A daily life that resembles the heavens 空に似た日常

[Summary] Chung-jeol (忠節, loyalty and fidelity) is a matter of whether the center of one’s heart lies not in oneself but in one’s nation and in God. Its purest emblem is the patriot-martyr Yu Gwan-sun. She led the demonstration at the Aunae marketplace. On that day nineteen people, including her parents, died for the nation. In court she refused to appeal, saying, “I cannot acknowledge the Japanese trial itself,” and while leading a one-year-anniversary independence demonstration in prison she died under severe torture at Seodaemun Prison on September 28, 1920. Her family produced nine independence patriots — the highest record for a single family. The loyalty of the Korean people differs in grain from that of other peoples in three ways. First, it shone brightest when things were darkest. Second, its agents were not kings and nobles but all the common people. Third, it is a loyalty of love-of-humanity, for in five thousand years it never once invaded another people. Upon such a special character of loyalty, filial piety, and fidelity (chung-hyo-yeol), True Parents came; now is the time to attend True Mother and complete the Great Epic of the Korean People as a Chosen People — an epic that goes beyond loyalty to become the epic of holiness (聖).

(A Path of Meaning) The final problem is not knowledge or class, but the utmost sincerity (至誠) that loves the environment Heaven has given and treasures the times. Behold Yu Gwan-sun. She had nothing to boast of. Yet because she was loyal when the nation could not be loyal, and was loyal in an environment where loyalty was impossible, did she not appear before the nation as an index of loyalty!

(True Father’s autobiography) The words of Grandfather Mun Yun-guk, which I heard holding my breath beneath the blanket my father had thrown over me, remain vivid in my ears even now. Grandfather said, “Even if you die, if you die for the nation, it is blessed.” He also said, “What we see before our eyes now is darkness, but a bright morning will surely come.”

1. The Filial Piety of Sim Cheong, the Fidelity of Chunhyang, and the Loyalty (忠) of the Patriot-Martyr Yu Gwan-sun

Today we stand before the fifth chapter of the Great Epic of the Korean People as a Chosen People. In our past sessions we engraved on our hearts the culture of hyo-jeong (filial-love) centered on The Tale of Sim Cheong, and the culture of fidelity centered on The Tale of Chunhyang. Filial piety is the love between parent and child; fidelity is the unchanging love between husband and wife. If hyo is a flower blooming within one family, and fidelity is a single road toward one person, then what is loyalty (忠)? It is a character that joins “center (中)” and “heart (心).” That is, according to the center of one’s heart, one is divided into a loyal subject or a traitor. If oneself is the center, one is a person who can betray at any time; if the nation, the king, or God is the center, it becomes loyalty for a great value. Today we will meet the patriot-martyr Yu Gwan-sun, of loyalty and fidelity, who gave one life for the independence of the nation.

2. The Patriot-Martyr Yu Gwan-sun — Her Short Yet Eternal Life

Yu Gwan-sun was born on December 16, 1902, in a small village in Byeongcheon-myeon, Cheonan, as the daughter among three sons and one daughter. That household had early followed the Methodist faith, and her father, Mr. Yu Jung-gwon, and her mother, Madam Yi So-je, raised their children within a deep faith.

From childhood Yu Gwan-sun was bright and had a gift for leadership. On the recommendation of an American missionary doing mission work in Gongju, in 1916 she transferred into Ewha Haktang (Ewha School) as a special scholarship student, and in 1919 advanced to the first year of the higher course. Living in the dormitory, she learned the new learning. But what she learned most deeply at school was not English, but ‘the sorrow of one who has lost her country.’ Friends who studied with her at the time related that every night she knelt and prayed in one corner of the dormitory.

On March 1, 1919, at last that day came. At Tapgol Park in Seoul the Declaration of Independence was read aloud, and the shout of ‘Long live Korean independence (Daehan dongnip manse)’ covered the streets of Seoul. Lulu E. Frey, the principal of Ewha Haktang, fearing for the students’ safety, tried to dissuade them from taking part, but Yu Gwan-sun and the students climbed over the school wall and went out into the streets. In their hands the Taegukgi (the Korean flag), on their lips ‘manse (long live),’ and in their breasts they poured out a burning fire. The Government-General hastily issued a nationwide order to close the schools.

