Three-Day Journey: Stories of a Twelve-Year-Old Korean War Refugee

By Duk-Joong Won, PhD

The Professional Reviewers Views on the 3-Day Journey:

Blueink Review: "The aftermath of war is often measured in body counts or economic damage; however, one of war's most lasting impacts is the loss it imposed on children. Author Duk-Joong Won was just 12 years old when he was handed a small package and told to leave his mother behind, with assurance that they would be reunited in three days. He never saw her again. Three-day-Journey is a gripping memoir of grief, faith, family, and ultimately triumphant."

KIRCUS REVIEW: "Arriving (at the USA) with $50 and limited command of the English language, he initially worked menial jobs, but eventually obtained a Ph.D. in economics. After decades as a successful businessman, he visited totalitarian North Korea in 1990; there, he learned that his mother and favorite sister were long dead, but managed to see his surviving siblings and say a final goodbye. Overtaken by depression back in the U.S., he changed career attending a seminary and becoming a pastor. Despite occasional language errors, this book provides a readable personal record of life in bygone Korea. It also effectively tells the story of an immigrant struggling and succeeding in the United States."

Rev. Walter Chun, Ph.D.: "Three-Day-Journey is a success story motivated by a heartfelt memory of his mother, as well as a fruitful achievement of hard work in the midst of distress. All the more, this is our story, of our parents motivating us."

Rev. Bill Youngblood: "What a compelling and inspiring journey! . . . . . . . . To read how you escaped the war, survived in the long journey to safety in South Korea, made it to America, managed to get a first rate education, reconnected with Insook, start and run a company, and go back home to see your family in the North and South, and finished your career as an ordained United Methodist Pastor with wonderful effectiveness in each church that you served is truly an inspiration. . . . ."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503541436

Duk-Joong Won, PhD

Author Duk Joong Won was born and raised in Korean peninsula, a whirlpool of international conflicts in the twentieth century. A history of his citizenship may demonstrate how turbulent the international politics have been in the region where he was born and grew up: Duk Joong was born in a remote farm village in northern Korea as a citizen of the Imperial Japan. Korea was a colony of Japanese Empire from 1910 through 1945. As Japan surrendered to the U.S. in August 1945, he became a citizen of Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea). DPRK ruled the northern half of Korean peninsula under the auspices of the USSR. On June 25, 1950, North Korean Army swept nearly entire Korean peninsula. The only real estate that DPRK did not control was Bussan Metropolitan Area on the southeastern tip of the peninsula. The U.N. Security Council formed U.N. forces from troops of sixteen nations to save the bewildered South Korea. As the DPRK army retreated to the border between China and Korean peninsula, Communist China sent her massive "volunteer" army and reinforced North Korean troops. Duk Joong was a tender 12 years old child when he was handed a small package to carry on his back. His mother stayed behind with a plan that she would join her son "tomorrow morning." The UN military command assured the civilians refugees that we would be allowed to return home in three days. He never saw his mother again. He walked more than fifty days through the valleys fighting the cold winds from Siberia, climbed the mountains buried with deep snow, and crossed ice floating rivers unclothed in subzero temperature. When his refugee trail stopped at Daejon City in the Central South Korea, he automatically became a citizen of the Republic of Korea (South Korea). After Duk Joong completed his education from sixth grade through college in South Korea, he came to the United States for his post graduate studies. He was able to attain Master's and Doctorate degrees in Agricultural Economics at the University of Maryland. In 1974, he began his professional career as an economist as an employee of Bechtel, Inc. In 1977, Dr. Won and his two close associates decided to found a consulting firm in Washington, D.C. and named it Applied Systems Institute Inc. In 1978, Dr. Won and his family chose to become naturalized citizens of the United States.

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Copyright © 2015 by Duk-Joong Won, Ph.D..

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015901805

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5035-4144-3

                Softcover        978-1-5035-4145-0

                eBook             978-1-5035-4143-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 02/06/2015

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CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

I. A Mustard Seed

II. Childhood Memories

III. Joys and Trepidations

IV. Endless Three-Day Journey

V. The Tipping Point

VI. Life in Uniform

VII. America the Beautiful

VIII. Academia

IX My Career

X. A Bridge

XI. The Lost River

XII. New Beginning

XIII. Retirement

About the Book

About the Author

To my sister, Kyung Sung.

