ANGELIC PROTECTION

BOULDER OF DOOM 

As missionary kids growing up in post-war Korea, one of our favorite playgrounds for all kinds of adventures was the mountain above our house called Chun Ma San, which meant 'Mountain of a Thousand Horses’. 

One summer afternoon, neighborhood Korean friends and we went hiking on the mountain.  One of our pastimes was to find boulders to roll down hill and see what kind of momentum they would build up. 

We found a giant boulder over six feet high that looked like it was moveable if we combined all of our strength together.  We all got behind it and started to strain and push to start it rolling. 

Well, it actually started to move.  That is when our childish hubris was suddenly replaced by sheer panic.  We realized that if this giant boulder started rolling and picking up speed, it wouldn't stop until it crushed a bunch of shanty houses and shacks below.  It could kill a bunch of people!

We all ran around to the front of the boulder to hold it back from rolling.  We all put our backs against it and strained for what seemed to be an eternity. 

"What do we do now?" 

"I don't know.  We can't let go." 

"We'll hold it and you find a big rock to brace it in front." 

Suddenly, the boy at the end shrieked in horror.   A very large black snake had slithered over his foot and was wending its way between our feet.  We all let go and took off running.  We did not look back, because we really did not want to know if the giant boulder was going to roll down the mountain. 

Our hearts were pounding and our mischievous little brains did not want to deal with the fact that we had gone too far.  Our consciences were screaming at us.  We did not stop until we got back down the mountain to our neighborhood. 

When we had caught our breaths, we looked up the mountain to see if the boulder was still in place.  To our total relief, it was still there.  The boulder of doom had not moved.  It had not crushed anyone.  What a relief! 

We went on playing for the rest of the afternoon until it started getting dark and parents were calling out for their children to come home and eat dinner. 

We all dispersed to our respective homes.  But, one of the parents kept calling for their son to come home.  This is when we realized that that boy had not been playing with us after we had come down the mountain. 

After eating, the neighborhood kids gathered outside again and started looking for our lost friend.  About two hours after dark, here he came, trudging down the mountain to the neighborhood. He was worn out and very angry with all of us. 

When we ran from the snake, he had stayed back and held up the boulder for hours until it got dark and he was too tired to push against the rock any longer.  When he finally let go to come home, the boulder shifted another inch or two and then stopped.

These many years later, when the memory comes to mind, it weighs heavily on me.  There are spiritual lessons to be learned that transcend the poor judgment, the impulsivity, and the obvious lack of good sense we children displayed.

In Proverbs 11:21, the Scriptures say: “Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not go unpunished; but the seed of the righteous shall be delivered”. 

So, we, as kids and adults, were punished with guilt; but, as children of Godly parents, we can be assured of delivery from permanent punishment. 

Looking back, it seems almost definite that angelic protection must have been present.  Paul asks rhetorically in Hebrews 1:14, “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” 

And didn’t we and others who would inherit salvation, in grave danger, indeed need angelic protection?  As the Holy Bible promises in Isaiah 30:18, “The Lord longs to be gracious to you, He rises to show you compassion.”  

CRAB APPLE WAR

After five years of missionary work in Korea, it was time for my father to take us back to the United States for a year of furlough.  We visited family, Dad gave talks in churches and seminaries about the mission work in Korea, and we kids went to school at Philmont Christian School. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church Missions Board put us up in a house in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia.  I was in the fifth grade while Sterling was in the sixth grade.

The house we lived in was right across from an amusement park.  The park’s slogan was, “Life is a Lark at Willow Grove Park.”  During the summer months when the park was open, I went to sleep every night to the never ending screams of the people on roller coasters as the connected cars roared down the steep grades and squealed around the corners.

Among the many ways that we kids entertained ourselves, in the winter we had snowball fights, went sledding, and built igloos out of blocks we cut out of the packed down snow.  We piled snow in front of the house as high as we could, climbed out my bedroom window on the second floor, and jumped onto the giant pile.

We had a crab apple tree in the back yard.  When the apples would fall off of the tree late in the season they would start to get rotten and mushy.  We had the neighborhood kids all come over and had crab apple fights using garbage can lids for shields.

One day, after a messy battle, we wound things down and congregated on the front porch of my house.  After a round of bragging and speculation as to how far an apple could be thrown from the front porch, I accepted a dare and threw a rotten crab apple from the porch all the way to the middle of the intersection about 40 or 50 yards away.

