Cham Bumo Gyeong: Episode 176

Cham Bumo Gyeong
Book 7: True Parents’ Course of Suffering and Victory
Chapter 1: Suffering and Victory during the Japanese Occupation and in Communist North Korea
Section 1: The Movement for Korean Independence, Paragraph 12-20

12 What is a patriot? A patriot is someone who sacrifices for the sake of his or her nation. The person who sacrifices the most becomes the most honored patriot. What is a filial child? Filial children dedicate themselves for the sake of their parents, even to the point of giving up their life. Suppose there are two sons, both of whom are dedicated to their parents, but only one of them is willing to offer his life for them. In that case, the one who was not willing to offer his life does not qualify as a true filial son.Likewise, between two people who serve their nation, if one of them offers his life and the other does not, the one who was not willing to offer his life is not regarded as a true patriot.

We should be going the way of the Will, resolved to offer our lives. I personally offered my life long ago for the sake of righteousness. I am not a small-minded man. While attending school under Japanese rule, I fought in the underground movement. Had I opened my mouth after I was captured, 70 of my comrades could have lost their lives; so I did not say a word. When I take an oath of loyalty, I am a person who fulfills it. Even when I was at the point of death from the increasingly severe torture, for which they used various methods, I preferred to die rather than open my mouth.

13 At the time of Japanese rule, even while I was undergoing all kinds of torture, I did not confess. However much the chief interrogator of the Gyeonggi Province Police Department tortured me, I did not confess. I said, "I will not talk," and that was that. They could have continued torturing me for 365 days and it would not have worked on me.

When I blacked out they would throw a bucket of cold water on me to make me regain consciousness; then I would joke with them, "Why did you do that? Let me sleep a little more!" When they saw that, even the torturers became my friends. When they came, I even said, "Hey, when you do it like that, it doesn't hurt me. Do it like this instead." When it was obvious that torture would not get them what they wanted, they forced me to sign a document. But I told them, "If you take me to court, I will speak out and tell the court you forced me to sign it against my will." A man of integrity acts according to his commitments. I am such a man. Because I am that kind of man, I did not perish even though I was persecuted.

14 Because God is with me, I am definitely not lonely. I am not lonely at all. During the time of the Japanese occupation, I was imprisoned and subjected to many kinds of torture. They beat me to the point where my head was gashed open and my entire body was covered with blood. In those circumstances,God taught me a secret method of endurance.

Once I was interrogated for 12 hours and tortured to the point that I could not even crawl or move. They tortured me to the point where I lost consciousness, and then they threw cold water on me to wake me up. They repeated this again and again. Nevertheless, I did not open my mouth. Satan conquered the world, and after he occupied the world, he attempted to dig out heaven's secret. But I did not utter even one word about it. Since everything hinged on my one word, even at the point of death I absolutely refused to open my mouth. Another horrible torture utilized a square bar with sharp edges that dig into the skin; it tore up my flesh, but I did not talk.

You must know how to maintain loyalty. If you make an oath, you must keep it even if you perish. Suppose after undergoing that kind of torture you gave in and talked; even though you survived, that day would remain a day of misery and regret that you would never be able to forget.

15 My flesh was hot and sore after my beating, and I was vomiting blood. There I prayed, "This blood is the blood of the ancestors who betrayed history. Since the road that I will have to travel still remains ahead of me, if there is a cross that I need to bear, please let me bear it further." This is the kind of prayer that only a true man can offer. This is the path I have walked to this day.

I prayed, "Right now I am persevering and enduring, but the day will come when I will be repaid. Therefore, Father, please endure. If You are going to judge the Korean people or the world, please notify me first so that I can have a chance to save them before You bring the judgment." What a difference between someone who prays like me and someone who is only complaining about this and that and blaming others!

Why don't you become a man like me, someone who appears only once in human history? Then, after you go to the spirit world, you too will be someone whom the world will honor. How awesome that would be! You have only one chance to become like this, so do not miss it. If you miss this chance, it will never come again. Therefore, you must seize this opportunity.

16 You do not know how beneficial exercise is. When I was exhausted, I would take advantage of any chance to go to urinate; if I took time to do physical exercise for as little as five minutes, my urine would be clear. Because I learned this, I survived prison life. Even though I received severe torture in that place, still I did not die.

Whenever someone is tortured, blood must be shed. One of the forms of torture was to force me to drink a lot of water and then stomp on my stomach. To resist that kind of torture, I had to empty my rectum. I had to get the water out through my rectum instead of urinating. This was to open a passage to relieve pressure on the stomach.