PREFACE

Three-Day Journey is the story of my life. My journey began on a cold November day in 1950 when I was twelve years old. Millions of Koreans were ordered to evacuate their homes and villages. The military authority of the United Nations promised that we would be allowed to return home in three days’ time. In a few days, the Allied forces planned to chase out the North Korean invaders. But the situation turned from bad to worse, and we never returned home. We were forced to extend our journey indefinitely. Barely clothed, we walked through valleys, climbed hills and mountains, and crossed rivers in subzero temperatures. The saddest part of my journey was that my mother stayed behind. Her plan was to secure our household valuables during the night and join us the next day. When she tried to join us in the early morning hours, the Communist Chinese army blocked the road. They came to the Korean Peninsula to reinforce North Korean forces.

We were forced to continue our journey for almost two months and finally stopped in Daejeon, a city in the central region of South Korea. After several years, the UN Forces finally stalled the combined troops of North Korea and Communist China and the Demilitarize Zone(DMZ) border was drawn.

The Korean Peninsula was devastated by the three-year war. Millions of refugees strived to survive on humanitarian aid from the free world. Even I, a thirteen-year-old boy, tried to help our family budget by selling newspapers on the city streets every day.

My sisters, who were my de facto guardians, supported me as best as they could, and I graduated from a college in South Korea. In my college years, I set my eyes on the postgraduate studies in the United States. I pursued this goal relentlessly, satisfying every requirement of the Korean government to obtain a passport and a student visa to the United States. Many of us who came to the United States for graduate studies in the 1960s successfully completed our programs with master’s and PhD degrees at American universities in spite of severe adversities.

Many years later, after establishing myself in the United States, raising a family, and running a successful consulting business in the Washington, D.C. area, my thoughts returned to my homeland. I felt that a bridge was urgently needed between the two factions of my family split between North and South Koreas.

There had been no channels of communication between the two sides for forty years, and time was running out as some of the nine surviving siblings in our family were pushing into their eighties. Since I was the only citizen of a third country(USA), I was a natural candidate to be the bridge builder between four sisters and our mother in the North and three sisters and two brothers, including myself, in the South. I began a letter-writing campaign to the North Korean government for an entry visa. On the day after Thanksgiving day in November 1989, after eleven months of persistent petitions, I received a short note from the North Korean government that I would be allowed to come and visit my three surviving sisters. My mother and youngest sister had passed away some years earlier.

The dramatic reunion in April 1990 triggered all the old grievances and heartbreak that had accumulated in me over four decades, and I suffered a serious depression. Through counseling, I came to realize that I needed to make changes in my life and find an outlet for helping people. I resigned as the CEO of the consulting firm that I helped build and lead for sixteen years and enrolled in a Christian theological seminary so that I could serve rural church as an ordained minister.

I was appointed to serve three rural United Methodist churches in Upstate New York. My wife and I were blessed with ten wonderful years serving these communities. I retired from the post in 2004, and we settled in a warm Southern California where we live today.

Three-Day Journey is a memoir of my life stories of struggles, joys and trepidations.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

After we retired and settled in Southern California, Insook and I decided to take a creative writing course at Mt. San Antonio College. Professor Syd Bartman-Pierce required her students to submit writing assignments periodically. I took the class and drafted the first four chapters of my memoir in a semester. I repeated the same course the following year and drafted the next four chapters of this book. I am thankful to Professor Bartman-Pierce for her patience and guidance. She built up my confidence as a writer.

Amy, our oldest daughter, played a key role throughout the manuscript stage. She carefully edited every word. As soon as a new chapter was drafted, I shipped it to Amy and her husband, Adam, in New York City. She squeezed editing into her busy schedule and returned corrected versions to me by e-mail.

I owe Marshall and Judy Ketchum, my gracious neighbors, a great deal. They were the first test readers of my stories and a primary source of positive feedback. When my writing came to them too slowly, Marshall gently questioned me, When do you think your book will be ready? I am hoping to use your book in my Bible study class. What a way to motivate a writer.

I thank Sophie and Ian, my two grandchildren, for giving me purpose. I often confessed that I would feel satisfied even if my only readers were Sophie and Ian. They are very lucky children because they have parents who read books to them every night at their bedtime. SunMie and Brian, my second daughter and her husband, are raising their children with a love for books. I am confident that Sophie and Ian will read my stories in the future.

I am thankful to Jeanne Warren Lindsay, the publisher of Morning Glory Press, for reviewing my earlier draft. Her encouragement and good words became important fuel during the writing process.

Above all, I am most grateful to God for the energy, memory and time to organize the stories of my life. I have benefited the most through the process of writing this memoir because it enabled me to realize how God was intimately involved in each of the events of my life. This memoir is my living witness of God’s grace. I shed many tears of my gratitude for God’s grace while I was writing the stories contained in Three-Day Journey.