When the school closed its doors, Yu Gwan-sun thought, ‘The manse must not end here. It must echo throughout the whole country. I must carry this fire to Chungcheong Province, to our own village.’ With her older cousin, hiding the Declaration of Independence and the Taegukgi in her bosom, she boarded a train and went down to Cheonan. The sixteen-year-old girl went down holding a burning ball of fire in her arms. Reaching her hometown, Yu Gwan-sun forgot sleep, meeting the leaders of nearby villages, consulting with the church pastor, and preparing the great undertaking. The date was set for April 1 (the first day of the third lunar month), at the Aunae marketplace. On the night before, she and her family made, all through the night beneath an oil lamp, the Taegukgi flags to hand out.

At noon on April 1, a crowd of more than three thousand gathered at the Aunae marketplace. At one o’clock in the afternoon, when the village elder Mr. Jo In-won read out the Declaration of Independence, Yu Gwan-sun, holding a great Taegukgi tied to a pole, led the cry of independence. The shout pierced the sky.

The Japanese military police were dispatched at once and swung their bayonets at the peaceful demonstrators. The military police stabbed the side of Yu Gwan-sun, who held the Taegukgi at the head of the crowd, and, seizing the wounded Yu Gwan-sun by the hair, dragged her away. At that moment, how could her parents merely look on?

“Her father Yu Jung-gwon, together with his wife Yi So-je, followed their daughter as she was dragged away, desperately shouting for independence, and was stabbed by the bayonet swung by a Japanese military policeman and breathed his last.” (from the record of merit of the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs) That day at the Aunae marketplace, nineteen people, including Yu Gwan-sun’s parents, died on the spot, and some thirty were gravely wounded.

And the next scene is a single line written in the official record of the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs: “Around four in the afternoon, Yu Gwan-sun, carrying on her back the body of her father who had died stabbed by a blade in the left abdomen and the head, together with some forty others including Yu Jung-mu, Jo In-won, Jo Byeong-ho, and Kim Yong-i, rushed to the dispatch station and strongly protested to the Japanese military police.”

An ordinary girl would have embraced her parents’ bodies and wailed, then fainted, or fled in fear. But Yu Gwan-sun carried her father on her back and walked again to protest the outrage of Japanese imperialism. She had no more ‘fear.’ It must have been only a heart resolved that, if she died, she would die. On the spot Yu Gwan-sun was handed over as a ringleader to immediate summary trial.

On May 9, 1919, Yu Gwan-sun was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment at the Gongju District Court, and on June 30 a three-year sentence was confirmed at the Gyeongseong Court of Appeal. All those tried with her at that time, feeling wronged, appealed to the High Court. But Yu Gwan-sun alone refused to appeal. She did not plead ‘I am innocent’ before the Japanese court. She cried out from one dimension higher, refusing to appeal, declaring, ‘I do not acknowledge your trial itself.’ Wikipedia summarizes the gist of her courtroom statement that day thus.

“At the time of her trial at the Gyeongseong Court of Appeal, Yu Gwan-sun denounced and protested Japan’s occupation of Korea, arguing forcefully that the law of the Government-General of Korea was an unjust law and that to be tried under it by a Japanese judge was unjust.”

Imprisoned at Seodaemun Prison, Yu Gwan-sun did not stop the independence movement. According to the testimony of fellow prisoners such as Eo Yun-hui and Yi Sin-ae, even in prison she did not cease to cry out ‘manse’ morning and evening. And on March 1, 1920, at two in the afternoon — the first anniversary of the March First Movement — she persuaded her fellow prisoners and led a manse demonstration inside the prison. Some three thousand prisoners responded, and the sound of ‘manse’ crossed the prison walls and spread into the streets, so that many people gathered and raised the manse cry, and it is recorded that the streetcar traffic nearby was even paralyzed. The military police had to be dispatched. As the ringleader of this prison manse, Yu Gwan-sun was again shut in an underground solitary cell and subjected to cruel torture.

Under harsh torture, malnutrition, and the cold solitary cell, Yu Gwan-sun’s body rapidly broke down. But her spirit did not break to the end. On April 28, 1920, by a special amnesty commemorating the wedding of the Crown Prince Yeong, her sentence was cut in half; and on the morning of September 28, 1920, two days before her release, she breathed her last in the cold solitary cell of Seodaemun Prison. She was seventeen years old.