The apple splattered all over the windshield of a car entering the intersection.  A very angry man slammed on his brakes, jumped out of his car, and came running toward us yelling and cursing at the top of his lungs.  All the kids scattered and ran away in abject terror.  I froze in place.  I realized what I had done and decided to take my medicine like a man.  My brain was racing with a string of lame apologies I would try, but I was more afraid of the whipping I would get from my parents when they found out.

The man ran up to me and stopped.  The veins in his neck and forehead were bulging out and if eyes could burn you, I would have been on fire. He yelled out asking me, “Where did they go?”

Suddenly, I realized that I had another choice.  It was time for a decision.  It all happened so fast.  I blurted out, “They went that way around the corner.”

He ran around the corner of the house chasing after them.  He finally tired out when he could not catch anybody, so he went back to his car, cleaned off his windshield, and drove away.  I have had mixed feelings of smugness and of guilt every time I have recalled that incident or retold that story, even to this day.  I am afraid though, with the passing of time, that the smugness is taking precedent.

My younger brother Nelson remembers when the soft serve ice cream shop in the picture below went out of business.  He recalls that Sterling and I dragged the plastic cone that had been on the roof all the way over to our back yard.  All of us kids loved forts and hiding places so we crawled inside of the cone to hide at times.  

CRAP!  ROBBED AGAIN

Right after the Korean War ended in 1953. Pusan, the southernmost port city, was jammed with over 2 million often poverty stricken refugees.  They lived a hand-to-mouth existence and were desperate for a more peaceful life in the midst of the chaotic remnants of the war and the preceding 39 years of slavery under the Japanese occupation.

The basic necessities of life....food, fuel, water, shelter....were in short supply, and life was difficult for many who had to live on the margin.  Too many times, during my early years in Korea, firestorms would sweep the shacks of the shanty town on the mountain behind us killing hundreds of squatters....refugees trying to start a life for themselves once again.

As in similar circumstances throughout history, petty thievery was often one of the few means of survival.  So it was not surprising that our house got hit by burglars from time to time.  We had an eight foot concrete wall around our yard with barbed wire and embedded shards of glass on top.  We also had a guard dog that roamed our yard and barked at every movement or sound.  These security measures may have deterred thieves most of the time, but they did not stop the most destitute and determined.

But here is where the age-old story gets a little bit interesting.  There seems to have been an unwritten code among the thieves; it went something like this, “I know that I am intruding and taking what does not belong to me from you; it is a necessity for me.  However, in deference to your dignity, I am going to make myself vulnerable to apprehension.  If I am not apprehended, then your dignity is maintained, despite your loss.”

Sounds “good”....how did it play out?

Well, in the morning after a theft, the homeowner or someone in his family would invariably find a fresh pile of “dump” somewhere in their living area. Translation: “I took the time to expose myself and take a dump before I left your premises as a good faith demonstration of my willingness to be apprehended for my crime.”

Rodney seemed to have a penchant for finding these “monuments” and often showed up at breakfast cheerily and brightly saying, “We got robbed again!!”

One night during the cool of spring and sometime in the early morning hours , perhaps around 3:00 AM, I woke up to the sounds of the window screen in our bedroom being quietly cut with a hunting knife.  Hushed voices were followed by a dark figure clambering noiselessly through the window.

At the age of seven or eight, blankets still provided a mystical shield against danger.  Lying on my stomach on the cot, with the blanket pulled almost completely over my head I saw the two legs of the thief creep by, just inches away. 

My heart was pounding as he passed.  I peeked out at his back as he picked up the sewing machine and iron and began to turn back around, just in time for me to get my head partially back under the blanket.

The thief handed the booty through the window’s torn screen to his accomplice and returned for some clothing.  My brother Rodney slept blissfully in the next cot, oblivious to the drama going on.

After it was over, thinking there was no point in waking everybody up, I went back to sleep. 

Rodney must have awakened earlier than I, and, seeing the ripped screen, put two and two together. 

I woke up just as he tore into the kitchen crowing triumphantly, ”YEAH! THERE WERE TWO OF THEM ALRIGHT; I FOUND BOTH PILES OF CRAP!”

