![]() ![]() Further down the road were two Cho villages. Another settlement consisted of fifteen Chun families. One cluster of two hundred households was known as the Lower Chun Village. Other villages nearby also consisted almost entirely of clans. It was a difficult life, but nobody starved. They kept chickens for their eggs, and ate beef, pork or chicken on special occasions usually birthdays. The villagers mostly ate millet in place of rice, with corn, beans and pickled cabbage and radish. After the Japanese took over, it was taken to Jeongju, where there was a market every five days, processed intoīrown rice and sent to Japan. The best quality rice was not for the eating, at least not at local tables. At least half rented their fields, surrendering half their produce as payment to the landowners. The families in 'Moon Village' and neighboring Morum Village farmed the land, growing rice, millet, corn, beans, cabbages and radishes. ![]() Two prominent literary figures of this century, the poet Kim So wol and the writer Lee Kwang su, were locals. During the Yi dynasty, before the Japanese annexed the country in 1910, more students from Jeongju county passed the prestigious higher civil service exam than from any other area of Korea, including Seoul. The county town and its small, surrounding villages had their share of prominent sons. ![]() Market day in Jeongju, the town near Moon's village, in the early part of the centry (Kokusho Kankokai Co., Tokyo) The plains were rich in peat, and in the mountains there was gold. It was the leading rice producing county of North Pyong-an Province and also had a thriving fishing industry. Jeongju county sloped gently down from the mountains and spread over five hundred and fifty square miles of fertile coastal land. Remains of the Moon home in Sangsa-ri in present day north Korea (HSA-UWC, Seoul)Ī few miles to the west was Jeongju, a town of just under ten thousand inhabitants, and a stop on the country's main railway, which carried travelers and freight north to the Manchurian border and south to the capital, Seoul, and on, down the length of the peninsula, to the southern port city, Pusan. Unofficially, however, the locals called it 'Moon Village' because ten of the households were of the Moon clan, seven of them close relatives. No one knew which was the official name, although 'Sangsa-ri' was more commonly used. The house was one of a line of fifteen which made up a tiny village or ri known as both Sangsa-ri and Dok heung-ri. Sun myung Moon was born in the winter of 1920 in the straw thatched home of a farming family in north-west Korea. The Moon Village - Sun Myung Moon, the Early Years, 1920-1953 - Michael Breen ![]()
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