Ham Sok-Hon's Advice for Today:
"Put your sword down and think hard!"
Many have much to say what is happening about the recent, rapid North-South rapprochement on the Korean peninsula. Perhaps too much so. So why turn to someone who died a decade ago?
Ham Sok-Hon, had he been alive today, undoubtedly would have much to suggest and to warn to not only to his compatriots but also to the international community. Even if he chose not to volunteer, undoubtedly reporters would be at his doorstep. Ham was a close ally of Pres. Kim Dae Jung and twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Much to his embarrassment, he was often referred to as "Korea's Gandhi" in his quest for a truly democratic Korea via non-violent change. Also, as a North Korean refugee and even a member of the early North Korean Government prior to his imprisonment by the Russian occupation forces right after World War II, he would have been asked for his opinion.
Ham's perspective was both historical and philosophical. Though a Quaker, his perspective was just as Taoist as Christian. His first job was as a high school history teacher. He was perplexed on how to teach what many considered Korea's sordid history. At the same time he wished to inspire his students to have a pride in country based on intellectual honesty and not flimsy nationalist sophistry. Remarkably, he succeeded in doing so by using his high-caliber mind and a brave, mystical soul. As a result he was able to encourage his fellow citizens during his 80 years while earning the respect of even foreign naysayers.
So, how might Teacher Ham possibly speak from the grave?
One has little choice but to look at his numerous writings. The best known is "Ddeusero Bon Hanguk Yeoksa" which an abridged version was later translated into English and entitled as "Queen of Suffering."
Just as national liberation came as a surprise in 1945, we have similarly been taken back by the rapidity of movement towards reunification in the past few months. Consider how Ham opens his chapter on the country's liberation:
"Let us be frank. No one foresaw liberation. …If any believed that liberation was coming, it was the ignorant public, who believed it just because they were ignorant. If the liberation came like a thief it means that it does not belong to any individual, but naturally to the public. Another thing we should realize is that the liberation was a gift from heaven, for to say that nobody knew it was coming means that no one designed it. Anything which has come without someone arranging it is a gift from heaven. This was a liberation, which heaven handed to the people. The joy was all the greater for the unexpectedness of it. Perhaps this was deliberately wrought by Providence as an education to see how happy we would be, to see the goodness of our hearts again well up of itself. ….
"Those who blew their political horns out of desire for power, whom could they have addressed if there had been no masses? Those who may have learned the art of war in Moscow, what good would it have done if all they could find were dead bodies? Those who may have struck a deal in the United States, what sort of country could they have built without a Korean people? The people are sovereign."
Foreign involvement in the Korean peninsula has been a mixed blessing. Although cosmopolitan, Ham was very skeptical about foreign influence on the political and spiritual well being of his fellow citizens. An example of this concern is as follows:
"The Korean War was nothing but a war of attrition demonstrating the meaning of the confrontation of the two camps. Both will surely spend themselves to exhaustion by competing in technology, policy, strategy and propaganda. Thus putting up the edifice of a new culture will not begin until both sides start scraping the bottom of their store of material wealth and philosophies. The two sides are locked in a fight matching money with sword, although each claims democracy for public display. Only when money and sword have both disappeared will true democracy be brought to life." [italics added]
Given the dichotomy of two versions of "The Better Way" contested by foreign powers at the cost of the Korean people, Ham advised that Korea should set out its own path:
"What is this new thing? A middle course. A choice between the two will yield no solution to problems of the world. It is only a puerile writer who ends his story by having the one win over the other. In real victory there is neither winner nor loser. Salvation will come only when both end in failure. Saving one's enemy is true victory. He who kills his enemy is the loser by that very act. If that is the way in novels, how much more should it be so in the universe conducted by the all-powerful God? There can be no winner or loser. Both must lose. A third party must emerge soaring above the two. This higher position of the third party is the middle course. God places himself not above nor below but inside. The inside signifies heaven. The middle is not intermediate but the center, the heart, the ultimate. Neither this side nor that side; it is "I." Neither before nor after, nor some other time; it is now. It is neither materialism nor idealism it is life. Not this, not that; it is one. Let us then call the middle course the highroad, the highroad all countries, all people, all gods should travel."
Too often Koreans have blamed foreigners for their woes of the twentieth century. Critical as Ham may have been about the cynicism of foreign powers, he does not let Koreans portray themselves as innocent victims. An example of this is the following:
"Is it not a pity? When the armies of the two countries arrived, one in the north and one in the south, how splendid it would have been if we had come out with a firm declaration, 'We are one nation, one people.' When the two got together to draw a line across our unscarred middle, the one thrust on us communism, the other capitalism, we should have said, 'We are neither communist nor capitalist. We are one nation. We know only of being one, not two. We would sooner die as one than live as two….'
