Author's Preface to English EditionThe story of Queen of Suffering dates back to the 1930's. I happened to be teaching Korean history in a small rural high school then. When I actually began the class, I realized that it was impossible to teach it as it was. Four thousand years of Korean history amounted to nothing but a series of humiliations, frustrations, and failures. Honestly, how was I supposed to teach that?
I began to gaze upon Korean history squarely. When I did, it appeared like a beggar girl who, chased by village urchins, ran away this way and that and hid herself and then finally collapsed on the street, crying her heart out. My feeling then was comparable to one of Jesus' disciples who, goaded by his Master, encountered a tempest while crossing the sea of Tiberius in a small boat. Jesus was asleep, and I didn't know what to do. The entire world seemed desolate. But I couldn't just remain stupefied. I had to wake my Master who was asleep inside myself. A voice came to me then, saying, "Oh, why do you have so little faith?"
When I came to myself, I began contemplating this beggar girl. Quietly I approached her, wiped her tears, dusted the mud off her, tended her wounds, and began listening to her halting mumblings. During all this, I became aware of a figure, barely visible, standing behind her. It is this story which constitutes Korea's history of suffering.
First I told the story to about a dozen friends of the same faith. It was serialized under the title "Korean History from a Christian Perspective" in the magazine, Sôngsô Chosôn (The Bible and Korea) from February 1934 until December of the next year. Those were the days when Imperialist Japan was resorting to the most oppressive measures to wipe the Korean race from the face of this earth. In 1943, Japanese authorities arrested all the readers of the magazine, charging us with harboring dangerous ideas, and abolished the magazine itself. The case was dropped after we had spent one year in prison.
The Japanese prosecutor who was investigating the case made an interesting comment when he released me. "If the history of Korea is a history of suffering in your opinion, then is it the entire history of the human race also a history of suffering?" he asked.
I responded by saying, "That's true" He asked me then, "How about writing Japanese history from the same perspective?" I answered him, "I think that it can be done'
Shortly after that, Japan surrendered unconditionally, and Korea was liberated. The way of history is mysterious, and Korea came to be occupied by the U.S.A. in the south and by the USSR in the north within a month after her liberation. This time, the suffering Queen was not only persecuted but also broken in two at her waist. Now that South Korea has become a nuclear base for the United States and North Korea a satellite state of the Soviet Union, what does history have in store for the suffering Queen?
At this critical moment when the future is so uncertain, the Friends World Committee for Consultation is publishing an English version of Queen of Suffering. Why? As the author, I feel overwhelmed and can hardly express my feelings in words.
When I was visiting Friends at Pendle Hill (a Quaker study center outside Philadelphia) ten years ago, I spoke cruel words to them. "Haven't you all nailed my mother to a cross and exposed her private parts to her shame, Red China holding her one arm and Japan grasping the other, while the polar bear holds down her head and the eagle from the Rocky Mountains holds down her legs?" Everyone became solemn and silent.
Isn't it time that the Queen of Suffering should receive words to ten her own story? After all, English is the international language.
Isn't it the case that the young Japanese prosecutor, like Caiaphas, prophesied unaware?
February 1985
HAM SOK HON