After the American missionary principal of Ewha Haktang, Walter, strongly demanded the handover of the body, the Japanese handed over the remains on condition that ‘it not be reported to the foreign press and the funeral be held quietly.’ When the body returned to Ewha Haktang on October 12, the students received it with wailing, and she was buried in the Itaewon common cemetery. (Later, as the Japanese developed Itaewon into a military base, her grave, in the course of being moved to Miari, was lost and has not been found.)

Later records and memorial steles engraved her spirit, compressed, thus.

“Though my fingernails are torn out and my ears and nose cut off, though my hands and legs are broken, I can bear that pain; but the pain of having lost my country alone I cannot endure. That I have only one life to give to my country is this girl’s only sorrow.”

These sentences do not remain as Yu Gwan-sun’s own direct words. But no one would call this single line, in which later generations engraved her spirit in compressed form, a mere making of a hero. For there is the truth of her actual deeds themselves: denying the jurisdiction of the Japanese court, the manse she cried out every morning and evening in prison, and the truth that she led the prison manse on March 1, 1920.

The flower of Yu Gwan-sun’s loyalty and fidelity did not bloom by chance. It was a flower that bloomed upon her whole family having walked that thorny path together.

Her eldest brother Yu U-seok (1899–1968) led a manse movement in Gongju on the same day, April 1, 1919, and was tried together with Yu Gwan-sun. Even after his release he never let go. While attending Gyeongseong Law College he organized the Society to Protect the Fatherland and was expelled; in 1927 a four-year sentence was again demanded of him in the Wonsan Youth Association case; and in 1934 he carried out anti-Japanese activities in Yangyang and Gangneung — dragged to Japanese prisons as many as eleven times in his life, yet never bending his knee. The eldest brother too was posthumously awarded the Order of Merit for National Foundation, Patriotic Medal, in 1990.

Her younger brother Yu In-seok (1904–1977), having lost both parents at fifteen, endured the Japanese colonial period wandering the mine shafts of Yangyang and Wonsan with a pickaxe in hand throughout the era.

The youngest brother Yu Gwan-seok (1911–1944), who lost both parents at eight, in the end did not see the Liberation; he departed the world in 1944 at the early age of thirty-two, leaving behind two young children, a son and a daughter.

The independence patriots among Yu Gwan-sun’s family and kin officially decorated by the government number nine, counting Yu Gwan-sun herself, her father Yu Jung-gwon, her mother Yi So-je, her eldest brother Yu U-seok, her uncle Yu Jung-mu, her cousin Yu Ye-do, her second cousin’s child Yu Je-gyeong, her grand-uncle Yu Do-gi, and her eldest sister-in-law Jo Hwa-byeok. Let us take one line from the Ministry’s materials as it is.

“Among Yu Gwan-sun’s family there was not one who was not a patriotic fighter for the Liberation of the fatherland.” One whole household devoted all its kin to the path of loyalty (忠). This is a record among the highest for a single family in the history of the Korean independence movement.

3. The Blood Shed, and the Shout That Spread to the World

When we speak of the March First Movement, there is one person we must touch on, however briefly: the 28th president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson. In 1918, ahead of the end of the First World War, he proclaimed ‘the principle of national self-determination’ — the principle that ‘let each people decide its own destiny.’ Korea’s independence activists too resolved, ‘By this principle, let us also rise up ourselves.’ It became one of the fuses of the March First Movement.

Mr. Park Eun-sik’s The Bloody History of the Korean Independence Movement records the truth of those days thus.

Over about three months from March to late May 1919 — number of demonstrations (1,542), participants (1 to 2 million out of a population of 17 million at the time), those who died for the nation (7,509), the wounded (15,961), those imprisoned (46,948). Every prison in the country was overcrowded to three to six times its capacity.

As Professor Kim Jeong-in of the Department of History at Dankook University summarizes, on March 1, 1919, manse demonstrations broke out simultaneously not only at Tapgol Park in Seoul but in seven cities including Pyongyang, Jinnampo, Anju, Seoncheon, Uiju, and Wonsan, and spread throughout the whole country.

March 31, Jeongju, North Pyongan — of four thousand demonstrators, twenty-eight died for the nation. One year later, True Father was born in Jeongju.

April 1, Aunae, Cheonan, South Chungcheong — nineteen died for the nation.