You must understand that God is the king of wisdom. In order to survive, there has to be a way for blood to get out. When you are exhausted, your nose bleeds, doesn't it? If it did not, you could suffer from a cerebral hemorrhage. To prevent that from happening, your nose must bleed. A nosebleed happens because your body is aware that your blood pressure is rising.

Likewise, during torture, in order to relieve the pressure, you must bleed. If you are not bleeding from the torture, you need to bite your lips or tongue and make a hole so that you will bleed. I saved many people by teaching them this. The path that people like us are walking is not an easy or comfortable one. I faced death many times, but I overcame every challenge because I knew this secret.

17 Toward the end of Japanese rule in Korea, I was tortured numerous times by police detectives. A person who does not love his country cannot love God. Therefore, I participated in underground resistance activities in Japan. Since I had been involved in that struggle while in Japan, when I returned to Korea, the Japanese police knew that I had returned, and they followed me around like ghosts. When the police finally arrested me and interrogated me, during the interrogation I vomited blood and was on the verge of death a number of times. Despite this, I risked my life to remain loyal and maintain my responsibility to my comrades with whom I had worked, by telling the police that I had fought alone.Even when threatened with death, I did not talk. When I am determined not to talk, I do not talk.

After Korea was liberated from Japan at the end of World War II, I could have retaliated against the people working at the Gyeonggi Province Police Station. But because they were defeated and in tears, I just let them go back to Japan as they were.

18  If you do not plant, you cannot harvest. I saved my enemies by helping them escape at night, and now the young people of Japan are repaying me for that favor. The country of Japan has to repay it. This is why I am grateful to God for the experience of prison life in my twenties.

By going into a Japanese prison, I could understand the misery of the Korean people who had faced 40 years of this mistreatment. It was all part of my education. After prison, I could understand how evil Japan was. I had heard about the suffering of the Korean people at the hands of the Japanese from the testimonies of my fellow patriots, and I had also read about it in books. But I did not feel how terrible it was until I had the actual experience myself. I did not fully believe what was written in the books because sometimes stories are told from the standpoint of the writer's imagination. I finally came to understand the tragedy of Korea for the first time when I actually went to prison and was tortured and shed blood alongside other prisoners who were enduring the same kind of torture.

My experience in prison awakened my sense of duty that I must liberate these suffering people. Prison served as a great teacher. There I laid foundation stones that, in the course of the providence of restoration, no one is able to touch.

19 I know that the Japanese slaughtered many of our people during the Japanese occupation of Korea. Because of that, just thinking about the Japanese people makes me tremble with rage. However, in Asia, one cannot ignore Japan. Although Japan was defeated in World War II, its participation is essential to create the three-nation alliance in Asia of Korea, Japan and China.

In terms of their national character, the power of the Japanese to unite could be greater than that of the Germans. Therefore, we do not take revenge against them. If you start with revenge, you end in revenge, and ultimately all will perish. Therefore, in order to make a new world based on Unification teachings, we are leading a new movement for unity to save Japan and its people first.

20 No matter how much this world opposes me, I will not perish. Even though I may be imprisoned, my mind and my teachings cannot be imprisoned. While the Japanese were torturing me I thought, "Go ahead and strike me! If you do, the path that I have been walking in front of God and the path that God has been laying for Japan will be connected. So go ahead and strike me! See if I hate you or not. You can check how strong my love for my enemy is."

Even while being beaten and vomiting blood, I said, "Ah! It was good for me to be beaten. I was struck on behalf of all humankind and all the resentment in history. You beat me, but I will completely forget it; I will not remember it. Dear God, please forgive them." We must all be willing to be hit and to forgive. In order to do this, we must stand in the position of denying our lives. Then all problems will be simple to resolve.

When Korea was under Japanese rule, there was a time when I was tortured for 12 hours straight and I vomited blood. I was also subjected to a torture so unusual that I can never forget, a torture that drives people insane. Miraculously I survived. Nevertheless, I did not treat my torturers as enemies. I felt responsible to pray for them to receive blessings. I studied each of them and pondered deeply to find something good in them as a condition for me to give them my blessing.

Every human being has a conscience. One of the prison guards who tortured me one day came to me the next morning after everyone else had left the room and apologized to me. Thinking of this, I realized that all human beings are the same. No one can deceive their own conscience.