(Clearwisdom.net) I am a 69-year-old ethnic Korean woman and living in Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin Province. I began practicing Dafa on June 6, 1996.
Infinite joy through Dafa practice
Before I practiced Dafa I suffered from spinal injuries, the result of a work accident. Later on I was diagnosed with gastric cancer, asthenia, and a plethora of other medical conditions. My husband not only refused to help me, but he also smoked and drank, and he often beat me. My children could not bear to see him abuse me any longer. I divorced him in 1995, with my son's full support.
I visited a colleague at her home on June 1, 1996, to discuss how we could jointly run a small business. We chatted in the living room for a while. Then she took me to another room. I immediately saw a portrait on the wall. I couldn't help but heshi and bow to the portrait. She was greatly surprised and said, "How do you know to honor Master this way? I don't even know how to do this!" I said, "I don't know why I did it." It turned out it was Master Li's portrait. She thought I must have profound predestined relationship with Master and encouraged me to practice Falun Gong.
I knew this was a wonderful practice, but since I wanted to make money at the time and I thought that if I didn't lie, I wouldn't be able to make money, and as I knew that lying is against the standard for a cultivator, I said to her, "I'll practice when I'm no longer doing business."
I stayed with her, and we began a business partnership. But I could not forget about Falun Dafa and I said to her in the evening on the fifth day, "I'll give up this business and will follow you to the practice site tomorrow." I began practicing Dafa on June 6, 1996. All of my illnesses disappeared soon afterwards, and I had endless energy. Through Fa study I realized that divorce is wrong, so I re-married my ex-husband and I took over all the household chores. My children saw the changes in me and admired Dafa.
Appealing for Master and Dafa in Beijing
Jiang Zemin and his gang began persecuting Dafa in 1999. I joined several practitioners and petitioned in Beijing in October 1999. We did not know what to do. We asked another practitioner who was also did not know what to do, so we came home.
Three of us returned to Beijing at the end of 1999. It was very cold. We went into the Office of Appeals at 7:00 a.m. the next day as soon as the door opened, took a form and filled out the reason for our being here. The police detained the other two practitioners but let me go. However, being an elderly Korean woman, and unable to speak and write Chinese, I did not know the way home. I pounded on the door and shouted, "Open up and let me in." An officer opened and said, "We don't want you here, just leave!" I said, "No, I won't, I don't know how to get home. I want to go in there and stay with them [the other two practitioners]." The police didn't know what to say, so they sent the three of us to the police station associated with the appeals office. Early the next morning I noticed no one on the second floor, so I went to the second floor and did the Falun Gong exercises.
When the police came to work they realized one detainee was missing and heard someone say that I was doing exercises upstairs. They came to the second floor, furious, and saying, "Where do you come from? How dare you do the exercises here?" I smiled and said, "What's wrong with the exercises? They are good for my health. What's wrong with doing exercises when no one is present?" The police ordered me to squat. I thought, "I didn't commit any crime, so I should not squat. I should do the meditation." So I sat down and did the meditation. They shouted at me but I ignored them, so they left me alone. Soon officials from the liaison office in Beijing arrived; one official said, "Madam, let's go! Let's not meditate here." I didn't listen to him. Again he said, "Ok, let's get up." I didn't move. He held me up and took me to the liaison office where I was held for three days before being sent back to Yanbian.
One day a practitioner came to me and said it's ok to write a guarantee statement - just to keep the officials off our backs. I did not agree because I wanted to practice my belief. I left home and went into hiding to avoid persecution.
Appealing once again in Beijing
I felt horrible as other practitioners around me got arrested. I could not concentrate during Fa study or doing the exercises. I thought, "I am a Dafa disciple; Master and practitioners are being persecuted, it isn't right for me to hide like this."
I thought it over and over and eventually decided to go to Beijing and appeal for Master. After I made this decision I began to worry, because I am old and cannot read Chinese characters. I cannot find my way around, so how do I get to Beijing on my own? I had gone with other practitioners the last two times. What am I going to do this time? I looked around for other practitioners to go with me, but all practitioners that were still in town had profound fear and refused to even see me once they heard I was going to Beijing. I asked around for two days without accomplishing anything. I took the plunge and decided to take the journey alone the next day. I went to a beauty salon and had a perm and facial treatments and took a train to Beijing the following day, bearing in mind Lunyu and Hong Yin, which I had just memorized. Surprisingly, I met a young woman who offered to help. She took me all the way to Tiananmen Square.
