Ju Ki-cheol

Early in 1939 Ju Ki-cheol stood once more in the pulpit of the Sanjeonghyeon Church in Pyongyang. He had just come out of a cell. He had been there for months. The Japanese police were watching him closely.

That day he did not preach an ordinary sermon. He read out a list of five things he was praying for. One of them has been preserved in the Korean sources. He asked God to let him overcome the power of death. In free translation, the request was this: grant that I may overcome the power of death.

Ju Ki-cheol, often spelled Joo Ki-chul in English, was a Presbyterian minister. He refused to bow at the Japanese Shinto altars. For that he was arrested again and again. In all he spent more than five years behind bars, and in April 1944 he died in Pyongyang prison. Today Korean Christians call him a martyr. The South Korean government honors him as a freedom fighter.

But it began in a village on the south coast.

A COUNTRY THAT WAS NO LONGER ITS OWN

Ju Ki-cheol was born on November 25, 1897, in Ungcheon, in Changwon county, in southeastern Korea. Ungcheon is now part of the city of Changwon. His childhood name was Ju Gi-bok. His father was called Ju Hyeon-seong, his mother Jo Jae-seon. She was his father’s second wife, and his father already had children from his first marriage. The sources disagree on which son Ki-cheol was in the line of sons. The family was not poor. According to the Korean encyclopedia they were middle-class farmers who employed hired hands.

To follow this life, you need to know something about Korea at that time. For centuries it had been a kingdom, with Confucianism as the foundation of state and family. Buddhism and the old folk religion lived alongside it. Around 1900 the power of Japan was growing. In 1910 Korea was annexed to the Japanese empire. The Koreans lost their own government. Japan would rule the country until 1945.

Christianity was young in the country and had been brought mainly by missionaries from the West. The church grew strongest in the north, around Pyongyang, now the capital of North Korea.

In the southeast, where Ki-cheol grew up, it was mainly Australian Presbyterians who worked. A commemorative calendar of the Uniting Church in Australia says he came to know the gospel through that Australian mission. It is a church source, but it fits what we know about the region.

CHRISTMAS 1910

At Christmas 1910 Ki-cheol went to the church in Ungcheon for the first time. He followed his eldest brother, Ju Gi-won, who already attended. He was thirteen. That same year Japan had annexed the country.

In 1912 the writer Yi Gwang-su came to Ungcheon to give a lecture. According to the Korean encyclopedia, that lecture was decisive: the boy wanted to go to the Osan School in Jeongju, on the other side of the country, in the north.

From 1913 to March 1916 he attended the Osan School. There he came under the influence of Yi Seung-hun and Cho Man-sik, two Christians who worked for the future of their people. At that school, faith and love for Korea were woven together.

In 1916 he went to study commerce at Chosen Christian College in Seoul, the school that would later become Yonsei University. It did not work out. He developed problems with his eyes and his health, and within a year he was back home. A young man with plans, back in his village.

In October 1917 he married An Gap-su, a woman from a well-to-do family in Gimhae. She had studied in Seoul at the Jeongsin Girls’ School, a Christian school.

MARCH 1919

On March 1, 1919, a nationwide movement for independence began in Korea. Everywhere people rose in resistance against Japanese rule. According to Michael Breen in the Korea Times, 9,458 people were imprisoned afterward, more than a fifth of them Christians.

Ki-cheol took part. According to the South Korean Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs, he was chairman of a youth association in his region. We know nothing more about his role. He was twenty-one and had already made his choice for his country. The choice for his life was still to come.

THE REVIVAL PREACHER IN MASAN

In September 1920 Kim Ik-du held revival meetings in the Munchang Church in Masan, a port city not far from Ungcheon. Kim was known for his gift of healing, writes the historian Kim Kang-sik. In those meetings Ki-cheol went through what the Korean encyclopedia calls an experience of rebirth.