And the March First Movement did not occur only within the Korean peninsula. West Gando and North Gando in Manchuria, the Maritime Province, Tokyo in Japan (the February 8 Declaration of Independence), the United States (the Korean Liberty Congress) — it was an event in which one people’s shout echoed simultaneously across five continents.

4. When the Korean People Raised the Beacon, the World Awoke

The shout of the March First Movement did not stop on the Korean peninsula.

Chen Duxiu, dean of Peking University in China, confessed on March 23, 1919:

“When I look at the undertaking of the Korean people and then look back at our great China, I am truly ashamed.”

Under that influence, in China too, with its four hundred million people, the May Fourth Movement erupted at Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

And on May 19, the Turkish national movement began in earnest.

And in April 1919, in India too, Mahatma Gandhi raised a nonviolent, non-resistance movement. But a tragedy occurred in which British troops fired indiscriminately on peacefully assembled demonstrators and massacred hundreds.

Later, India’s poet-sage Tagore (1861–1941) sent a short poem in 1929.

“In the golden age of Asia / Korea was one of its lamp-bearers / And that lamp is waiting to be lighted once again / For the illumination in the East.” Perhaps the poet Tagore, deeply moved by the Korean people’s ceaseless will for independence and the spirit of the March First Movement, wrote this poem.

5. Three Differences Between the World’s Love of Country and the Korean People’s Loyalty and Fidelity

Then let me ask: were there people who loved their country only in Korea? No. France had Joan of Arc, China had Yue Fei, America had George Washington, South America had Simón Bolívar, India had Mahatma Gandhi — every people has many renowned patriots. Then why do we say ‘the Korean people’s loyalty differs in grain’? Because here there are three clear differences.

(1) The First Difference — Loyalty in Proportion to Suffering

In most countries of the world, patriotism grows strong ‘when one’s country is doing well.’ Winning at the Olympics or becoming a great power naturally raises patriotism for one’s country. But the Korean people have a loyalty that grows stronger in the hardest times, when the country has been lost. Many peoples enjoy the light when there is light, but a people that becomes light itself in the darkness is a special thing.

(2) The Second Difference — A Loyalty in Which All the People Are the Agents

Look anywhere in the world, and the figures who represent a nation’s loyalty are mostly kings, nobles, generals, and officials. But let us call to mind the names that represent the Korean people’s loyalty. Non-gae — she was a courtesan. Gwak Jae-u — he was a country scholar without office. Yun Bong-gil — he was a young man of the countryside. The student volunteer soldiers — they were middle and high school students who had never once held a gun. And Yu Gwan-sun — she was a young student. ‘All the people’ are the protagonists of the Korean people’s loyalty. Why is that so? Because it was a loyalty welling up only from ‘love of country.’ It is the people’s loyal devotion that to lose one’s country is, even alive, not to be truly alive.

(3) The Third Difference — A Loyalty of Love-of-Humanity (愛人)

This is the most important difference. In its five-thousand-year history the Korean people has never once been used to invade or dominate another people. Our loyalty was always a loyalty of ‘guarding our own land,’ never a loyalty of ‘seizing another’s land.’ This is a very special difference of Korean loyalty.

Heaven needed, as the people to whom it would entrust the final mission of binding humankind into one family, a people with ‘hands that have never harmed another.’ It is not a people that says, ‘Our people was a mighty people overflowing with the power that dominated many peoples,’ that is needed.

The utmost filial devotion of Sim Cheong, more precious than life; the fidelity of Chunhyang, staked on her life; the single-hearted loyalty of Jeong Mong-ju; and the loyalty of Yu Gwan-sun, staked on her life — these are the unique character of the Korean people, of which no precedent can be seen anywhere in the East or West, in past or present.

6. Why the Korean People Became a Chosen People

Thus the DNA of our Korean people has a character of loyalty, filial piety, and fidelity that is somewhat special in its grain. The protagonist we have set as today’s theme is the one patriot-martyr Yu Gwan-sun, but in truth the people who fulfilled loyalty without even a name overflow, even looking only at the manse movement. As we have seen, over ninety days one to two million people took part in the manse movement, and some 7,500 died for the nation. In the whole world’s history of independence movements, the numbers who participated and who were sacrificed are overwhelming beyond comparison with other countries. It is not merely, ‘Since the Korean people are Heaven’s chosen people, are we not proud? Since True Parents said we are a chosen people, let us just believe and be grateful.’ The Korean people had a special qualification to become a chosen people — from its founding myth, from its differently-grained character of loyalty, filial piety, and fidelity.

