Hello, everyone. Welcome back to my course, Re-imaging God in Korean Context. In the last module, God as Father, we examined the psychoanalytic approach to God images with a special focus on the work of Sigmund Freud. As we imagine God as our father, we should be mindful about the intrapsychic dimensions of our relationships with our own human fathers. Of course, God the Father is the father in heaven. On a conscious level, we profess that God the Father is clearly different from our own human fathers, and yet, on an intrapsychic or unconscious level, our experiences with God the Father and with our human fathers are fused. Thereby, influencing our image of God. In this module, we will examine the image of a heavenly God in the cultural context of Korea. A basic question is, in what sense does the heavenly God come to Koreans? Yun Dong-Ju is one of the most beloved poets of Korea. The following is a Korean English translation of his famous poem, Foreword, dated November 20, 1941. Every school kid in Korea knows this famous poem by heart. It's one of the few poems that I fully memorized. Foreword. Wishing not to have so much as a speck of shame toward heaven until the day I die. I suffered, even when the wind stirred the leaves. With my heart singing to the stars, I shall love all things that are dying. And I must walk the road that has been given to me. Tonight, again, the stars are brushed by the wind. Yun Dong-Ju was a Christian who had graduated from Yeonhui college in 1941, which later became Yonsei University. This year, Yonsei University celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Yung Dong-Ju's birth. After graduating college, Yun Dong-Ju went to Japan to major in English literature. Since his imprisonment in Japan on the charge of participation in the Korean independence movement and death in prison at the age of 27, he has been considered a significant resistance poet in Korea. Yun Dong-Ju poetry was first available to the Korean public in 1948, when his collections of handwritten manuscripts were published posthumously as The Heavens and the Wind and the Stars and Poetry. His poetry was very much loved by many Koreans due to his unique lyrical beauty and resistance motives against Japanese imperialism. Why did Yun Dong-Ju pay special attention to the heavens and wind and the stars in his poetry? It has been widely known that he had a pious Christian faith. He might have had a special attachment with heaven, I believe, as both a lyric and symbol of resistance. He confessed and wrote about his faithful journey in the very beginning of his poetry collections, "Wishing not to have so much as a speck of shame toward heaven until the day I die. I suffered, even when the wind stirred the leaves. With my heart singing to the stars, I shall love all things that are dying. And I must walk the road that has been given to me. Tonight, again, the stars are brushed by the wind. Why that Christian poet look up to the heaven and want to leave without shame until the day he dies? What was the meaning of heaven for a young Korean man who had lost his country?
