Rev. Sun Myung Moon
As a Peace-loving Global Citizen is the autobiography of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the Unification Movement. It was published in 2009 in both Korean and English by Gimm-Young Publishers of Seoul, South Korea. The book was released in South Korea on March 9, 2009 and debuted at #3 on the Businesss bestseller's list. It has ranked in various bestseller lists since then and was ranked 15th on the General bestseller's list as of October 14, 2009.
Ten Years of Tears Melt a Father-in-Law’s Heart
In 1988, a young and well-educated man who had joined our church wanted to get married and sought to be matched. He was matched with a Japanese woman. The father of this young man reacted very negatively to the match.
“Of all the women in the world, you have to marry a Japanese?” he said.
During the Japanese occupation, his father had been one of the Koreans conscripted into forced labor and taken to a coal mine in Iwate Prefecture in northwestern Japan. He risked his life to escape the mine
and walked for well over a month to Shimonoseki, where he was able to board a ship back to Korea. He harbored a tremendous hatred for Japan. On hearing the news of his son’s match to a Japanese woman, he
threatened to disown him.
“You betray the family,” he said. “I will have your name taken out of the family register. No woman from that enemy country will ever set foot in this house, so take her and go away. She is not right for you, so I don’t care whether you go or whether you die.”
“Of all the women in the world, you have to marry a Japanese?” he said.
During the Japanese occupation, his father had been one of the Koreans conscripted into forced labor and taken to a coal mine in Iwate Prefecture in northwestern Japan. He risked his life to escape the mine
and walked for well over a month to Shimonoseki, where he was able to board a ship back to Korea. He harbored a tremendous hatred for Japan. On hearing the news of his son’s match to a Japanese woman, he
threatened to disown him.
“You betray the family,” he said. “I will have your name taken out of the family register. No woman from that enemy country will ever set foot in this house, so take her and go away. She is not right for you, so I don’t care whether you go or whether you die.”
The father was adamant. The young man, however, went ahead and did what he felt was right. He married the Japanese woman and took his bride to his hometown in Nagan, Korea. The father would not even open the front gate for them. Sometime later, he reluctantly accepted their marriage, but his persecution of his daughter-in-law continued. Every time she seemed to have difficulty with something, he would say, “That’s nothing, compared with what your people did to me. You should have expected this much when you decided to marry into our family.”
