WEBVTT - Ché Ahn - Oct 30 - 9:00 am 0:00:02.420 --> 0:00:11.980 My father, Byung-Kook Ahn, was born on April 4, 1924, 0:00:11.980 --> 0:00:17.570 in Pyongyang, today the capital of North Korea, then a 0:00:17.730 --> 0:00:22.069 city alive with spiritual fervor in the wake of remarkable revivals. 0:00:23.110 --> 0:00:26.620 He was the firstborn grandson of devout believers, and his 0:00:26.680 --> 0:00:30.880 childhood was shaped by faith long before he understood its cost. 0:00:31.960 --> 0:00:34.839 He came to Christ as a young boy and answered 0:00:34.860 --> 0:00:38.409 the call to pastoral ministry as the Korean War erupted 0:00:38.670 --> 0:00:43.870 in 1950. To understand my father's life, one must understand 0:00:43.909 --> 0:00:47.850 the world in which he came of age. In 1945, 0:00:47.850 --> 0:00:51.460 the Japanese Empire fell to the Allied forces of World 0:00:51.500 --> 0:00:55.800 War II, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain. 0:00:56.840 --> 0:01:01.180 With Japan's surrender came the dissolution of its 35-year colonial 0:01:01.260 --> 0:01:06.160 rule of Korea. For Koreans, this was a long-awaited liberation. 0:01:07.140 --> 0:01:12.639 But liberation arrived tangled in geopolitics. President Roosevelt had died 0:01:12.740 --> 0:01:16.959 earlier that year, leaving the young and unprepared Vice President 0:01:17.060 --> 0:01:20.980 Harry Truman to assume the highest office in the final 0:01:21.040 --> 0:01:24.640 months of World War II. As Truman negotiated with Stalin, 0:01:25.020 --> 0:01:29.520 The Soviet Union insisted on controlling all of Korea. Stalin 0:01:29.640 --> 0:01:33.979 argued that Korea, once Japan's territory, should now serve as 0:01:34.040 --> 0:01:38.130 a buffer between Russia and their former enemy. Stalin and 0:01:38.170 --> 0:01:43.309 Truman compromised. They divided Korea at the 38th parallel, leaving 0:01:43.350 --> 0:01:46.720 the North under communist rule and allowing the South to 0:01:46.750 --> 0:01:52.460 be free. This compromise reshaped history, much like how Germany 0:01:52.520 --> 0:01:56.020 would be divided. with East Germany falling under the shadow 0:01:56.060 --> 0:02:01.460 of communism. In stark contrast to its northern counterpart, South 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:04.900 Korea would be rebuilt as a democratic nation with a 0:02:04.960 --> 0:02:08.960 system modeled after the United States, having a president in 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:14.160 the Blue House, a legislative assembly, and a Supreme Court. 0:02:14.300 --> 0:02:19.220 In 1946, the dictator Kim Il-sung sought to reunify the 0:02:19.260 --> 0:02:25.130 peninsula under communism. Soon after, Persecution swiftly shuttered the doors 0:02:25.510 --> 0:02:29.150 of the church that my father was pastoring. To make 0:02:29.210 --> 0:02:33.270 matters even worse, my dad was imprisoned along with numerous 0:02:33.389 --> 0:02:37.510 other pastors under the oppressive North Korean regime. My father 0:02:37.560 --> 0:02:42.220 was just 26 when the Korean War broke out in 1950. 0:02:42.220 --> 0:02:46.140 After the war ended in 1953, he remained trapped in 0:02:46.180 --> 0:02:52.240 the North as the Korean Demilitarized Zone, DMZ, effectively separated 0:02:52.340 --> 0:02:56.080 North from South Korea. No one was permitted to leave. 0:02:56.780 --> 0:03:00.750 That's when the hand of God intervened. A government official 0:03:00.930 --> 0:03:05.130 authorized the release of prisoners, including my father. In the 0:03:05.190 --> 0:03:09.150 great exodus that followed, more than a million North Koreans 0:03:09.230 --> 0:03:12.730 fled to the South. My father escaped with his parents 0:03:12.830 --> 0:03:16.410 and siblings, carrying nothing but his faith and the trauma 0:03:16.510 --> 0:03:21.310 of war. In Seoul, they worshipped at Youngnak Presbyterian Church, 0:03:21.750 --> 0:03:26.430 which became a spiritual refuge for countless northern believers displaced 0:03:26.470 --> 0:03:30.930 by the war. My father despised communism, not out of 0:03:30.990 --> 0:03:34.709 pure ideology, but out of lived horror. He had a 0:03:34.770 --> 0:03:39.590 hard time speaking about the evils he had witnessed. By 1963, 0:03:39.590 --> 0:03:43.390 the height of the Cold War, the Democratic Party was 0:03:43.490 --> 0:03:49.330 staunchly anti-communist, and my father aligned himself accordingly. But before 0:03:49.410 --> 0:03:52.770 