1

A Mustard Seed

This is my grandfather’s story that my mother used to tell me before we were separated.

It was a fine spring day in the year 1896. My grandfather and his horse were resting on top of a hill. He was on his way to a well-known shaman in the region. It was only a few months after Yong Soon, his oldest son, died of an unknown disease and a couple of weeks before, Yong Yul, his youngest son, had been infected by the same disease as his deceased older brother. According to his most trusted herb medicine doctor, Yong Yul had the same symptoms as Yong Soon, but the doctor had no idea how to cure the youngster. The father of the sick boy had no other option but to seek consultation from a shaman who lived a full day’s journey away on horseback.

He and his horse were resting after climbing a steep hill. His mind was preoccupied with his third son’s health. While he was deep in thought worrying about his son, a tall man with blond hair and blue eyes approached him and said politely, "Good day, Halaberji [grandpa]." Halaberji couldn’t believe his eyes because the man and his female companion were Westerners, and the hilltop where he encountered the couple was not a likely location for Westerners to travel. In fact, it was the first time my grandfather saw Westerners in his life.

The couple was traveling from the opposite direction on three horses—two horses to ride on and the third one for transporting their belongings. The tall man continued in broken Korean, "Don’t worry, Halaberji. Take this book and read it. You may find life."

Halaberji received a small booklet from the Westerner. He found that it was written in Chinese. He glanced through the booklet because he was curious about the new life to which the man referred. (In those days, most learned Korean adults were able to read Chinese literature because most official Korean communication was written in Chinese characters.) Halaberji found the booklet interesting. It contained stories of healings—the blind were able to see, paralytics walked, lepers were healed, miracles occurred.

My halaberji got on his horse and turned back home. That night, he devoured the booklet. He was drawn to the stories within. He read it over and over. The more he read, the more he liked it.

A week or so later, his youngest son, Yong Yul, showed signs of recovery. The doctor was invited back to see his patient. He carefully checked the young boy and found that his vital signs were indeed getting better, yet he was unable to explain why. The boy showed more vigor, and his appetite gradually returned. Halaberji was amazed. He found new hope for his third son’s life.

Now he faced a new challenge: he did not know what to do with the new discoveries from the booklet, and he had no idea where he could find the man and woman who gave it to him. He searched all over the region in vain. In the meantime, halaberji kept on reading the booklet over and over. His son’s health continued to improve. His entire family resumed their normal lives.

Months later, halaberji was elated. He found the couple at the local market on a market day that came once a week. He saw this couple at the far end of the crowd, but it was easy to spot them because they were at least a head taller than the rest of the crowd.

Halaberji rushed to the couple and pulled the tall man’s sleeve and shouted, I am so glad that I have finally found you! The tall man was surprised because he did not remember my halaberji. Have we met?

Halaberji responded, Remember, you gave me a booklet about two months ago on a hilltop?

Yes, yes. Did you like what the booklet said?

Yes. I liked it very, very much. But what is it? Who wrote it? Where did it come from? Is it a religion? What is the name of the religion? Show me how to practice the teachings in the booklet.

Halaberji told the tall man everything he had done since their encounter. He said that his oldest son, Yong Soon, had died of an unknown disease and that his younger son, Yong Yul, had been infected with the same illness, but his doctor had no idea how to treat. He met him and his wife on his way to the renowned shaman to get her advice. As soon as he received the booklet, his instinct told him to return home immediately. Best of all, my younger son has been healed, and my doctor cannot even explain why! Halaberji said with gratitude to the tall man and his wife. I have never seen such a miracle. I really want to invite you both to my home so you can teach us more about your faith and show us how to practice it. I welcome you to my home, and we would like for you to come anytime you can.

Halaberji gave them detailed directions along the unmarked country roads to his home. The couple came with their three horses and stayed with Halaberji and his family for several days. The couple taught them the core teachings of Jesus, how to pray, and some Christian hymns.

The two Westerners told Halaberji that they were Christian missionaries sent by the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States. They taught Halaberji and his family the basics of Christianity. They went over the teachings in the booklet verse by verse. The booklet was the Gospel of John written in Chinese before the Bible was translated into Korean. This book was a mustard seed, and it sprouted in Halaberji’s family.

This halaberji was my grandfather. The place was a small farming village called Jang Sang Ri, about 150 miles northeast of Pyongyang, currently in North Korea. To reach this village from Pyongyang, the missionaries needed to take a train for many hours. There were no other means of transportation from the nearest railroad station to Halaberji’s home.

