Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: Episode 321
Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: A Selection of True Parents’ Speeches
Book 8: The Reunification of Korea and World Peace
Speech 06: Address at the Inauguration of the Citizens Federation for the Unification of North and South Korea, pg 1187-1192
Address at the Inauguration of the Citizens Federation for the Unification of North and South Korea
May 15, 1987
Little Angels Performing Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
Inauguration of the Citizens Federation for the Unification of North and South Korea
My fellow citizens, we are gathered here today to mark the founding of the Citizens Federation for the Unification of North and South Korea. The reunification of our divided country has been our long-cherished hope and desire.
As Koreans, we are proud of our rich cultural heritage, exemplified by our unique language and its system of writing, our elaborate arts, and our long history extending more than five thousand years. Korea is noted for its exceptional historical continuity and ethnic homogeneity. Koreans have long inhabited this beautiful land in peace-loving communities. From the beginning, we knew that we were destined to live in unity, not in separation.
Despite this destiny, we now have experienced 42 years during which our people and our land have been divided. Our joy and gratitude at the time of our liberation in 1945 did not last long, as we fell into the tragic separation between North and South. How long will this national tragedy continue? Although the prospects for peace appear dim, does this mean we have to give up our hope for national reunification?
My fellow citizens, I declare with my full conviction that the time for the unification of our homeland is at hand. We are gathered here today to facilitate its coming through the founding of the Citizens Federation for the Unification of North and South Korea.
Think for a moment how Korea was able to obtain its liberation in 1945. There were two prominent factors: One was the sacrifice and dedication of those who gave their lives for the restoration of our independence; the other was the global situation with the defeat of Japan at the conclusion of World War II.
The unity of the homeland today must come in the same way. The international communist movement of the past seventy years is now in its final phase. The decline of the Soviet Union and the countries under its domination is evident for all to see. They can no longer conceal their record of failure and deception. The fall of communism will be linked, without a doubt, to the fall of Kim Il Sung. This will be a factor that will facilitate the unity of our homeland.
Under the circumstances, it is most appropriate that we ignite the flame of a movement for unification, and elevate this movement by our faith in Heaven. To do this, we need to strengthen our desire for reunification. It is said, “Where there is a will, there is a way.” It is also said, “God helps those who help themselves.” Without a will and a desire for unification that is strong enough to move the heaven and earth of the North, how can we possibly expect unification? This is the very reason we are organizing the Citizens Federation for the Unification of North and South Korea today.
God or no God, the fundamental question
The thirty-eighth parallel not only marks the physical division of a people related by blood, it also designates a boundary between conflicting ideologies and value perspectives. It is because of this difference that, despite the fact that we all are descended from the same ancestral root, we fought against each other during the Korean War. This difference of values became an impenetrable wall that separated the brothers and sisters and severed the relationship between parents and children.
What is the basic difference between these conflicting value perspectives? It is faith in God versus the denial of God. The value perspectives that confront each other are theism and atheism.
The fundamental tenet of communism is the denial of God. There are no absolute values in communism because it rejects the idea of God and hence does not espouse any standard of good and evil. From these beliefs, one can easily derive the principle that the end justifies the means for the cause of communist revolution.
Communist theoreticians claim that communism is a science and use this claim to justify the denial of God and all religions. They denounce faith as superstition and declare that religion is the opium of the people. But did science in the twentieth century in fact render religion, faith and God obsolete?
The answer is no. On the contrary, science reveals that communism itself is a nineteenth-century superstition. Science in the twentieth century is serving as a witness to God by overthrowing communism’s false view of the cosmos. The cosmos in the nineteenth century was seen as composed of absolutely solid particles that could not be divided into smaller units. Based on this concept, communists expounded their fundamental philosophy of materialism, saying that the universe essentially is composed of material.
However, the physics of the twentieth century has overturned this false view of the universe. Physics has revealed that in actuality, material is intangible energy and the physical universe and energy are compatible and interchangeable. A growing number of scientists today are of the opinion that the emergence of the universe was not an accident merely resulting from some autonomous laws of causality. They leave open the possibility that there was a primary act of will. This primary cause in science is what religion calls God.
The Creator of the universe is a God of intellect, emotion and will. We were formed in His image, and He finds delight in the flow of love to and from us. To experience joy through loving relationships with His children is the very reason God created. It follows that denying the existence of God is like denying the existence of one’s parents. All values in human society begin from recognizing and establishing a filial relationship with the Creator. Science itself verifies that communism has no basis upon which to provide a value perspective. Hence it is destined to disappear.
