cannot see? With many giving a little, if you eat one spoonful less and give it to me, my sightless father will be spared his hunger.” Those who saw and heard her were moved at heart and gave a spoonful of rice or a dish of kimchi without grudging; and if anyone said, “Eat before you go,” Sim Cheong would say, “My old father waits in a cold room — shall I eat alone? Let me hurry back and eat with my father.”

Gathering rice from two or three houses until it was enough, she would hurry home: “Father, were you not cold and hungry? You waited long.” The blind man would seize her two hands: “Your hands must be cold,” and bring them to his mouth and blow on them, stroke her cold feet, click his tongue and brim with tears: “Aigo, aigo, how grievous. How heartless, my fate! That I should send you to beg food and live by it. Aigo, aigo, this cruel life clung to in vain, only making my child suffer.” Sim Cheong, with deep filial devotion, consoled her father: “Father, do not speak so. To attend one’s parents and for a child to be repaid with filial care is upright in principle and proper to human duty; so do not worry, and please eat.” And taking her father’s hand, “This is kimchi, this is soy sauce; you must be hungry, please eat plenty.”

*[True Filial Piety and the Korean People’s Unique Concept of Hyo]

What do you feel as you watch this scene? I see that this girl has no consciousness at all of ‘performing filial piety.’ Because she dearly loves her blind father, her body moves naturally. This is true filial piety (孝).

Yet do you know how special this filial heart of the Korean people is? In no country in the world is there a word that translates Korea’s ‘孝’ one-to-one. If you ask an artificial intelligence to translate ‘hyo’ into another language, it says there is no exactly corresponding word. Even the Bible, which teaches truth, is the same.

In the Hebrew and Greek of the original Bible, [(Exodus 20:12) “Honor your father and mother”; (Leviticus 19:3) “Each of you shall revere his mother and father”] — instead of the word ‘hyo’ they use words like ‘honor, revere, obey.’ In Western culture, the phrase ‘filial piety’ (a child’s responsibility) differs in grain from the Korean 孝. Korean filial-heartedness is not a matter-of-course notion worldwide, but the distinctive character of the Korean people.

*[Sim Cheong’s Filial Devotion That Transcends Life Itself]

Behold Sim Cheong’s bearing. She joined her two palms, rose, and prayed before Heaven: “I pray, I pray before Heaven. That I, Sim Cheong, die is not in the least grievous to me; but wishing to resolve, in his lifetime, the deep regret of my sick father, I meet this death. Spirits of heaven and earth, be moved, and open wide my dark father’s eyes that he may see.”

You may say that filial piety, anywhere in the world, is given to one’s parents. But the Korean people’s filial heart differs in depth. When The Tale of Sim Cheong is told to foreigners, they say it is frightening — how could she give even her own life to open her father’s eyes? These days even Koreans, their hearts grown hardened, sometimes disparage Sim Cheong’s filial piety, calling it unfilial to stake one’s life to open a father’s eyes. But Heaven has a purpose to teach through Sim Cheong’s filial piety that transcends life: a filial heart that holds that, if one cannot resolve the father’s deep regret, then to live as a child is not truly to live; a heart that would do anything if only it could resolve the father’s regret. Moved by that life-transcending filial heart, Heaven brought about a miracle that opened the blind father’s eyes. And not only the father — a miracle in which all the blind opened their eyes at once. At this passage, foreigners all chorus “Wonderful.” The filial piety of Koreans is truly astonishing, they say.

This filial heart of Sim Cheong is a story that compresses the character of the whole Korean people. It is said that the historian Dr. Arnold Toynbee, hearing of the Korean people’s culture of respect for elders and of filial piety, was unsparing in his praise. The deep hyo-jeong of the Korean people must not remain only on this Korean peninsula. It must become a light that illumines the world. The filial heart of one Sim Cheong worked the miracle of opening the eyes of all the blind. When that love moves Heaven, a miracle occurs, and that miracle does not remain in one family but spreads to the whole world. This is precisely the heart of the Korean Wave (Hallyu). People of the world watch Korean dramas and are moved in their hearts.

