I will tell you how God the Father trained me since I was young. My pulse is 46. They say that I need to have an auxiliary heart. And when I checked my electrocardiogram for 24 hours, it goes down to 32 when I sleep at night. However, the cardiologist said that my heart muscle is strong, so I don’t need a pacemaker. They say that marathon runners and professional basketball, volleyball, and soccer players have a pulse of around 46. I think I was born that way. I remember that adults were worried because my pulse was so slow, so they gave me acupuncture and medicine. Since my pulse is slow, I get cold when I’m still. Maybe that’s why I was so active since I was young. I get hot easily when I move. So I think it was my nature to move.
When I was young (5-6 years old), I used to run around the mountains, fields, and rivers. Sometimes I went alone, and sometimes I went with the neighborhood kids. I lived like this until I was about to enter elementary school. But I didn’t want to go to school. It was the first day of school, and I refused to go to school, so my grandmother grabbed me by the collar and dragged me out to the street. At that time, many students were walking down the street to go to school, and I was so embarrassed that I begged my grandmother and told her to let go of my collar so I could go to school. So I started going to school, but I hated school. So I sneaked out of school pretending to go to the bathroom during class. I asked my neighbor’s friend to bring me the book after class and went to the riverbank.
My hometown is Hapcheon. Hap is the Chinese character ‘hyeop’ for “between”. Cheon is “rivers”. Hapcheon means a town surrounded by a river. I would skip class and gather dried grass and catch fish in the river in the summer, and in the winter, I would walk on the ice in the rice fields, and when it was cold, I would light a fire on the dried grass on the riverbank to dry my wet socks and pants. I was bored of walking alone, so I would lure the neighborhood kids to join me. I don’t think I was ever able to sit still as a child.
I didn’t know what happened when I was three years old or younger, but my older brother told my wife. When my wife visited Korea, my brother asked about my son. He didn’t see my children yet. so he guess they were curious. He asked how my son (the boy) was. He asked my wife if he was very naughty, and she said yes, and he said that he must be. When I was young, I was so active that if I was sent out in the morning wearing pants, I would come back in the evening wearing a skirt. This means that my pants would tear and become a skirt. He said that there was a fire at a substation next to our house, and I would go to the burned-out area and hang all kinds of iron skewers on my body and sleep with them.
Then, when I was in the second grade of elementary school, I got sick. I didn’t feel any pain from the illness, but the adults were worried. Pleurisy, bronchitis, etc. So my grandmother took me to a hospital run by German missionaries in Busan and treated me as an outpatient for a whole year. That’s why I didn’t have to go through that boring school life and I didn’t have to skip school. That’s why I graduated from skipping school.
At that time, my family treated me badly at home. I hated home so much that I wanted to run away, but I couldn’t live without running away, so I had to endure it day by day. I didn’t know how fortunate it was that I got sick and ran away from home.
When I was young, I had two shameful nicknames at home. One was “Mukdol,”( meaning is over- feeder?) and the other was “thief.” The nickname “Mukdol” was a bit unfair. It was a nickname given to me by my family and relatives without any reason. During the Korean war, there was a shortage of food. My family didn’t evacuate far away, but hid in a cave on the side of the mountain across the river. When we ran out of food while hiding, we would come and go at night to sneak food that we had hidden in the house. That was something that young women had to do. Because the young men were taken away by the People’s Army to be used in the military or as forced labor.
When the women returned after crossing the river or cross the fire line, and come back with food on their heads, the men would step forward and help them lower their heavy loads. When they got close to the entrance, a guy wearing a diaper would inevitably come out and say, “Aunt, did you bring ‘dongbu’(a type of bean)?” Aunt and the women brought the food despite the fear of death, but the men did not step forward to greet them and instead, the guy wearing a diaper looked for something to eat, so they took out their anger on the hungry guy wearing a diaper. That’s why I got the nickname “Mukdoli.” When my relatives called me, they always called me “Mukdoli.” I was embarrassed to be called Mukdoli in front of the neighborhood kids.
One day, I was playing outside with the neighborhood kids, and as evening came, the kids slowly disappeared one by one. I was left alone. Later, I found out that it was the day to make red bean porridge. Since I went home and no one was there, I decided to go to my rich relative’s house next door. I thought my mother was there, so I went to her house to look for my mother, but I had to pass the kitchen to get to the living room. As I was passing by the kitchen, my relative’s grandmother happened to be making red bean porridge. When she saw me, she said to me, “Are you back, Muk-dol? Eat red bean porridge,” as she always did before. I was embarrassed because I thought I had come to get red bean porridge at that time, so I returned without saying anything.
The grandmother noticed my feelings and told my mother and relatives about it, and the decision was made to “never call Joonsik Muk-dol.” From then on, when the elders of the family called me, they never called me Muk-dol. That’s how I was able to get rid of the dishonor that had been attached to me. In. Esau’s life was damaged because of red bean porridge, but I was able to get rid of the dishonor of being called Muk-dol because of red bean porridge.