My recollection is only of three instances in which we were burglarized, but even if that was all, that was three too many times.  This does not count the time we were robbed at gun point as told in my TWO ROOSTERS story. 

I do remember that at five years old, if I had to relieve myself in the middle of the night, I had to go outside to the outhouse.  The fear of burglars and braving the extreme cold of winter nights were just a few of the challenges.

I had to sneak down the hallway, through the dining room, and into Dad’s study while avoiding the creaky spots in the wood floor.  I didn’t want to wake anyone up.

Then, I had to move a chair over to the wall next to the door and climb up to get the house keys off of a hook on the wall.  I unlocked the door to the porch room where we left our shoes and umbrellas before entering the house.  I locked that door behind me and then unlocked the porch door to the outside.

I braved the cold, the dark, and childhood fears to go to our unlit, unheated, foul smelling outhouse.  Then, to get back to bed, I had to reverse the whole routine.

It was a great day when my father finally put in an indoor porcelain toilet.  With no running water, Sterling and I had to keep the bathtub filled with water from the well out in the yard.  To flush the toilet, we would dip a bucket of water out of the bathtub and pour it into the toilet bowl.  

At least now I didn’t have to brave the dark and foreboding outdoors in the middle of the night. 

KITE BATTLES

When my brother Sterling was 6 years old and I was 5, we saw that all the kids and many adults went a little ways up the mountain behind our house and flew kites.

This grand event was a part of the Korean celebration of Chuseok, their harvest festival, which usually took place in September around the Autumn equinox.

Wanting to be like all the other kids, we asked Dad, “Can we go fly kites, too?”  Well, Dad had the grand idea that we were going to show them what a real kite was like.  We would build a big American style kite and show them what it was all about.

He showed us how to build a giant diamond shaped kite and rigged it with a big ball of twine.  Dad took us up the mountain to where all the kite flying was taking place.  The Korean kids had these little kites about 12” X 18” in size and they used silk thread or fine sewing thread.  They just threw the kite into the air and the wind would take it right up.  Our kite was bigger than I was.  To the great amusement and bewilderment of the Korean kids, they watched and laughed as we ran back and forth for half an hour trying to get the giant kite into the air.  How embarrassing!

Then, pride swelled in my chest as Sterling finally got the kite into the air, and the majestic kite rose up on the winds coming up the mountainside, dwarfing those puny little Korean kites.

Within seconds, my pride turned to shock as our kite went flipping and flopping out of control down the mountain side as all the Korean kids laughed and started yelling, “Chae dong, nah gah tah!”  This was the victory chant they used when they cut down someone else’s kite.  A little boy, barely five years old, had used his special reel and expert technique to maneuver his little kite over ours and then cause it to dive so that our strings crossed.   He then let his kite ride out into the wind so that his razor sharp, powdered glass covered thread cut through our heavy twine like a hot knife through butter.

My brother and I were mortified.  I had never been so embarrassed in my life.  As we trudged down the mountain in shame, Sterling and I made a pact that we were going to learn how to make and fly Korean kites, and we were going to beat them at their own game.

                FLIGHT  - a poem by Nelson Hard

          Soaring and dipping

          Swooping in graceful spirals

          Kites cavort in sky

The Korean fighter kite, the “bang-pae yeon”, is very distinctive; a rectangular, bowed “shield” kite with a hole in the middle of the sail.  The elaborate wooden reel has four to eight branches or spokes, with a longer central rod.  The reel allows a practiced kite fighter to let out and take in long lengths of line with amazing speed.  To manipulate his kite, to make it climb or dive, the flier may pump the reel rapidly from eye-level to knee-level and vice-versa. The flier can also cause the kite to move to the right or left.  The line is coated with glue or resin and powdered porcelain or glass.  Kite fighters bring their kites, reels, and cutting line to tournaments and engage in a series of one-on-one battles until a winner prevails. Combat can last for five minutes but can conclude in as little as ten seconds with one fighter crossing his line against the other fighter’s line and slicing through it!

Years later in our early teens, my brother and I had perfected the art of kite fighting.  We got all the neighborhood kids involved in making kites with bamboo and rice paper, grinding glass with hammers, making glue out of overcooked high gluten rice, and helping us coat and dry long expanses of thread with the concoction.  Once the line dried with the glass abrasive impregnated, it was razor sharp.