*[The Tale of Sim Cheong Is a True Story]

At first I thought The Tale of Sim Cheong was only an invented novel. But while preparing this sermon, over the course of a week I read The Tale of Sim Cheong three times, watched pansori (traditional sung narrative) videos, and spent my days reflecting on Sim Cheong’s filial heart. Then one dawn at six o’clock, the moment I opened my eyes, a resonance came from a clear place within: ‘The Tale of Sim Cheong is a true story.’ I was startled.

Thinking again, The Tale of Sim Cheong was an astonishing, revelatory novel from Heaven. In one village there must really have been a blind father, a gentle mother, and a daughter. The gentle mother departed the world after seven days, and the blind father raised the newborn daughter with every effort. To open her father’s eyes, Sim Cheong sold herself as a human sacrifice at the Indangsu. In olden times, human sacrifice was a dark culture worldwide. Even the Bible has the story of Abraham’s offering of Isaac. I think stories of people actually offered as such sacrifices were handed down. If so, returning alive in this world is impossible. Then what does it mean to say that one died yet did not die but came back to life? To be as if alive though dead is in fact the real experience everyone has at death. Having died fulfilling her filial devotion, Sim Cheong entered, as a matter of course, a beautiful spirit world like an underwater palace.

So the story after the Indangsu describes the spirit world as if it were this present world. Going to the spirit world as a filial daughter, the angels attend her with utmost care. She briefly meets even her birth mother, Lady Okjin, who passed away early, and they embrace in joy; but because their spiritual dimensions differ, they cannot be together long. Some three years passed, and the blind father too, deceived by someone like the Ppaengdeok-mother, lived miserably and, missing his footing on a begging road, fell into the water and departed the world. Being a truly good-hearted man, the father surely went to the paradise world. There he met the daughter knotted in his heart, opened his eyes, and in a place like a beautiful imperial palace, parent and child enjoyed an everlasting age of great peace. If one reads the part after the Indangsu as a vivid story of the spirit world, it becomes not fiction but a true story.

The Tale of Sim Cheong also contains another important revelation of Heaven. In the Garden of Eden, Eve fell and heaven and earth sank into darkness. God, having lost heaven and earth, came to be in a position of deep regret, like the blind man Sim. That unresolvable regret of God can be resolved only through hyo-jeong that transcends life, like Sim Cheong’s — that is the core of this revelatory novel.

*[From Ungnyeo to the Only Begotten Daughter — The Lineage of the Chosen People]

If in the Dangun myth there was Ungnyeo, the mother-figure of the Korean people, then there was the sixteen-year-old filial daughter Sim Cheong, the sixteen-year-old faithful woman Seong Chunhyang, and the loyal sixteen-year-old Yu Gwan-sun. All are images of the true woman in the flower of their age. Upon such a true lineage of loyalty, filial piety, and fidelity (chung-hyo-yeol), the only begotten Daughter, True Mother Hak Ja Han, was born among the Korean people, and at the age of sixteen went forth to the position of True Parent through the Marriage Supper of the Lamb — which seems to me like the invisible providence of Heaven.

Filial piety (孝), fidelity (烈), and loyalty (忠) are connected like concentric circles. The innermost circle is 孝 (the individual); as that circle spreads it becomes 烈 (the couple). Widening further it becomes 忠 (the nation), and at last is completed as 聖 (the cosmos / holiness). The one who completed that true 孝·烈·忠·聖 is none other than True Parents. True Mother, beyond filial piety, fidelity, and loyalty, overcame suffering and was victorious unto holiness (聖), and so could become Holy Mother Han. Let us look at words from True Father’s autobiography.