The sacrifice of these forebears and patriot-martyrs did not vanish in vain. Upon their blood and sweat we now live with pride. Though outwardly the Liberation may seem to have come suddenly with the end of the Pacific War, had there been no bloody sacrifice and resistance of these forebears and patriot-martyrs, we would not have had the legitimacy of our people’s independence recognized in the international community.

So we all owe a great debt to their life-throwing sacrifice. Now, when we attend True Parents and found the true fatherland they hoped for with their lives, and thus repay that debt, they will be able to rest in peace in the heavenly world.

7. True Mother in Prison and the Completion of the Great Epic of the Chosen People

So, to fulfill that grave responsibility of the chosen people, we must attend in our hearts the heaviest, yet most holy, ones. They are precisely True Father, who accomplished all and ascended (Seonghwa), and Holy Mother Han, True Mother, who now suffers the ordeal of prison. For True Father and True Mother are the ones Heaven sent, upon the foundation of the precious sacrifice and devotion of those forebears and patriot-martyrs, to complete the dream by which Heaven chose the Korean people as a chosen people. And so among True Father’s ancestors too are Mr. Mun Ik-jeom and the grand-uncle Mun Yun-guk, who received the Order of Merit for National Foundation, Patriotic Medal.

Also, in the first chapter of True Mother’s autobiography appear the story of her maternal grandmother Jo Won-mo, who shouted for independence that day, and of her godmother Hong Sun-ae, who heard the manse cry while carried on the back.

(True Mother’s autobiography) “My maternal grandmother Jo Won-mo was born into a Christian household. She was outstanding in faith and patriotism and zealous in all things. During the March First manse movement of 1919, she carried on her back my godmother Hong Sun-ae, who had turned five, joined that procession, and took part in the manse movement.”

And on August 15, 1945, the day of Liberation, godmother Hong Sun-ae carried the three-year-old True Mother on her back, held up the Taegukgi, and cried out for independence. This is by no means a coincidence.

Thus the loyalty of that grandmother and the loyalty of godmother Hong Sun-ae were the very ‘condition of devotion for the birth of True Mother Hak Ja Han.’ The loyalty of the Korean people is not simply a ‘history of guarding the country.’ More deeply, it was a ‘foundation of loyalty that prepared the birth of True Parents.’ This is the decisive secret of the Great Epic of the Korean People as a Chosen People.

And let us not forget: the Great Epic of the Korean People as a Chosen People is not yet a ‘completed epic.’ It is a ‘living epic’ still being written, at this very hour, through the life of each and every one of us. If The Tale of Sim Cheong was the epic of filial piety, The Tale of Chunhyang was the epic of fidelity, and the patriot-martyr Yu Gwan-sun was the epic of loyalty — then the final epic of completion must be holiness (聖). Who is completing this holiness? It is ‘Holy Mother Han,’ who has taken up the ordeal of prison.

Now this nation is failing to become the fatherland Heaven loves. We must go and find the true fatherland. Now, we must inherit that ‘Long live Korean independence!’ of the Aunae marketplace, that loyalty and fidelity. True Mother said, “Forgive. Love. Be one.” The final battle between good and evil cannot be done by human power alone. Utmost sincerity moves Heaven. We must ignite the heart of Heaven. Now we are in a situation where the injustice pierces the sky. She told us to cry out and pray with the heart of Heaven. In our hands is held the flag of all nations becoming one, ‘the flag of Cheon Il Guk.’ On our lips let us cry, ‘True Parents! Holy Mother Han, True Mother! Manse!’ Like the patriot-martyr Yu Gwan-sun, with a burning ball-of-fire loyalty, so that Heaven may hear, so that it may reach True Mother in prison — now is the time to cry out.

• A poem composed in the heart of the loyalty and fidelity of the patriot-martyr Yu Gwan-sun and of True Parents.

In that small breast of sixteen, how did so great a fire arise?
When she knelt and prayed, the plundered mountains and streams sobbed with her.
Though her nails were torn out and her flesh ripped, the one phrase she poured out—
Long live Korean independence! Long live Korean independence! Ten-thousand-fold long live Korean independence!
That cry of loyalty blooms as an eternal rose of Sharon (mugunghwa),
and is written, line upon line, into the Great Epic of the Korean People as a Chosen People.