Ahn Ei-sook

Life

Ahn Ei-sook was born on June 24, 1908, in Pakchon, North Pyongan Province. After graduating from Seomun Girls' Higher Common School in Pyongyang, she studied in Japan, completing the advanced course at Tokyo Kasei Girls' School. After returning to Korea, she taught at Daegu Girls' Higher Common School and at Boseong Girls' School in Seoncheon, North Pyongan Province, where she taught Japanese and music.

When the Japanese authorities imposed Shinto shrine worship (the rite of bowing at Japanese Shinto shrines), she refused and resigned from her teaching post. She then evaded arrest by hiding in the homes of former students and relatives. In 1939 she traveled to Japan with Elder Park Kwan-jun, visiting political figures to protest the injustice of compulsory shrine worship. That same year, she and Park scattered leaflets denouncing the persecution of Christianity inside the chamber where the 74th Imperial Diet was in session, and both were arrested. After being sent back to Korea, she was held in Pyongyang Prison, where she was imprisoned alongside other prisoners who had refused shrine worship, including Ju Gi-cheol, Han Sang-dong, and Choi Duk-ji. She was released about six years later, upon Korea's liberation in 1945. According to her memoir, she was facing imminent execution at the time.

After liberation she went to the United States and married the Rev. Kim Dong-myung. She studied at Northwestern College in Minneapolis and earned a master's degree in Christian education from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas. She died on October 19, 1997, at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles.

Ministry and Achievements

In 1957 her husband, Kim Dong-myung, was appointed the Southern Baptist Convention's first home missionary to Koreans in the United States, and he founded the Korean Baptist Church of Los Angeles. Ahn shared in this ministry as a pastor's wife. The couple welcomed Korean international students at both the church and their home, so much so that the place reportedly came to be known as the "Dong-myung Diner." She also held testimony meetings in Korea, Japan, the United States, and various European countries, and she founded Saenuri Baptist Church in Daejeon.

Her memoir of her prison experience, Jugeumyeon jugeurira (If I Perish), is believed to have been first published in the late 1960s; an edition from the Christian Literature Society of Korea appeared in 1976. The title is taken from Esther 4:16: "and if I perish, I perish." The English edition is titled If I Perish, and the book has also been translated into Japanese and Chinese. Her other works include Jugeumyeon sallira (If I Die, I Shall Live), Dangsineun jugeoyo geureonde an jugeoyo (You Will Die, Yet You Will Not Die), Geureol sudo itji (That Could Happen), and Natgo sipeoyo (I Want to Be Healed). The gospel song "Naeil ireun nan mollayo" also became known in Korea through her translation; the original, "I Know Who Holds Tomorrow," was written by the American composer Ira Stanphill.

Influence on the Korean Church

If I Perish became a widely read devotional book in the Korean church during the 1970s and 1980s. Through it, many church members learned about the prison lives of believers who had refused Shinto shrine worship. Ahn called herself a "disqualified martyr," while within the church she was known as a "living martyr." She is remembered as a leading female figure of the movement against shrine worship.

Assessment

Within the church she is highly regarded as one who kept her faith in the face of Japanese religious coercion. However, much of the detailed account of her prison life and the circumstances of her arrest rests on her own memoir, and specific details should be treated with this in mind.