"Fatalism is a philosophy for the oppressed. It is imprisonment of life, a faith embraced by the slave. The winner over suffering gains a fighter's view of life, like Prometheus. The one who gives in to suffering, on the other hand, turns to fatalism. The people of Korea became enslaved to fatalism when they began to retreat from the frontlines of life, overwhelmed by the repeated onsets of suffering. They lost faith. They forgot that their spirit was invincible. Faith is what makes one invincible. Because this was lost, because the soul withered, imprisonment followed."
And just when Ham has punched the nation's sore spot, he redeems the Korean people with:
"Nevertheless, fatalism is not far from the idea of Providence. In difference the two are one hundred and eighty degrees apart, but for that very reason their starting point is the same. It will not require a major conversion for this nation to enter a higher faith. Despair can easily become trust, stagnation change into élan. Whether it is to be faith or fate will depend on the presence or lack of a unifying moral meaning…."
"Have the Koreans been given a global mission? Reforming our way of living we certainly have heard of. Social betterment, yes. Today, we hear a great deal about a variety of national movements. But I have yet to hear anyone calling with confidence for a mission for us in the interest of humankind. You may perhaps feel that being part of the free world and doing our share in the anti-communist cause is global mission enough. It is not enough.
"What I have in mind is something more meaningful, something undertaken on a spiritual level, not participation in something everyone else is doing. Discover for yourself work to do and carry out the work staking your whole being on it - then the work is rightly your mission. So long as a nation holds on to an ideal to which it aspires and feels committed to its mission, it will not perish."
In a very correct sense, Ham Sok-Hon places Korea in a pivotal role in world history – a role that only grows decade by decade. Today Korea's unique role is only strengthening by the self-confidence that has grown out of economic and political development. With the diminishing threat of war, Korea is on the brink of assuming a new role in the world. But this has only come after a great deal of suffering – a kind of misery that has only strengthen the national character. As Teacher Ham wrote so well:
"We bear the burden of the world. It seems as if the civilizations of the East and West push their dregs off toward us. Buddhism from India and Confucianism from China, with all their fine virtues, left behind their every abuse once they crossed the Yalu into Korea. The thought of Europe and the civilization of the United States, for all their benefit, spread only their deadly poison as they landed at the port of Pusan.
"The undesirable features of Eastern civilization are passivity, conservatism and formalism. We alone seem to have been the recipient of their worst effects. The weaknesses of Western civilization are in their acquisitive, predatory and all-on-the-surface aspects, and their sharpest fangs seem to have sunk into us alone. Like a rubbish heap that catches leftover food, the evil off-scourings of others' pleasure-seeking and consumption have all been unloaded on our frail shoulders. The land of scenic beauty is now a museum of misfortunes. …
"If anyone desires to see the misfortunes and effects of iniquity in the world in all their aspects, all one has to do is come to Korea: here you will find abuses of Confucianism and Buddhism, examples of militarism, slavery under capitalism."
"Let us first consider the causes for the failures in our history which have led to the confusion of today. The first is poverty. The second, foreign interference. Foreign countries, which helped bring about the liberation, regarded our liberation solely as their own working. As they acted accordingly, the path before us has not been smooth. The third cause is mistakes made by our politicians, which hardly need discussion. The fourth is the spiritual weakness of the people, that is, historical inertia or perverse habits of long standing. Spiritual weakness is the greatest of all causes, for a strong spirit could have overcome the other causes. The fifth is the erroneous judgment on the part of the people. The human being is spiritual and spirit is freedom. What distinguishes spirit is that it can overcome inertia, which operates in the physical world. It is not easy, but it can be done. A true determination could have overcome the old habits. But we failed."
"Let us take one or two of those mistakes. We assented to the establishment of the 38th parallel. The line was drawn by the big powers in their wanton desire to exploit our country for their purposes. We could have refused it but we failed to do so. Reliance on foreign aid is another mistake. The idea that the country cannot be run without foreign assistance is a bad habit that developed after the liberation. Failure to come to terms with Japan immediately after the liberation was a mistake. In the first flush of heightened emotion on our part and the prevailing mood of contrition on their part, negotiations could have set the two countries on their right path. But we failed. What we have done has been hasty, imprudent and ill-thought-out - this shows a lack of confidence."