The second dishonor was given to me by my family: I was a thief. This nickname was given to me because of a terrible incident I committed. It was a punishment I deserved. I was in the third grade of elementary school. It was Chu-seok(Korean Thanksgiving). I was playing outside with my neighborhood friends in the morning, and all kinds of colorful and noisy Chuseok toys in the store dazzled my eyes. While playing soldier with my friends, I suddenly had a thought: It would be really fun to buy swords, spears, long guns, pistols, etc. from that store and arm the kids with them.
Then, a scene suddenly came to my mind. While I was having breakfast with my family in the main hall, a neighbor came to pay back money she had borrowed from my grandmother. I saw my grandmother taking the money and putting it in the closet, and that reminded me of that. So I went home right away, took out the treasure from the closet, and had my neighborhood friends arm themselves and play soldier with great excitement.
It was time for lunch. When Mukdol didn’t come for lunch, my sister called me to come. I was so busy playing that I ignored the call to eat lunch and played with the kids. Eventually, it was time for dinner. My family was eating dinner and they didn’t see Mukdol on the dinner table, so they sent my sister to come in for dinner. I was having fun playing too busy to listen, so my sister returned home. But when , My grandmother needed to use the money, she reached into the closet to get the money out, but it was missing. The money is nowhere to be found. There was a lot of trouble in the house. The whereabouts of the money were unknown. At that moment, something like a flash of light flashed through my sister’s mind.
Mukdol was having fun skipping lunch and dinner, and the kids were decorating themselves with all kinds of flashy things? What kind of money did these kids have that allowed the poor neighborhood kids to buy and wear such toys? Who had the money to buy all those toys, and where did they get the money? No matter how much she thought about it, there was no way the money that was put in the closet drawers would run away, but my older sister thought that Joonsik was strange. He didn’t come home for lunch, and when my older sister saw that the neighborhood kids were wrapped in all kinds of toys, I was called in as a person of interest by my family. They kept asking me what I did with the money I had left over. So I said that I didn’t steal it, but that my neighbor stole it. My neighbor was known as a thief family in the neighborhood, so I lied.
Then they called that kid over and asked him how he bought the toys, and he said that Joonsik bought them all. So they started interrogating me again. So I had no choice but to tell the truth. I said that I wanted to buy toys to play with my kids, so I took the money and bought them, and put the remaining money in a hole in the mud wall. So they took me to the scene and had to find the remaining money. From then on, my family members would label me a thief and threaten me. They would make me run all kinds of errands, and if I showed signs of rebellion, they would ask what a thief would do if I didn’t do them, so I tried hard to obey them so that I wouldn’t be called a thief. From then on, being at home was like hell. I hated being at home. I wanted to run away, and then the opportunity came to leave home. That’s when God helped me.
The adults were worried that I had a serious illness. I didn’t know if I was sick, but I sweat profusely when I slept, and the adults thought I was not well. So I was sent to my aunt’s house in Busan and received treatment as an outpatient for a year at a hospital run by German missionaries in Busan, and I was able to leave home. I was so happy that I was able to escape from that house. However, I missed home because I had been away from home for so long. And when I returned home, it seemed that my family had forgotten that I was a thief. So I thoroughly realized how scary it was to steal at a young age.
A year later, when I returned to school, all the kids my age in the neighborhood were in the fourth grade, but I was the only one in the third grade. My pride was hurt, so I couldn’t do that, so I skipped a grade and went to the fourth grade. My homeroom teacher forbade me to clean the classroom after school because I was sick. I couldn’t move against my will. I wanted to go out to the playground and play with the kids, but how could I play on the playground when I was exempted from cleaning because I was sick? From that time on, my behavior began to become tied down.
But I have another experience with stealing. It was when I was in the military, and I liked a raincoat. I thought it would be nice to use it at home. And a friend who worked at the military office was good at playing the guitar. He liked playing the guitar and singing. I secretly stole his printed songbook and put it in the bottom of my vacation bag and rode the bus. It was close to the Military Demarcation Line, so there were military police checkpoints everywhere. The military police would stop the bus, get on, check the soldiers and civilians, and then get off.
That day, at one checkpoint, the military police saw me and thought I was strange and told me to get off. I was so scared that I prayed earnestly to God and repented, vowing never to steal again. I was reminded of the time I stole when I was young. When I did that, the military police asked me questions and searched my luggage, and when they saw the raincoat I had stolen, they didn’t react at all. They just let me go in the next bus. I really endured it for ten years. From now on, I decided never to steal from anyone else. Since then, I get cold sweats whenever I hear someone else’s stuff. If I don’t even give a tithe, it’s like stealing from God, so I try to give it relatively accurately. After that, I showed a traumatic reaction to stealing to my children, so I don’t know if my children are interested in other people’s stuff. I told them to give a tithe properly, but are they giving it properly?
I didn’t have any male adults above me at home. My father passed away when I was two, and my older brother, who is seven years older than me, left home when he was in middle school, so I grew up without any interference from male adults. I was free to fly around the mountains, fields, and rivers. From a young age, God made me a free spirit.
