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Dr. Ché Ahn is the Senior Pastor of Harvest Rock Church in Pasadena, California, and President of Harvest International Ministry (HIM), an apostolic family of
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My Father, Byung-Kook Ahn: Early Life and the Korean War 0:00 Chapter 1. My father, Jungkook Ahn, a pioneer and apostle. My father, Jungkook Ahn, was born on April 4th0:11 19 24 in Pyongyang. Today, the capital of North Korea, then a city alive with spiritual fervor in the wake of remarkable revivals. He was the0:23 firstborn grandson of devout believers, and his childhood was shaped by faith long before he understood its cost. He came to Christ as a young boy and answered the call to0:35 pastoral ministry as the Korean War erupted in 19 50. To understand my father's life, 1 must understand the world in which he came of age. In 190:47 45, the Japanese Empire fell to the Allied forces of World War 2, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain. With Japan's surrender came the0:58 dissolution of its 35 year colonial rule of Korea. For Koreans, this was a long awaited liberation. But liberation arrived tangled in geopolitics.1:11 President Roosevelt had died earlier that year, leaving the young and unprepared vice president Harry Truman to assume the highest office in the final months of World War 2. As1:22 Truman negotiated with Stalin, the Soviet Union insisted on controlling all of Korea. Stalin argued that Korea, once Japan's territory, should now serve as a buffer1:34 between Russia and their former enemy. Stalin and Truman compromised. They divided Korea at the 38th parallel, leaving the North under communist rule and allowing the1:46 South to be free. This compromise reshaped history, much like how Germany would be divided, with East Germany falling under the shadow of communism.1:57 In stark contrast to its northern counterpart, South Korea would be rebuilt as a democratic nation with a system modeled after the United States, having a president in the Blue House,2:10 a legislative assembly, and a supreme court. In 19 46, the dictator Kim Il sung sought to reunify the peninsula under communism. Soon2:21 after, persecution swiftly shuttered the doors of the church that my father was pastoring. To make matters even worse, my dad was imprisoned along with numerous other2:33 pastors under the oppressive North Korean regime. My father was just 26 when the Korean War broke out in 19 50. After the war ended in 19 53, he remained2:45 trapped in the North as the Korean demilitarized zone, DMZ, effectively separated North from South Korea. No 1 was permitted to leave. That's when the2:57 hand of God intervened. A government official authorized the release of prisoners, including my father. In the great exodus that followed, more than 1000000 North Koreans3:09 fled to the South. My father escaped with his parents and siblings, carrying nothing but his faith and the trauma of war. In Seoul, they worshiped at Yungnak PresbyterianEscaping North Korea and Immigration to America 3:20 Church, which became a spiritual refuge for countless Northern believers displaced by the war. My father despised communism, not out of pure ideology, but out of3:32 lived horror. He had a hard time speaking about the evils he had witnessed. By 19 63, the height of the Cold War, the Democratic Party was staunchly anti3:44 communist, and my father aligned himself accordingly. But before all of this, I had barely known him. My mother, sister, and I remained in South Korea, while my father journeyed to the3:56 United States in 19 58. He had applied to be a pastor of the 1st Korean Southern Baptist church in all of North America, a small congregation located in4:08 downtown Washington, DC. When he got the job, it felt like winning the lottery as this was a 1 way ticket out of the postwar poverty of Korea. It4:20 put us on the fast track toward living the American dream. Nevertheless, visa issues delayed immigration for the rest of our family until November 19 60.4:32 I was 4 years old, 2 months shy of my 5th birthday, when our plane touched down on American soil. I did not recognize the man waiting for us outside the airport.4:44 There were no photographs of my dad other than a faded black and white wedding portrait of my parents. Our separation, expected to last briefly, had stretched into4:56 almost 3 years. During that time, my maternal grandparents had helped my mother raise my sister and me. Their home had been my 1st world. As we exited5:08 the plane, my mother pointed out a man standing near the terminal and said, that's your dad. Go shake his hand. So I nervously ran up as my mother instructed and offered him my hand.5:20 I know you're my dad, I told him, but you don't look like my dad. It was an honest statement from the lips of a child, but it foreshadowed the emotional distance that would define our relationship for5:32 much of my life. Reuniting with my father was difficult. He held 2 jobs