One fine summer day, Sterling got on top of the outhouse roof to fly his new secret weapon.  After an epic cat and mouse battle with an unknown kite fighter from the next neighborhood over, Sterling finally prevailed and cut through the other kite’s line.  The untethered kite went flipping and flopping in the wind down toward the bay as we all taunted, “Chae rong, nah gah tah!”

A Korean friend inquired around and found out that the other kite fighter was none other than the head of the gang of hoodlums that ran the red light district next to our neighborhood.  Unfortunately, the hoodlum chief had also inquired around and found out that it was Sterling who had embarrassed him by beating him in a kite fight.  Rumor had it that he was looking to exact revenge and would probably beat us up if he caught us. 

For the next month or so, in order to go anywhere, we had to send out Korean friends out ahead of us to scout for trouble.  In order to go shopping, go to church, get a haircut, or go anywhere, we had to pass through the edge of their territory.  It was dicey for a while.  We eventually heard that he had been arrested in a police raid and was in jail, so we stopped worrying about passing through his turf. 

E-mail I received on Feb 18, 2013

Hi, Dr.Rodney,

I am Peter,Nam, a Korean have been living in Shenzhen,China for three years.  I read your essay KITE BATTLES. 

You described your childhood times so vividly and it inspired me so much and made me write a letter to you.  I am very curious about where and when you had lived in Korea.  Could I post your essay on my web http://koreankite.tistory.com/ ?

Bangpae making and flying is my hobby and I had a chance to teach Bangpae making method to a guy live in London.  It took me about one and half years by e-mails between me live in Shenzhen,China and him in London.  After that I decided to make a site on making and Korean kite, and it becomes famous Bangpae blog on portal as google,yahoo,etc. 

If you approve me to post your essay and give me a chance to introduce you on my web about Korean kite, It would be a great honor of me.

Thank you very much.

Sincerely,  Peter,Nam

I gladly gave Master Nam permission and he did put a link to this story on his website.  To the consternation of my older brother Sterling, Peter Nam listed me as one of the three Korean kite "Foreign Masters"  in the world.  Sterling called me and asked me why I was named the Kite Master when he was the one in the story that won the kite battle.  Go figure!

The link to Master Nam's page about this story is:   https://koreankite.tistory.com/71 

LANGUAGE CHALLENGES

Having arrived in Korea in 1954, at age 4, and starting right off playing with the neighborhood Korean kids, I didn't have any problems picking up the Korean language very fast.  In fact, I think there was a point in my early childhood where I spoke Korean better than English. 

I often dreamed in Korean, and on the ship back to the United States in 1959, I was sleeping down in one of the  crew member’s quarters and was told the next morning that I was talking in my sleep in the Korean language.

There was more than one occasion in which my father was preaching in a Korean church and got stuck for a particular word.  After an awkward pause, my brother Sterling or I would yell out the right word.  There would be a subdued laughter in the church and my dad would carry on with his sermon.  One time my father used the right word but pronounced it in a way that it meant something else.  My brother Sterling corrected my father so that the Koreans would understand what he really meant.

The Koreans had two numbering systems.  Just to tell the time on your watch you would use two systems.   You would use one number for the hour and another for the minute.  "Yul she Ship bun" meant Ten after Ten.  

The use of honorifics was important, especially if you were a young person talking to an adult.  When you talked to an older person or a person in a higher social status than yourself, you used honorific endings to your sentences.   If you were not sure of someone's age or social status, erring on the side of showing respect was the safer way to go.

In church, praying to God had an even higher honorific vocabulary which you would only use when talking to a king.  This would make the sentences longer and more cumbersome.

The Korean language is structured in syllables that are less complex than English, so Koreans had a challenge trying to pronounce English words that had two or three consonants together.  For instance, my name, Rodney, has the letters d and n together.  Koreans would separate the consonants into separate syllables.  They would say Ro-du-ney.   They also do not have the ‘r’ sound like ours so they pronounced English words with the letter ‘r’ with a rolling ‘rrr’ sound or an ‘l’ sound.

As part of the mission ministry, my father sold Bibles, theology books, and other classic works to Christian college and seminary students at cost.  Otherwise, they would be prohibitively expensive or most likely unavailable in the post-war Korean market.  

One day, when my father was not at home, my mother answered a knock on our gate and let in a young seminary student who, she assumed, wanted to buy a book.

