This article is part of a series on the history and founding principles behind The Washington Times.
Dr. Hak Ja Han and her late husband, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who founded The Washington Times, came by their opposition to communism honestly.
They were both born in what is now North Korea and spent time under the brutality of that communist dictatorship. They came to understand firsthand the abject cruelty of that system — and vowed to use nonviolent ways to bring peace and one family under God.
In 1948, Hak Ja Han was 5 years old, living in the North during the early years of Kim Il Sung’s regime. As Kim consolidated his power in what came to be the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, his police force tightened control of all forms of religious teaching and belief. The harshest treatment was reserved for the devout.
The young Hak Ja lived with mother Soon-ae Hong and grandmother Jo Won-mo near Pyongyang. They belonged to the Inside-the-Womb Church in the city of Anju. As deeply committed, born-again Pentecostal Christians, they had revelations that Jesus Christ would return in the flesh and certain preparations — such as the hand-sewing of many sets of clothes for the coming Lord — had to be done.
These believers came to the attention of the state police, and in 1948, they arrested Hak Ja’s mother and grandmother. While they were in prison, Hak Ja visited the prison every morning to ask if this was the day her mother and grandmother could be released.
Even the hardened prison guards could not help but be charmed by the little girl, who carried flowers when she could get them. They sometimes gave her candy.
“I was polite and well-behaved,” she wrote in her memoir, “Mother of Peace,” and the police released the women after about two weeks. The women then began to plan how to flee South.
Unbeknownst to Hak Ja Han, earlier that year, Rev. Moon had been arrested and imprisoned in the same prison. He had been preaching in Pyongyang and was falsely arrested as a spy for the South. The leaders of the Inside-the-Womb Church were imprisoned with him at the same time, and although he sent messages to them, they refused to heed him.
For 100 days, Rev. Moon was tortured — finally to the brink of death — and thrown like a corpse into the snow outside the prison. Followers found him and desperately nursed him back to life. But the Inside-the-Womb Church leaders were killed in prison.
Two years later, Rev. Moon was back preaching and building a large congregation. Jealous North Korean pastors wrote to police and they re-arrested him, again on the pretext that he was spying for the South and “disturbing the social order,” he wrote in his memoir, “As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen.”
Rev. Moon was again severely beaten, but he never lost his connection to God.
“When the torture was so severe that it took me to the verge of losing consciousness, I would invariably hear the voice of God. In the moments when my life seemed to end, God would appear to me,” he wrote.
Rev. Moon was sentenced to Heungnam Prison, a death camp where prisoners had to fill dozens of fertilizer bags a day. Many died within months; his sentence was three years.
Receiving starvation rations, he knew he could not survive on physical food alone. So, beginning on his first day, he divided his handful of rice and gave half away to other prisoners.
“I trained myself this way for three weeks and then ate the whole ration. This made me think that I was eating enough rice for two people, which made it easier to endure the hunger,” he wrote.
Every morning, the prisoners were forced to read the Communist Manifesto and be tested on the content. Rev. Moon realized the utter falseness of an ideology based on forced and institutionalized atheism would doom mankind to the most hellish existence.
While he was in Heungnam Prison, the Korean War broke out.
In 1950, the famous Inchon landing by Gen. Douglas MacArthur led first to the mass execution of Heungnam prisoners and then their liberation when the guards fled. Rev. Moon was able to escape South with two disciples, one of whom was injured and had to be carried at times.
Hak Ja also endured a treacherous escape to the South in autumn 1948, after her mother and grandmother were released from jail. Near the border, they were captured by North Korean soldiers and locked in a shed. But Hak Ja was asked to deliver food to the soldiers and, again charmed by the innocence and sweet nature of the little girl, the soldiers released them on the condition they head north.
But once out of sight, the women made a rush to the south. By night, they had reached the 38th parallel, marking the border between North and South Korea with soldiers on both sides, and they began the dangerous crossing.
Hak Ja was suddenly inspired to “sing a song from the southern part of Korea.” This saved their lives because South Korean soldiers had heard their approach and were ready to shoot — until they heard the familiar song.
“In this way, God protected us,” Hak Ja Han wrote, noting that they never again saw the grandfather they had left behind.
During their lives in South Korea and eventually the United States, where they spent most of their adult lives, Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han developed a powerful critique and counterproposal to Marxism-Leninism. It was effective when taught on college campuses and it earned them the hatred of the Communist world.
In the 1990s, Dr. Han and Rev. Moon seized the mission of peacemaking, by personally meeting and befriending the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev and North Korea’s Kim Il Sung.
The Washington Times carried articles on both events as historical milestones.
In a June 2021 “Peace Starts With Me” rally, Mrs. Han publicly noted that The Washington Times “became a reference for American presidents, including President Reagan. The aim of The Times has been to inform American leaders on how to defend America and, as a nation blessed by God, how America can live for the sake of the world.”
“This is why I wish to strengthen the presence of The Washington Times in the heart of D.C.,” she said.
“This is not just for the sake of America,” she added. “America is uniquely placed to become a beacon of hope for all people, who are like orphans who do not know their parent. To do so, and to make a fresh start, leaving behind 400 years of suffering and atonement, I wish to usher in a new springtime of the providence.”
• Cheryl Wetzstein, a former reporter at The Washington Times and member of the Family Federation of World Peace and Unification, provided this story.
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