On November 1, 1920, Kim Ik-du gave a Bible class in the church in Ungcheon, Ki-cheol’s own church. There he decided to become a minister.

A story goes around that his eyes were healed during Kim Ik-du’s prayer. The English Wikipedia reports it cautiously, with the word “allegedly.” The detailed Korean encyclopedia says nothing about it. I cannot confirm it.

What makes a person change direction? For Ki-cheol it was not a new country or a new job. It was a preacher in a hall full of people, and then a Bible class in his own village church. Do you know a moment like that, when you knew that listening alone would no longer be enough?

FROM PYONGYANG TO BUSAN

In December 1921 the presbytery of South Gyeongsang gave him permission to study. In a Presbyterian church, the presbytery is the regional assembly of ministers and elders. In March 1922 he began at the Presbyterian seminary in Pyongyang, where nearly all Presbyterian ministers in Korea were trained. From 1923 he also worked as an assistant preacher in Yangsan.

On December 22, 1925, he graduated. On December 30 he was ordained as a minister. On January 10, 1926, he began at the Choryang Church in Busan, then called Pusan. It was the first church ever founded in that city.

He was pastor and teacher at the same time. At the provincial Bible institute he taught young men who wanted to become pastors themselves. One of them was Son Yang-won, who would later be imprisoned for his own faith. An Australian church source says that Ju was a support to his former student in prison.

According to an article by the historian Kim Kang-sik in the Busan Ilbo, in 1929 Ju submitted a proposal to the presbytery against Shinto worship. That would be early. Other sources speak of protests in his province in 1931. I leave open exactly how it went. What is certain is that he had been raising the subject for years before his arrest.

MASAN AND AN EMPTY HOUSE

In July 1931 he became pastor of the Munchang Church in Masan, the church where he had come to repentance in 1920. In 1932 and 1933 the ministers of his province chose him as moderator of the presbytery. From 1933 he was also invited to speak at the revival meetings of the seminary in Pyongyang. His name became known throughout the country.

In May 1933 his wife An Gap-su died after an illness. She was thirty-four. The sources say little about how he bore that loss. So I leave it at that one fact.

In 1935 he married again, to Oh Jeong-mo, a deaconess from the church in Masan. In the years that followed she would prove at least as determined as he was.

A BOW AT THE EMPEROR'S ALTAR

What did Japan actually want from the Korean Christians?

Shinto is the ancient religion of Japan, with shrines to gods, ancestors and the emperor. In Korea, Japan built a large Shinto shrine in Seoul and then, according to Breen, more than eleven hundred others across the country. Students and citizens had to bow there. The government said it was an act of patriotism, not religion. Many Christians saw it differently. To them the bow was homage to other gods.

At first the obligation applied mainly to schools. Christian schools that refused could be closed. In 1936 Presbyterian missionaries in Pyongyang decided to close their schools rather than give in. In 1938 Japan extended the obligation to all Christians. The Methodists and the Roman Catholic Church accepted the government’s explanation. They agreed that it was a civil ceremony. Among the Presbyterians the resistance was strongest, but there too the regional assemblies gave in one by one.

In July 1936 Ju Ki-cheol became pastor of the Sanjeonghyeon Church in Pyongyang. Some sources say 1937. The Korea Times calls that congregation one of the birthplaces of the Presbyterian church in Korea. He arrived in exactly the years when the pressure was at its greatest.

READY TO DIE

In 1938 he was arrested for the first time. Britannica says February, the Korean encyclopedia says spring. After his release he went on refusing.

That same year he preached the sermon for which he became best known. In Korean it is called Ilsa gakoh, which means something like: being ready to die. According to the Korea Times, he said openly in it that the national church should not have given in to Japanese pressure. Britannica points out that his motive was faith, not patriotism.

In September 1938 the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church met, the highest assembly of the denomination. The assembly passed a resolution approving visits to the Shinto shrines. According to Breen, police stood at the doors and critics were given no chance to speak. Ju was in custody again at that moment. According to the sources Wikipedia cites, that was precisely to keep him away from the assembly.