all of this, I had barely known him. My mother, sister, 0:03:52.830 --> 0:03:56.110 and I remained in South Korea while my father journeyed 0:03:56.150 --> 0:03:59.730 to the United States in 1958. He had applied to 0:03:59.770 --> 0:04:03.730 be a pastor of the first Korean Southern Baptist Church 0:04:03.810 --> 0:04:08.290 in all of North America, a small congregation located in 0:04:08.350 --> 0:04:12.780 downtown Washington, DC. When he got the job, it felt 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:16.450 like winning the lottery. as this was a one-way ticket 0:04:17.000 --> 0:04:20.680 out of the post-war poverty of Korea. It put us 0:04:20.760 --> 0:04:25.380 on the fast track toward living the American dream. Nevertheless, 0:04:25.900 --> 0:04:29.220 visa issues delayed immigration for the rest of our family 0:04:29.660 --> 0:04:34.809 until November 1960. I was four years old, two months 0:04:34.850 --> 0:04:38.270 shy of my fifth birthday, when our plane touched down 0:04:38.670 --> 0:04:42.730 on American soil. I did not recognize the man waiting 0:04:42.790 --> 0:04:46.100 for us outside the airport. There were no photographs of 0:04:46.160 --> 0:04:50.640 my dad other than a faded black-and-white wedding portrait of 0:04:50.700 --> 0:04:55.969 my parents. Our separation, expected to last briefly, had stretched 0:04:56.110 --> 0:05:01.250 into almost three years. During that time, my maternal grandparents 0:05:01.290 --> 0:05:05.150 had helped my mother raise my sister and me. Their 0:05:05.270 --> 0:05:08.920 home had been my first world. As we exited the plane, 0:05:08.980 --> 0:05:11.620 my mother pointed out a man standing near the terminal 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:15.810 and said, That's your dad. Go shake his hand. So 0:05:15.870 --> 0:05:19.210 I nervously ran up as my mother instructed and offered 0:05:19.250 --> 0:05:22.560 him my hand. I know you're my dad, I told him, 0:05:22.980 --> 0:05:25.880 but you don't look like my dad. It was an 0:05:25.960 --> 0:05:28.660 honest statement from the lips of a child, but it 0:05:28.740 --> 0:05:32.719 foreshadowed the emotional distance that would define our relationship for 0:05:32.820 --> 0:05:37.140 much of my life. Reuniting with my father was difficult. 0:05:37.750 --> 0:05:40.969 He held two jobs just to provide for our basic needs, 0:05:41.450 --> 0:05:44.510 in addition to the supplemental income from my mom's job 0:05:44.589 --> 0:05:48.630 as a maid. My dad worked weekdays as a dental technician, 0:05:48.910 --> 0:05:52.169 a trade he had learned during the Japanese occupation, and 0:05:52.210 --> 0:05:55.970 he was fully dedicated to pastoring on the weekends. I 0:05:56.029 --> 0:05:59.790 understand now, after nearly half a century in ministry, the 0:05:59.870 --> 0:06:03.170 weight of that dual calling. But as a child, I 0:06:03.250 --> 0:06:06.890 understood only the distance. He never said, I love you, 0:06:07.050 --> 0:06:10.850 or showed affection in a way I remembered. Trauma lived 0:06:10.910 --> 0:06:16.320 in him. The Japanese occupation, the Korean War, imprisonment, These 0:06:16.400 --> 0:06:19.360 left wounds that time could not easily mend. When I 0:06:19.500 --> 0:06:22.460 once asked him what war had been like, he answered 0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:28.089 quietly and curtly, I cannot talk about it. His pain 0:06:28.190 --> 0:06:31.690 surfaced in his temper. When I was five, I decided 0:06:31.730 --> 0:06:34.690 to take a bunch of small plastic army soldiers from 0:06:34.730 --> 0:06:37.870 a friend's house. When my father saw me playing with 0:06:37.910 --> 0:06:41.440 the dozen or so toy soldiers at home, he instantly 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:46.010 knew they weren't ours. His anger exploded. He spanked me 0:06:46.110 --> 0:06:49.830 hard for each soldier I had stolen. I saw something 0:06:49.870 --> 0:06:53.550 in his eyes that frightened me, rage born not of malice, 0:06:54.010 --> 0:06:59.550 but of years of fear, scarcity, and unspoken suffering. That 0:06:59.650 --> 0:07:04.270 moment began a long season of physical discipline. Bad report cards, 0:07:04.630 --> 0:07:09.339 intentional and unintentional mistakes, fed into a pattern of abusive 0:07:09.380 --> 0:07:14.640 behavior until I left home at seventeen. At the very start, 0:07:14.760 --> 0:07:17.880 our family lived in poverty typical of most immigrants who 0:07:17.920 --> 0:07:21.580 came with nothing to this nation. Our first year together 0:07:21.620 --> 0:07:25.540 was spent in a cramped one-bedroom apartment on 16th Street 0:07:25.620 --> 0:07:28.820 in the capital, just a short walk from my dad's church. 