just to provide for our basic needs in addition to the supplemental income from my mom's job as5:44 a maid. My dad worked weekdays as a dental technician, a trade he had learned during the Japanese occupation, and he was fully dedicated to pastoring on the weekends. I understandThe Emotional Distance in Our Relationship 5:56 now, after nearly 0.5 a century in ministry, the weight of that dual calling. But as a child, I understood only the distance. He never said I love you or showed affection in a way6:08 I remembered. Trauma lived in him. The Japanese occupation, the Korean War, imprisonment, these left wounds that time could not easily mend. When I once asked him what6:20 war had been like, he answered quietly and curtly, I cannot talk about it. His pain surfaced in his temper. When I was 5, I decided to take a bunch6:32 of small plastic army soldiers from a friend's house. When my father saw me playing with the dozen or so toy soldiers at home, he instantly knew they weren't ours. His anger6:44 exploded. He spanked me hard for each soldier I had stolen. I saw something in his eyes that frightened me, rage born not of malice, but of years of fear,6:55 scarcity, and unspoken suffering. That moment began a long season of physical discipline. Bad report cards, intentional and unintentional mistakes fed7:07 into a pattern of abusive behavior until I left home at 17. At the very start, our family lived in poverty typical of most immigrants who came with nothing to this7:19 nation. Our 1st year together was spent in a cramped 1 bedroom apartment on 16th Street in the capital, just a short walk from my dad's church. My parents slept in the bedroom,7:31 and my sister and I slept on the floor in the living room, which we were used to doing in Korea. Then we moved into a 2 bedroom apartment in Takoma Park, Maryland. The landlord told us we had to vacate the7:43 apartment when my mother got pregnant with my brother. The year after, with a generous loan from a church member, my father bought a modest 3 bedroom house in Silver Spring. To us,7:54 it felt like a mansion. My father had attended bible college in Korea, but did not complete seminary until after immigrating to the United States. He enrolled at Howard University,My Father's Apostolic Calling and Generosity 8:07 an elite historically black institution in the capital. The seminary was deeply engaged in the civil rights movement, theologically liberal and it influenced my father for years to8:18 come. The small Korean congregation that my father pastored met after regular church hours in a chapel of an American Southern Baptist Church in Washington DC.8:31 Most of the members were Korean graduate students sent by their government to study so they could return with specialized degrees and rebuild their nation. Accordingly, they were8:43 generally young singles on a temporary assignment. That meant there were no other kids at church. So my sister and I sat through the adult services week after week, bored and lonely, until a8:54 young American man named Michael took us under his wing for a Sunday school class of 2. My father's church continued to grow. Later, he would become the president of the Korean Southern Baptist9:06 Convention. I believe that my father had the calling of an apostle. He ended up becoming a well known Korean pastor, and he even befriended doctor David Yonggi Cho, founder of the9:18 Full Gospel Central Church, preaching at his church in Seoul and playing golf with him. Beneath my father's sternness, he was an extraordinarily generous man. He never took a9:30 pastoral salary. His income as a dental technician funded the church. He sponsored relatives from both sides of the family to immigrate to America. He went on to help me purchase my 1st home9:42 in California and supported my graduate studies at Fuller Seminary. My grandmother later paid for my doctorate. Generosity was my father's love language, though I did not recognize9:54 it until adulthood. In 19 96, God healed what decades had fractured. My father and I reconciled. He told me he was proud of me as a pastor.10:05 He told me at long last that he loved me. I wept and then began to laugh with joy that filled my heart. I share more of this story in a10:17 later chapter. My father lived to be 86. On June 6th, 2010, he went home to be with the Lord, whom he had served through war,Reconciliation and My Father's Apostolic Legacy 10:29 exile, hardship, and perseverance. My dad's life was 1 of endurance, faith, and sacrifice. An apostolic legacy that shaped the calling I10:41 would embrace.In this video 0:00 My Father, Byung-Kook Ahn: Early Life and the Korean War3:15 Escaping North Korea and Immigration to America5:45 The Emotional Distance in Our Relationship8:00 My Father's Apostolic Calling and Generosity10:20 Reconciliation and My Father's Apostolic Legacy11/12/2026 The Consequences of Recent Elections Become Clearer as We Move into the Final Months of 2026 Tony Perkins
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