Letter from the Parsonage (Four O’Clock Flower Story – Part Eight, 2001)

© WanHee Yoon

On August 20, 1995, The New York Times carried a major story from Seoul: Kim Sun-myung, the world’s longest-serving political prisoner, had been released after 42 years and 21 days, granted a special pardon on the 50th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japan.

The beginnings of his tragic life lay in the turbulent days after Japan’s defeat. Amidst the chaos, he came to believe that only communism could save a nation staggering in confusion. During the Korean War, he joined the North Korean People’s Army, but on October 15, 1951, he was captured by UN forces. From that moment, he was sealed within the frozen shadow of history, cut off from the modern world, and forced to live a life estranged from civilization.

His years in prison were filled with torment. His father and younger sister were executed by South Korean troops. Before his eyes, fellow communists who refused to renounce their ideology were tortured to death. Time and again, Kim was offered freedom if he abandoned communism. Time and again, he refused. Instead, he endured more than four decades behind bars, clinging stubbornly to his belief that someday, when a communist society was established, the people would live happily and equally together.

Cut off even from his family, he was denied visits and remained in isolation. At nearly 70 years of age, he still had a mother in her nineties who was alive. Yet on the day of his release, he hesitated to see her. He feared the shock she might feel if a son, legally declared dead more than 20 years earlier, suddenly stood before her. Just the thought of his parents, his sister, his family made his heart pound and his throat tighten with grief.

Stepping outside the prison gates, everything was alien, overwhelming. Plastic bottles, telephones, televisions, flushing toilets, forests of buildings, highways, streams of cars—all stretched before him under the wide blue sky, a world beyond belief. Yet within himself, he repeated again and again: None of this moves me! Behind this wealth, there are still people groaning in misery. Holding fast to the ideology that had defined his life, he began placing hesitant steps into a capitalist society, convinced that his communist faith would remain unshaken.

One scene was almost ironic. Among those who welcomed him was Mr. Kim Seok-hyun, 82 years old, who had shared prison walls with him for 32 years as a fellow political inmate, and who had been released earlier in 1990. To reporters, he said confidently: “I will teach Kim Sun-myung that capitalism is not entirely evil.”

The sight of Kim Sun-myung—his back bent from malnutrition and lack of exercise, his eyesight nearly lost to untreated disease, his body frail and fragile—was heartbreaking. Communists had once cried, “Religion is the opium of the people.” Yet it was they themselves who idolized a single figure, enslaved millions, and stole countless innocent lives. I cannot help but wonder what it would look like, the day Kim Sun-myung might finally realize that his devotion to ideology had betrayed him, that it had consumed his one precious life and forced him to endure decades of torment without ever truly living as a man.

Yes, Kim Sun-myung was a slave to an idea. But in truth, among us there are many who are no different: slaves to ideology, to drugs, to alcohol, to gambling, to possessions, to wealth, to the past itself. When a person becomes bound to something, their life ceases to grow; it begins to freeze. Even if one does not wear a prisoner’s number on his chest, even if one is not behind bars, the chains of such prisons keep us from genuine relationships and from walking rightly with God.

I recall the story of a woman who once loved her husband so completely that she cared for nothing else. When she first came to Christ, she felt guilty and afraid even to attend church, lest she betray her devotion to her husband. Yet when she came to know the Lord, she realized that the man she loved was, in the end, only flesh, and not the master of her life. Her eyes were opened to see that neither she nor her husband, but God alone, was the sovereign of their lives. And so she came to love her husband even more deeply—this time with a love that sought his soul’s eternal life.

There is no greater blessing in life’s journey than to meet the Lord who is the way, the truth, and the life. However lofty a philosophy or ideology may appear, in the end, it exploits and enslaves. Only truth frees.

“If you hold to my teaching, you are truly my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31–32)

These words remain the Lord’s message to all of us who are bound, imprisoned, or enslaved by something.

As I read the story of Prisoner No. 3597—this man who bore the inglorious title of the world’s longest-serving political prisoner—I thought of John Ruskin’s words: “The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion all in one.” For Kim Sun-myung, the question lingers: what was the true purpose of his life?

I could not help but wonder: had he met the Lord earlier, what a precious, beautiful, and regretless life he might have lived. And I recall another story, ancient yet ever fresh: when Cain killed his brother Abel and fled, God placed a mark upon him so that no one would harm him. In that same mysterious love, I wonder—what mark, what sign of mercy, might God yet place upon the remaining days of Kim Sun-myung’s life?