My grandparents accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior and became Christians. Halaberji decided to build a Christian church in his village. He began to worship in his own home, inviting his uncles, cousins, nephews, and neighbors. The congregation began to grow. Those two missionaries visited Halaberji’s home whenever they found the opportunity. The missionary couple came to Jang Sang Ri by horseback, and on a third horse they carried their belongings, including a manual organ with two foot pedals, gear to cook their own meals, and other supplies for their mission work.

My grandfather decided to build a church on a piece of high ground that he owned. He hired workers. They prepared the ground, harvested lumber from his forest, and built a modest church that could hold up to fifty people. Since the congregation was unable to support a full-time minister, the Methodist seminary in Pyongyang sent a student every weekend. The student pastor took a train on Saturdays to lead Sunday worship service at the country church in Jang Sang Ri. The student pastor stayed on Saturday nights in Halaberji’s guestroom. After lunch on Sunday, the pastor returned to his school.

Halaberji’s village was remote—at least three miles away from the closest railroad station. This was a long walk because there were two hills to climb and a large river to cross. Yet the American missionaries came faithfully to the village in rain and snow, in hot summer weather, and also on cold winter days. The church grew steadily, and the nascent Methodist District in the region officially accepted the church in Jang Sang Ri as a Methodist congregation. When my grandfather passed away, Yong Yul, the youngest son who was healed from the unknown disease, assumed his father’s role. I am the last child of Yong Yul.

The Korean Peninsula is located in the middle of three dominant countries: China, Russia, and Japan. Historically, each of these countries had their own geopolitical interests on the Korean Peninsula. China wanted Korea as a bridge to Japan, Japan wanted Korea as a stepping stone to China, and Russia dreamed throughout her history to have control over the unfreezing ports along the Korean coastlines because many of her own shores froze in cold winters.

While the missionaries and my grandfather were busy planting Christianity in our village, Imperial Japan accomplished three major military victories—over China, Russia, and the Chosŏn Dynasty (Yi Dynasty), which ruled the Korean Peninsula between AD 1392 and AD 1910. Imperial Japan engaged in war against the Ching Dynasty of China in 1894 and 1895, the Czars of Russia in 1904 and 1905, and the Chosŏn Dynasty in Korea in 1904. Japan, an island nation, won all three wars consecutively. In 1910, Imperial Japan officially colonized the Korean Peninsula while the world, including the United States, looked the other way. According to historical records, the United States made a secret deal with Imperial Japan that Japan would be allowed to colonize Korea if Imperial Japan would conveniently ignore the United States’ takeover of the Philippines.

The grip of Imperial Japan on the Korean people became tighter as time passed. The colonial power manipulated and even manufactured official records to take farmland and other property away from legitimate Korean owners for generations and push them out of their hometowns. Those Koreans who were deprived of their livelihoods had no choice but to move to Manchuria, other regions of China, or other lands for survival. On March 1, 1919, about a decade after being colonized, Koreans revolted against the brutal Japanese occupation. This nationwide revolt was inspired by the former US president Woodrow Wilson’s famous self-determination declaration to keep peace in a post–World War I world. The essence of Mr. Wilson’s declaration was that each nation should have the power to govern and not be ruled by other nations.

The uprising was unsuccessful. Japanese policies on the Imperial Japan became even crueler—they not only treated Koreans inhumanely but also attempted to wipe away Korean culture altogether. They forced all Koreans to change their names to Japanese-style names, and they prohibited Koreans from speaking their own language even in their own homes. I was told by my mother that my father reluctantly changed his last name from Won to Harayama under Japanese colonial rule. Actually, I believed that my real name was Harayama Dakehiro until World War II ended on August 15, 1945. My brother, who was fifteen years old then, came home from school in Pyongyang and instructed me that my real name was Won Duk Joong. I was seven years old at that time. After he taught me my real name, he taught me the Korean alphabet.

My mother began to send me to the preschool when I was four years old because it was required under Japanese rule. The only subject at preschool was the Japanese language. So by the time we became old enough to attend primary school, most of the children in my class were fluent in Japanese. I recall that my mother took me to the first day of school. She had no idea what was happening because she did not understand Japanese. The cruelty of this practice was that the communication channel between mothers and their children was truncated.

My brother and sisters teased me that I was a mama’s boy. My mother gave me special attention because I was the youngest of her ten children. The more practical reason that she treated me the most favorably was that I was a reliable interpreter for her. My older siblings frequently spoke in Japanese among themselves to keep their secrets from our mother who did not understand Japanese.

Imperial Japan