He asked my mother, "Have you sex appeal?"

My mother got flustered and her face turned beet red. 

He asked her again, "Have you sex appeal?"

Now she was getting worried as she did not know this young man's intentions.  After he had asked the same question several more times my mother finally figured out that he was saying, "Have you Shakespeare?"

One time I was in the marketplace and asked a vendor for the cost of an item I wanted to buy.  She just stared at me with a blank stare.  I asked again in perfect Korean, "How much does that cost?"  She still did not understand me.  I finally said in Korean, "I am speaking to you in Korean, not in English.  Please tell me how much that costs."  She finally came out of her trance and answered me.

That happened several different times while I was in Korea and I don't quite understand the phenomenon.  My brother Nelson told me that the exact same thing happened to him.

The Korean government put signs all over the walls in Korea that said "SAW BYUN KUM GEE."  This meant, "DON'T URINATE HERE."  There were very few public bathrooms, if any, so men would just walk over to a wall and urinate on it.  Women would just squat down and spread their long dresses out so that they could just urinate, or defecate, on the ground.

Well, at age eight, I noticed one day that the Korean sign, read backwards, said, "GEE KUM BYUN SAW."  This meant literally, "GO TO THE BATHROOM NOW."

I pointed that out to my father who got a big kick out of the word play.  He told his seminary students during one of his lectures, and they were amused that an American kid noticed that.  Well, one of those students, Sung Soo Kim, eventually got his Doctorate in Theology and went on to become President of the prestigious Kosin University in Pusan, Korea.

Ironically, over fifty years later in 2009, when my father died, Dr. Kim was in the U.S. on other business, heard of the impending service, and modified his travel plans to include attendance at the memorial.  After the service, we were talking, and Dr. Kim recalled to me that he still remembered how amused and impressed he was when my father told him the word play I had noticed as a child. 

When I got out of the Army and lived in Lubbock, Texas, my father came to visit me.  We went to a Chinese restaurant and enjoyed a good meal.  The Chinese owner and all the servers were dressed in traditional Chinese clothes.  Paying the bill at the counter, Dad asked the proprietor, "Isn't that brass character on the wall that means 'Good Luck' upside down?"

The man in full Chinese garb answered in a thick Texan accent, "Beats me, Mac!"

The Koreans did not understand puns or other types of word play very well.  My father loved word play, but his attempts at it in Korean failed miserably.  The pun may have been good but the Koreans didn't get it.  I have since seen several good examples of puns and word play in Korea by Koreans, so I don't know what the problem was back then. 

There were virtually no road signs on the country gravel roads.  When we drove to some church out in the boonies, we often times got lost, or at least came to forks in the road where we had to make a decision as to which fork to take.  It was purely guess work unless there was someone along the road we could ask.  My father asked a farmer, "Is this the direction to the town of Chung Ne?"  The farmer smiled and bowed politely, shaking his head up and down and said, "Yes."  

Well, a half hour down the road and no Chung Ne to be found, we asked someone along the road how to get to that town.  He politely told us that we had to turn around and drive back to the fork in the road and go the other way.  My dad was furious as we ended up late to church on more than one occasion and for the same reason.  

We found out later that the farmer was just being polite.  He did not want to offend us by saying "No."  After making the same mistake several times, we realized that we had to ask, "Which way is it to the town of Chung Ne?"  Then you would get the correct directions.​

Speaking of my father’s love for word play, my brother, Nelson Hard, adds this story of an embarrassing encounter in which a basic communication went awry unintentionally:

"A friend and I went on a camping trip with my father to the far northern provinces of South Korea.  After hiking and camping we decided to spend a night in an inn before driving home for 8 hours. 

When we arrived at the inn, we parked in the courtyard and proceeded to unload the car and talk with the innkeeper, telling her where we were from and that we were a missionary family on our way to the southern coast.

After settling in, my father decided to call my mother at home to apprise her of our plans.  He asked the innkeeper for the use of a telephone (chunwha).  The innkeeper was shocked and horrified and mumbled that she didn't have one.  My father pointed to the phone on her desk and said "You have one right there.  I'd like to use the chunwha to call my wife."  At first the innkeeper was befuddled and then began to laugh.  "I thought you wanted the use of a chunyuh (young maiden)". 

Dad's southern Korean accent had been badly misunderstood!