Wan-Mo Kang, former president of Young Koreans United of U.S.A.
I first met my "sunbaenim," (senior brother) Yoon Han Bong in May of 1983, when I was a foreign graduate student in New York. I met him with a group of students concerned about the path of our homeland. We were urban and full of intellectual pretentiousness; we thought we would meet a guy in a suit, with a refined speech. When he walked in, he did not look like what we expected at all... he resembled a handyman idling around Seoul's Union Station, with rugged hands. I thought: "this can't be him, right? Is someone else coming behind him?" and looked for others. Sometimes I remember that first encounter as if it happened yesterday.
Yoon sunbaenim revolutionized our lives upside down. I remember people saying, "He's the living Jesus!" or "This is our Lenin in Korea!" During the next year, we organized local chapters of Young Koreans United in New York, New England, and Philadelphia, and went on organizing. Giving up everything, like a wild horse we worked relentlessly for 10 years with Yoon sunbaenim at our side.
Since then, the children of the founding members of YKU are going to college and Yoon sunbaenim has left this world. We still reminisce about him and often ask ourselves: "What would Yoon sunbaenim do?" but we now have to work on our own. In thinking of Yoon sunbaenim, we reflect on the teachings he left behind, and our own life.
Have we become overwhelmed by everyday life and lost all vision for the future? Are we not distancing ourselves from his teachings, which emphasized dreams and hopes based on long-term planning and a wide perception of the world?
Have we been speaking ephemeral words that lead us astray from the real world and the community around us? Have we been unable to keep in constant communication with the people and seek the right path ahead?
Have we cast a blind eye to the challenges ahead, trapped in the old ways? Have we settled for rigid doctrines, and forgotten to lay our roots in a rapidly changing world?
How much are we really doing so that our next generation can realize their dreams and carry on the torch for the movement? Have we fully embraced and reached out beyond cultural barriers to 1.5 and second generation Korean Americans?
As we seek to find a clear answer to these questions, we approach the first anniversary of your passing.
Yoon sunbaenim, leave the work behind to those of us who are left behind. May you rest in peace.