The brutality and inhumanity of communism
Communism regards people merely as machines, as matter in motion. This is the obvious and inescapable conclusion of communism, which denies God. Labor is the communists’ god, and people are merely a higher-stage animal evolved from apes that learned to use tools. They believe that it was through labor that language developed, and then reason. Through this process, apes became human beings. In short, they argue that labor is god and human beings are evolved animals.
In communist society a person is just a tool for use in the revolutionary struggle. Human beings have value only when achieving this end; otherwise they are worthless. This is why people in communist society are treated as subhuman. The record shows that communist governments annihilated more than 150 million innocent people in the seventy years following the Russian Revolution.
Humanity’s dignity arises from the fact that we are the children of God, the Creator. In other words, our value originates from the fact that we have divinity, endowed by God. Therefore, to harm someone is in effect harming God, and to love someone is to love God. Each and every person is an individual embodiment of truth created by God. Every human being is a substantial manifestation of God Himself, and our life is eternal just as God is eternal.
The greatest sin committed by communism in regard to humanity is that its ideology denies God. Next, it considers people to be merely higher animals or moving matter, that is, machines. That is why countries espousing communism systematically deny human rights and human dignity.
We see the confrontation of these two conflicting value systems on the Korean Peninsula and in many other regions of the world. Unless this confrontation is resolved in a way applicable to the entire world, the problem of communism cannot be resolved and our hope for Korean unification is an illusion. Hence, to resolve the issue of Korean unification, it is essential to resolve the world problem, and vice versa. This is because the solution for Korea and for the world is the same.
I have been expounding the proposition that Godism, an expression of Unificationism, will resolve the conflicting value systems in the world today. Godism aims to clarify the existence of God and basic God-given human rights. Godism is indispensable if we are to free the communist world from its distorted vision and liberate Europe and America from secular humanism and decadent materialism. Our movement for unity must be grounded on this system of thought, which provides us with a new formulation of values. In the confrontation between these conflicting value perspectives, our primary goal must be to pursue unification based on the principles of freedom and democracy. Unification has no meaning without these principles. Freedom is a sacred and inalienable right endowed by God. Our brothers and sisters in North Korea have this same right, despite being deprived of it for more than forty years. If the reunification we achieve is one through which they too can enjoy freedom, it can be called true unification.
We must learn from the experience of Vietnam. It is entirely wrong to consider that Vietnam is now unified. On the contrary, I tell you that Vietnam has been placed in servitude to the Soviet Union. Millions of Vietnamese have been purged, and boat people still take to the high seas at the risk of their lives. Vietnam now ranks as one of the poorest nations in the world, with its per-capita income at less than one hundred dollars per year. Truthfully speaking, no one can say that Vietnam has been unified.
Our brothers and sisters in North Korea thirst for liberation, and our movement’s work on a global scale is the only way to accomplish it. We must strive diligently on behalf of our brothers and sisters who live under the darkness of communist rule in North Korea while longing for freedom and happiness.
The North Korean regime has been propagating its own unification tactics and strategy. It declares that South Korea must be liberated from the rule of U.S. imperialists and that the people of the South eventually must unite with the Juche, or self-reliance, ideology of Kim Il Sung. The obvious result of such a strategy is that the rule of Kim II Sung and his son will subjugate the people of the South under their own banner of unification.
For forty years, the North Korean regime has been pushing for unification under the guise of various so-called peace offensives. Despite this constant pressure and the threat of armed invasion from the North, South Korea has achieved remarkable economic growth and has attained a prominent place in the international community. South Korea’s gross national product now exceeds the North’s by a ratio of five and a half to one. At the end of 1985, the South ranked twentieth in the world in terms of GNP and twelfth in trade volume.
South Korea will be far superior to the North in economic and military strength by the time of the Seoul Olympics in 1988. Therefore, before Kim Il Sung dies, North Korea, in desperation, might seek to achieve unification by armed aggression. No one can deny that they might mount a military threat and even try to harass the Olympics. North Korea will employ all kinds of schemes with the purpose of halting the South’s progress, and they are of the opinion that, if the Olympic Games go through successfully, their chance of uniting the Koreas by armed aggression, which they believe in almost religiously, will disappear forever. In order to stop the Seoul Olympic Games, North Korea, using propaganda and other tactics to confuse South Koreans, will strive to heighten anxiety and tension on the peninsula, creating political confusion in the South.
FFWPU, USA