0:07:29.600 --> 0:07:32.190 My parents slept in the bedroom, and my sister and 0:07:32.260 --> 0:07:34.670 I slept on the floor in the living room, which 0:07:34.730 --> 0:07:37.309 we were used to doing in Korea. Then we moved 0:07:37.370 --> 0:07:41.430 into a two-bedroom apartment in Tacoma Park, Maryland. The landlord 0:07:41.490 --> 0:07:44.280 told us we had to vacate the apartment when my 0:07:44.320 --> 0:07:47.840 mother got pregnant with my brother. The year after, with 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:51.120 a generous loan from a church member, my father bought 0:07:51.170 --> 0:07:55.110 a modest three-bedroom house in Silver Spring. To us, it 0:07:55.150 --> 0:07:58.870 felt like a mansion. My father had attended Bible college 0:07:58.910 --> 0:08:03.130 in Korea, but did not complete seminary until after immigrating 0:08:03.180 --> 0:08:07.800 to the United States. He enrolled at Howard University, an elite, 0:08:07.840 --> 0:08:12.540 historically black institution in the capital. The seminary was deeply 0:08:12.620 --> 0:08:17.000 engaged in the civil rights movement, theologically liberal, and it 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:21.370 influenced my father for years to come. The small Korean 0:08:21.430 --> 0:08:25.850 congregation that my father pastored met after regular church hours 0:08:25.910 --> 0:08:30.430 in a chapel of an American Southern Baptist church in Washington, D.C. 0:08:31.450 --> 0:08:34.900 Most of the members were Korean graduate students sent by 0:08:34.940 --> 0:08:38.500 their government to study so they could return with specialized 0:08:38.540 --> 0:08:43.780 degrees and rebuild their nation. Accordingly, they were generally young 0:08:43.860 --> 0:08:46.840 singles on a temporary assignment. That meant there were no 0:08:46.900 --> 0:08:50.000 other kids at church. So my sister and I sat 0:08:50.020 --> 0:08:53.790 through the adult services week after week, bored and lonely, 0:08:54.410 --> 0:08:57.109 until a young American man named Michael took us under 0:08:57.170 --> 0:09:00.750 his wing for a Sunday school class of two. My 0:09:00.809 --> 0:09:04.240 father's church continued to grow. Later, he would become the 0:09:04.290 --> 0:09:08.620 president of the Korean Southern Baptist Convention. I believe that 0:09:08.660 --> 0:09:11.859 my father had the calling of an apostle. He ended 0:09:11.920 --> 0:09:16.110 up becoming a well-known Korean pastor, and he even befriended Dr. 0:09:16.170 --> 0:09:20.190 David Yonggi Cho, founder of the Full Gospel Central Church, 0:09:20.670 --> 0:09:23.730 preaching at his church in Seoul and playing golf with him. 0:09:24.690 --> 0:09:28.849 Beneath my father's sternness, he was an extraordinarily generous man. 0:09:29.470 --> 0:09:32.740 He never took a pastoral salary. His income as a 0:09:32.790 --> 0:09:36.940 dental technician funded the church. He sponsored relatives from both 0:09:37.000 --> 0:09:40.290 sides of the family to immigrate to America. He went 0:09:40.390 --> 0:09:43.170 on to help me purchase my first home in California 0:09:43.650 --> 0:09:47.860 and supported my graduate studies at Fuller Seminary. My grandmother 0:09:47.920 --> 0:09:52.640 later paid for my doctorate. Generosity was my father's love language, 0:09:53.040 --> 0:09:57.370 though I did not recognize it until adulthood. In 1996, 0:09:57.370 --> 0:10:02.260 God healed what decades had fractured. My father and I reconciled. 0:10:03.210 --> 0:10:05.650 He told me he was proud of me as a pastor. 0:10:06.010 --> 0:10:09.350 He told me at long last that he loved me. 0:10:10.429 --> 0:10:13.990 I wept and then began to laugh with joy that 0:10:14.150 --> 0:10:17.510 filled my heart. I share more of this story in 0:10:17.550 --> 0:10:22.710 a later chapter. My father lived to be 86. On 0:10:22.790 --> 0:10:26.850 June 6, 2010, he went home to be with the Lord, 0:10:27.309 --> 0:10:32.490 whom he had served through war, exile, hardship, and perseverance. 0:10:33.590 --> 0:10:37.890 My dad's life was one of endurance, faith, and sacrifice, 0:10:38.670 --> 0:10:42.560 an apostolic legacy that shaped the calling I would embrace.