I saw plainclothes officers and uniformed police milling around in the square. As I walked about an officer came up to me and asked where I came from, I said, "Korea," so he took me for a foreigner and saluted me and left. No one asked any more questions. I climbed up the bell tower. I took off my white scarf and proceeded to write the words "Falun Dafa is good" using a red lipstick. However, I forgot how to write "lun" [wheel], and the police spotted me, as I was getting anxious. I ended up being taken to Tiananmen Police Station without finishing the makeshift banner.
The police asked me where I came from. I said, "The universe." He said, "Falun Gong should not lie." I said, "I'm indeed from the universe." They didn't know what to do, so they sent me and four other practitioners who refused to give their addresses to the Beijing Chaoyang Police Station. The other four practitioners were taken to the dungeon. Soon I heard heart-wrenching screams, which must have been from torture. The screams got louder and louder. I said to the police, "Stop abusing people; if you kill them, disaster will strike you." Then a man came in and vehemently slapped my face several times, yet, I felt no pain. Strangely, the man held up his hand and moaned, "My hand! My hand! What's happening?" He ran to the bathroom to wash his hand and never came back.
They sent me to the dungeon the next day. I saw pools of blood on the floor. Only one of the four practitioners was lying on the floor, the other three were gone. Instinctively I shouted at the police, "Are you human? Look at all this blood!" An official from Yunnan Province arrived later on; they mistook me for a Yunnannese from my accent. The official said they were going to release me today, but they couldn't find my family and said he was worried to let me travel alone. I was deceived by his faked kindness and gave him my daughter's phone number. He left and came back in less than 30 minutes with a smug look, saying, "You have appealed in Beijing twice and were twice detained. You are from Yanbian!"
I was taken back to Yanbian and sent to a detention center. Two months later I began to vomit blood and was thus taken home. I went into exile to avoid further persecution. The officials continued to look for me, and I wandered from place to place. When I visited practitioners they were so afraid that they refused to open the door. Those were the most difficult days of my life, but it taught me the importance of caring for other practitioners. After that, I always tried my utmost to help practitioners living in exile.
Later on I moved to the countryside. One morning in 2001 my husband saw a large sack in the yard containing lots of Falun Gong materials. I think a practitioner threw it over the wall but he or she did not want to be identified. I began distributing the materials. The same person "delivered" a bag of materials the next day, and the day after. I could not hand out all of them, so I gave some to other practitioners. Dafa materials were in short supply at the time, and other practitioners were glad to take them. Thus I became a coordinator through no intention of my own.
Reading Chinese Zhuan Falun
We realized the importance of Fa study in 2004 in guiding us to walk the right path. I established a Fa study group at my home. At first we had four people; as more and more people understood the significance of Fa study, more and more stepped forward. We ended up with more than ten practitioners and later had three Fa study groups. But we were still studying the Korean language edition of Zhuan Falun. We moved on to studying the Chinese version of Zhuan Falun in 2007. At first I listened to others reading the book since I could not read Chinese. One practitioner marked the words with the Korean alphabet, which made it much easier for us. Two years later, a group of Korean women who could not even speak fluent Chinese were able to read the Chinese version of Zhuan Falun and all other Dafa books fluently.
Explaining the facts to the police
I participated in efforts to rescue fellow practitioners in 2006. Practitioners and I went with detained practitioners' families to detention centers and police departments and demanded the release of incarcerated practitioners. We patiently explained the wonders of Dafa to the officials there. At first they swore at us, but I remained calm and talked to them about the June 4, 1989 Massacre, the Cultural Revolution, various political campaigns, and then the amazing power of Dafa, and how it's widely embraced abroad. They grew quiet and listened to me. One official couldn't believe how much I knew. I told him I'm speaking from my life experience of sixty-plus years.
Eliminating strong attachments
Now let me talk about my shortcomings, which is a combative mentality. I am an orphan, and my experiences growing up taught me to fight for myself and to be more aggressive than the bully, from which I developed stubborn defensiveness. I have changed through cultivation, but not in a fundamental way, and this notion rears its ugly head when I talk to the police.
Even though I have done things to validate Dafa through the years, the combativeness surfaced again and again because I did not study the Fa as much as I should have. I would get into a fight with practitioners when someone "steals my thunder;" when someone opposes my ideas, and when someone is forgiven for a major blunder, and yet I am criticized for a minor error. Fa study made me realize my attachment to reputation and competitiveness. I said to Master in my heart, "Please don't worry, Master, I will do away with these notions." I went to practitioners with whom I had conflicts and said, "It's all my fault, please forgive me. I will definitely change and improve."
I have improved over time, although occasionally I still have a hard time controlling my temper.
I am Korean and I could hardly speak Chinese in the beginning, so I could not understand the deeper meaning of the Fa as other practitioners. But I have made it through the past decade with firm belief in Master and Dafa. I am determined to cultivate well so Master doesn't have to worry about me.
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