Having reviewed Korean history from political, spiritual and almost psychological perspectives, Ham concludes with the following advice that is surely relevant for today in context of what may eventually be a unified nation and an eventual form of government:
"Moral principles are even more urgent for the leader. By moral principles one can experience the whole within oneself. A modern version of this is the constitution. The virtues of a good king of the past have now been written into a constitution. There is no surviving the crisis facing us today unless the ruler has enough virtue to act according to the constitution, an expression of the wishes and wisdom of the whole people. Self-confidence is necessary but the wrong kind of self-confidence will lead the ruler astray. Therefore, a constitution is absolutely necessary to guarantee full freedom of religion and education, of speech, assembly and art."
Yet Ham never lost his focus that Korea is made up of the common people. In his essay, "The Path to Reunification," in the periodical Voice of Ssi-Al, he reminds the leadership north and south that the authority of the people can only accomplish the reunification of the two Koreas. At the same time, he advises the need for reconciliation rather than confrontation:
"I submit that the North and South question cannot be solved by either one conquering the other. It is unreasonable to think that one side could conquer the other. We must elevate ourselves to a position from which we can view the fighting that took place as ridiculous and stupid actions. I therefore objected to the use of terms like "Northern puppets" or "Southern puppets"…We had no good reason to fight. The only cause of the tragic war was that we were treated like the garbage can of civilization that could be divided into two parts. Had we known it, we would have embraced each other and surely not fought one another."
In his 1972 letter to the North Koreans, which was published only in the South, Ham declared:
"We must become one because we are one (people). We can live only by becoming one. We cannot live in this divided situation, and even though we are alive, we are not living. The South must trust the North and the North must trust the South. And on the faith let us stand up together. The earlier we stand up, the better … Reunification is revolution. It is a new revolution, not just a people's revolution nor just a social one—it is a larger and deeper and newer revolution."
In a separate piece, Teacher Ham reminds that reunification is ultimately up to the Koreans and they may be mistaken to rely too much on the foreign powers that have caused or benefited from the division of the peninsula:
"Reunification of the people is not simply a physical force. It is rather a spiritual movement, a movement of life itself. It is not only the external and physical forces that divided our people. The external forces could come in because the internal division had already taken place, and the vital living forces inside had already weakened. Therefore the divided people cannot be untied by the material forces alone. It takes the whole people to be moved by a common and strong inspiration."
And what may that common inspiration be?
"Awakening to one's mission is the strongest motive force for regeneration. If a falsified world mission can stir the masses for a time to an astounding level of activity, what great things can be wrought with a mission of universal historical significance, based on truth and underwritten by the justice of God? Let Koreans awake to their world mission if they want to clear themselves of the ignominy of a defeated nation."
And what may be the first step necessary for Koreans on both sides of the 38th Parallel to develop such an inspiration? It comes in exhortation found at the closing of his chapter on the meaning of Korea's history in the "Queen of Suffering":
"Put your sword down and think hard!"
The reunification process, though long in preparation, is suddenly zooming ahead catching almost everyone off balance–similar to Japan's defeat in World War II quickly resulting in the liberation–and division–of Korea. While foreign powers were largely responsible for the division of the country, the Koreans were also responsible with their internal divisions. Though foreign nations have a role to play in the reunification of the peninsula, it is ultimately up to the Korean people – and Ham means it literally as opposed to simply the elite–to make reunification possible. Ultimately the future is in the hands of the common Korean–regardless what foreign powers or politicians in either capital may believe.
For the average Korean to take back control of their country for the common good, it will require a spiritual centering within each Korean citizen to see past the history of the last half century and to take full account of his or her role in a new Korean future. This will require governance based on morality encoded in law that ensures freedom in the truest sense of the word.
However, Ham warns that all of this will take the faith and courage of the common Korean man and woman to stand united, without acrimony, and consider a less materialistic foundation for a stronger Korea. In any case, the first move is to step back from militarism and start rethinking the basics. Ham Sok-Hon, Korea's voice for a democratic and wise nation, would have expected nothing less.
References:
Ham Sok-Hon, Queen of Suffering, A Spiritual History of Korea, translated by E. Sang Yu, edited and abridged by John A. Sullivan, Friends World Committee for Consultation, 1985
Lee Yoon-Gu, "Ham Sok Hon; A Wandering Albatross", Living in the Light Some Quakers Pioneers of the 20th Century vol.II (Philadelphia: AFSC, 1985), pp.52-69.
Author:
Tom Coyner is software sales and marketing manager for a US firm with responsibilities for Korea. A Quaker residing in Tokyo, he is preparing for reassignment to work on a full-time basis in Seoul. He first came to Korea as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in 1975.
For an abridged version of this essay, printed in the Korea Herald, please click here.
Return to our
Page