(From True Father’s autobiography) “Mother, before I am the son of so-and-so Mun, I am a son of the Republic of Korea. Before I am a son of the Republic of Korea, I am a son of the world, a son of heaven and earth. I know it is right to love them first and then to love you, Mother. I am not the son of a petty man, so please act as befits the mother of such a son.” Though I spat out words cold as ice, my heart, seeing my mother’s tears, ached as if it would tear. Though she was a mother I longed for even waking from sleep, I had to steel my weakening heart.

(From True Mother’s autobiography) Before True Father’s holy body I vowed in tears, “Until the day my life ends, I will settle Cheon Il Guk on this earth!” I repeated this vow like a testament whenever the chance was given. After the Seonghwa (ascension), to spread the word to the ends of the earth and embrace the world, I rushed about as if mad. Even when my mouth was sore and I skipped meals and felt about to collapse at any moment, I did not rest for a single hour.

We are the Blessed Families and the proud children who attend True Parents, the ones who completed such cosmos-level hyo-jeong.

Most representatively, among the True Children, Hyo-jin nim and Heung-jin nim showed an exemplary hyo-jeong surpassing even Sim Cheong’s filial piety, and so are enshrined at the Cheonshim Won.

The two always spoke as if leaving a testament: “Being a filial child is my thing! I am ready to die gladly for my parents at any time.” And they actually put that pledge into practice.

(From True Mother’s autobiography) When we husband and wife went around the whole country holding Victory-over-Communism rallies, there were communist followers who threatened to “kill” us. Whenever that happened, Heung-jin would always roll up his sleeves and say, “I will protect Father.” As was later revealed, impure persons seeking to harm Chairman Mun entered the Gwangju rally hall disguised as audience members. Satan aimed at Chairman Mun, but when that scheme collapsed, it made Heung-jin a sacrificial offering instead. By becoming a sacrificial offering, Heung-jin fulfilled, in his stead, the promise he had made: “I will protect Father.”

And likewise Hyo-jin nim — before True Parents’ helicopter accident of August 2008, an event occurred in March 2008 that seemed as though Hyo-jin nim had gone first as an offering in place of True Parents. This part is conveyed through the testimonies of many members and the testimony of film director Kim Yeong-ho.

Thus the family-level filial heart of The Tale of Sim Cheong was completed at the cosmic level as holiness (聖) through True Father, True Mother, and the True Children. We are the proud Blessed Families established upon that authority of victorious hyo-jeong. We must hold pride and self-respect. Only when we hold such an attitude — a heart of hyo-jeong that transcends life — do we become the center of the chosen people.

*[Repeating Aloud the Dialogue That Models Sim Cheong’s Filial Heart]

1. The filial heart of six-year-old Sim Cheong: “Even a bird like the crow, when evening comes, knows to bring food and feed its own mother; how then should a person be worse than a bird?”

2. Declining Lady Jang’s offer to make her a foster daughter: “I serve my father as both father and mother, and my father trusts me as both daughter and son; had it not been for my father, would I be alive now? I mean to serve him as long as my body lasts.”

3. The last, earnest prayer at the Indangsu: “I pray, I pray before Heaven. That I, Sim Cheong, die is not in the least grievous to me; but wishing to resolve, in his lifetime, the deep regret of my sick father, I meet this death. Bright Heaven, be moved, and open wide my dark father’s eyes that he may see.”

*[The Cosmos Completed Through Hyo-jeong]

The protagonist who will complete this Great Epic of the Korean People as a Chosen People is True Parents, and among them, the One who must cross the final crisis of the last days and be victorious is none other than the only begotten Daughter of the First Advent, True Mother, Holy Mother Han.

Even amid grave suffering recently, she especially emphasizes to us the word hyo-jeong. This is not only human hyo-jeong; the teaching to fulfill hyo-jeong toward Heavenly Parent is a word unique to us alone, found in no religion of the world.

The root of all conduct is filial piety. The filial piety of children completes the parents. A mature society is completed through hyo-jeong.

Let us repeat the words that Mun Hyo-jin nim always spoke: “Being a filial child is my thing!” Loooong~