I raised rabbits when I was young. I fed them fresh grass all four seasons. In the spring, summer, and fall, I could easily provide fresh grass from my surroundings, but in the winter, I couldn’t get grass from nearby areas, so if I went to the mountains, there were fresh, living grasses. In order to get those grasses, I wandered all over the mountain even in snowstorms, winds, and rains. Despite such abundant food, the rabbits did not give birth to babies.
However, the rabbits of an old lady living in front of my house gave birth to five or six baby rabbits at a time twice or three times a year. At that time, I wondered why my rabbits were so plump and did not give birth to babies, while the old lady’s rabbits were so skinny and did not eat enough and gave birth to babies. Now that I think about it, I wonder if I did not mate my female rabbit with a male rabbit. I did not know that animals mate and give birth to babies. Since my mother did not have a husband, I did not know that couples had sex. At that time, there was no mass media in my town. There were no newspapers, magazines, radio, or even television around me. Of course, there was no electricity until my second year of middle school.
Even until I was in high school, I had no opportunity to learn about sex. When I returned home for the summer vacation from school, my friends came to visit me. We were having a heated discussion about where babies come from in my room. I later noticed that a newlywed woman was living in a rented room next to my room and was listening to our discussion. At that time, I concluded out loud that babies come from the mother’s belly button. Of course, at the time, they must have known for sure that it wasn’t true.
Then, starting in the second year of middle school, God the Father in Heaven began to interfere with my life. I began living a life where I couldn’t move due to illness and was stuck in my room. I developed a skin disease on the inside of my left ankle, called eczema. It was a terrible disease. Every spring and fall, a pimple-like bump would appear on the spot, like when you get bitten by a mosquito. Then, it grew bigger and bigger, the size of a large potato, and it was so painful, itchy, and unbearable. So I tried all kinds of skin medicine. It got better after treatment, but it would come back in the spring and fall, so I was really confused. My close relative, who was my age, also had this eczema. But when that child’s eyebrows fell out, he looked like a leper, although it wasn’t leprosy. I couldn’t tell you how worried I was that I would end up like that. So no matter how scary and painful the treatment method was, I was very determined to get better through treatment.
Since it would come back after treatment, the doctor said that I had to pull out the root of the boil, so I sprinkled sulfuric acid on rice and applied it to the boil. It was so painful that I fought the pain all day. At that time, there was no Tylenol to relieve the pain, or I didn’t know about it and couldn’t take it, so I had to endure the pain with my whole body 24 hours a day. Even then, when the boil came back, I hammered the herbal medicine that had been made by cutting the sides like rat poop into the core of the boil. I was told that I had to pull out the root of the source. From then on, I devoted all my energy to fighting the disease. I couldn’t do anything and fought the pain and the disease.
I had to wander around like that, so I had to stay locked in my room and fight the disease. After my second and third years of middle school, I entered high school. I left home to attend Jinju High School. I attended the dawn prayer at my local church and prayed to God. I asked Him to heal my disease. That disease and that pain became a trauma to me. I thought that the disease was something that God the Father gave me. I was afraid of God the Father since I was young. I thought that God the Father was the one who gave me pain and disease and disciplined me. So I went to church diligently and did volunteer work to look good to God the Father so that I wouldn’t be punished. It was because I thought that God would punish me if I did something wrong. I thought that God was like someone who was holding a fly swatter to catch a fly that was bothering me when I thought about God, waiting for the fly to land and then swatting it away when the opportunity came.
So I just looked at God’s face. I couldn’t have any bad thoughts, I couldn’t do any bad things, and I had to work hard to keep the law, keep the Lord’s day service, pay my tithes, attend church, and do church service. It was to look good to God. It wasn’t to receive God’s love, but to avoid becoming the object of God’s wrath. However, I realized that from God’s perspective, the reason He made me suffer from illness in middle school and high school was to help me get through my dangerous adolescence gracefully.
During the winter break of my second year of high school, I visited my aunt, who was the president of the Korean Nurses Association. My aunt introduced me to a dermatologist who had returned from studying abroad in the United States. When I applied the Cambisone (steroid, prednisone) ointment that the doctor had brought from the United States, my condition got better in a few days. Then, he gave me some medicine to take, saying that I needed to kill the bacteria in my body. Thinking back now, I think it was probably a prednisone-type pill. took one pill a day for seven days for the first week, two pills a day for the second week, and three pills a day for the third week… I took seven pills every day for the seventh week, and from the fifth week, rashes started on my skin. Then on the eighth week, I took six pills every day, and gradually reduced the pills every week, and on the fourteenth week, I took one pill every day, and from the eleventh week, the red spots on my skin started to disappear. And after that, I was completely free from that disease. At that time, a woman around me had been suffering from that disease her whole life. At that time, these drugs had not been introduced to Korea. I think that doctor also brought the drug and did a clinical trial on me. Oh, thank God, I was freed from the bondage of that disease.
Rice unmilled and Rice after milled 
ripened rice field
Gigea and a Korean sect made of rice straws
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