That year the Presbyterian seminary in Pyongyang was also closed, the school where he himself had been trained.

I do not write this to condemn the men at that assembly. They faced a choice between their churches, schools and church members on one side, and their conscience on the other. Some thought that giving in would save the church and its schools. I mention it to show how alone Ju stood at that moment.

FIVE PRAYERS

On January 29, 1939, he was released from the police station in Daegu. Shortly afterward he stood in the pulpit in Pyongyang and preached the sermon with which this chapter began. Wikipedia says it was a three-day leave, the Korean encyclopedia speaks of release. The sermon itself is certain. It was later published in English under the title My Five Fold Prayer.

After that, things moved fast. In October 1939 the Pyongyang presbytery, under police pressure, decided that ministers and elders who refused to bow could no longer preach or lead in prayer. Ju preached anyway. In mid-October he was arrested again. On April 20, 1940, he was released.

It was the last time. In 1940 he was arrested once more, in July according to most sources, on September 20 according to the Korean encyclopedia, in a nationwide operation against everyone who refused. The charges were lèse-majesté and violation of the public order law.

Under Japanese pressure the Pyongyang presbytery deposed him as a minister. His family had to leave the manse. Exactly when the Sanjeonghyeon Church was closed is not entirely clear. One Korean source says 1940, Britannica says after his death.

A WIFE WHO STAYED

While her husband was in prison, Oh Jeong-mo did not keep quiet. The Korean encyclopedia devotes a separate article to her. She was arrested more than ten times. When the church was closed, she gathered the members together. She encouraged her husband to hold out to the end.

An American missionary, Charles F. Bernheisel, also helped with the evening services while Ju was in his cell, according to the encyclopedia. It is a small detail. It shows that in those years the line between Korean and Western Christians did not always run sharply. There were missionaries who left, there were missionaries who stayed, and there were Koreans who gave in and Koreans who refused.

Ju himself was held in Pyongyang prison without ever being convicted. Anyone who reads the sources knows that he suffered severely there. I will not go into detail. It is enough to know that he stayed there four years, and that his body could not endure it.

How long can you hold to a decision when no one outside sees you? For Ju the answer was apparently: as long as it took.

NINE O'CLOCK IN THE EVENING

On April 13, 1944, he was moved to the prison infirmary. Eight days later, on April 21, Oh Jeong-mo came to visit him. It was the last time they saw each other. That same evening, around nine o’clock, he died. He was forty-six.

Words have been handed down that he is said to have spoken at the end. Wikipedia gives them, on the authority of a Korean book from 2002: “God of my soul, hold me firm.” I have found no second source for them. It is a tradition, and I present it as such.

He was buried in a public cemetery in Pyongyang. A little over a year later, in August 1945, Japan surrendered and Korea was liberated. Christians still in prison were set free. He was no longer there to see it.

Oh Jeong-mo died of breast cancer on January 28, 1947.

AN EMPTY GRAVE

After liberation Korea was divided in two. Pyongyang ended up in the communist north, where South Koreans cannot go.

In the south he was remembered. In 1968 a memorial to him was placed in the National Cemetery in Seoul, with no body in it. The government awarded him a high decoration for his struggle for independence. The sources disagree on the year: 1963 or 1990. In 2007, a hundred and ten years after his birth, the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs named him independence activist of the month. In Changwon, the region where he was born, there is a memorial center.

I find it striking that he is honored by his government as a patriot and by his church as a martyr. In his life the two belong together, but they are not the same. Britannica points out that his resistance came from faith. He would not honor another god.

In Seoul there is a memorial with no grave beneath it. His grave lies in a city on the other side of a closed border. What remains of him to read is that sermon from 1939, by a man who had just come out of a cell, climbed into the pulpit and asked God that he might overcome the power of death.