Miraculous liberation from certain death
On 25th June 1950, the North Korean army crossed the border to the South, starting the Korean War. The South Korean forces had little to offer against the heavily armed and relatively well-equipped North Koreans. Seoul fell within three days, and it seemed that the entire messianic nation would fall under the anti-religious dictatorship of the North. In the end, South Korea only managed to defend a small area around the port city of Busan in the far south.
But God knew what was at stake. It was not only God‘s chosen country that mattered, but also him whom God had asked to complete the mission of Jesus. That year, the Soviet Union abstained from UN Security Council meetings in protest that the organization recognized Taiwan, but not Mao’s China. There was thus no Soviet veto, and the Security Council could decide to send UN forces to assist South Korea. The war turned completely around after General Douglas MacArthur’s legendary amphibious landing at Incheon on 15th September 1950. In just over a month, UN forces liberated the entire peninsula.
As mentioned, the concentration camp where Sun Myung Moon was a prisoner, was located just outside the important industrial city of Heungnam.
As early as 7th July, UN forces began bombing the industrial area there. On 2nd August, the fertilizer factory was bombed to pieces. Many prisoners were killed. With the exception of political prisoners – Moon was in this category – the rest of the inmates were sent for military service. In the end, only about 500 prisoners remained in the camp. They were now set to repair broken houses in Heungnam.
The UN forces crossed the 38th parallel on 30th September 1950. The North Korean army was now in full retreat. The prisoners in concentration camps further south were shot. They started shooting the inmates in Heungnam as well. On 14th October, there were only 152 left. Sun Myung Moon was one of them.
He describes the situation in his autobiography As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen,
As the bombing became more intense, guards began executing prisoners. They called out the prisoners’ numbers and told them to come with three days’ food rations and a shovel. The prisoners assumed they were being moved to another prison, but in reality they were marched into the mountains, made to dig a hole, and then buried there. Prisoners were being called out in the order of the length of their sentences, with those with the longest sentences being called first. I realized that my turn would come the next day.
The night before my scheduled execution the bombs fell like rain in the monsoon season. It was October 13, 1950, and the U.S. forces, having succeeded in the Incheon landing, had come up the peninsula to take Pyongyang and were now pressing against Heungnam. The U.S. military attacked Heungnam with full force that night, with B-29 bombers in the lead. The bombing was so intense that it seemed all of Heungnam had been turned into a sea of fire. The high walls around the prison began to fall and the guards ran for their lives. Finally, the gate of the prison that had kept us in that place opened. At around two o’clock in the morning on the next day, I walked calmly out of Heungnam Prison with dignity.
Father Moon accompanied one of his twelve disciples from the prison camp, Jong-bin Moon, to Pyongyang. They had to walk all the way, and the journey took them ten days. The only food the two emaciated prisoners found along the way were rotten vegetables. During that journey, Sun Myung Moon wrote a song, “Blessing of Glory” (Yeonggwang eui eunsa) to thank God. The first verse reads like this:
The light of glory has come,
Beaming as the rising sun.
Now the liberation of the soul,
Oh revive you spirits, oh revive!
From the mountains and the valleys,
From your caverns wake and sing.
Glorify forever the light of your rebirth.
Glorify forever the light of your rebirth.
(From Songs of Worship and Fellowship, the Unification Church of America, Washington DC, 1968)
