She was told her daughter had less than three months to live. It was cancer. It was incurable.
So the woman moved her daughter and herself off the Korean peninsula and onto Yokji Island, where she started building. Drawing from both Christian and Buddhist traditions, she created not a church or temple, but a devotional, spiritual place. Currently the size of about a football field, Last Eden is a work in progress full of engraved statues, monuments and little buildings.
It was simply her offering to the higher consciousness, not pleading for her daughter’s life, but acknowledging there was something bigger at work – something she couldn’t understand, but she could honor.
Thirteen years later, her daughter is still alive. And not just alive, but thriving. Her cancer has disappeared. Doctors cannot explain it. Mother and daughter accept it as one of the universe’s many miracles, and continue to build.
Seeing the whole world
On a rainy Sunday afternoon, my party of Koreans, Gina, Kiana, Miss Jo, 11, and I, slogged through the mud and over slippery stones to emerge, awestruck, at Last Eden. The mother, bald and toothless, was there to greet us, inviting us into one of the little buildings, telling us her story, showing us photographs and randomly reciting the Lord’s Prayer in English at one point.
She studied my face.
“Such large eyes,” she said in Korean. “You can see the whole world with eyes like those.”
And then she gave me a present – a packet of photographs of Last Eden. I left the place stunned by its story and its sense of peace.
Bow this way
The day had begun eight hours earlier with 11 expertly maneuvering his car onto a ferry bound for Yokjido. We sprawled out on the ferry’s heated floor (no seats on Korean ferries) napping and nibbling on corn during the hour-long ride. We arrived on the overcast island, but the rain held off until we started hiking. There others were thrilled with the prospect of hiking in the rain.
“Such a refreshing, unique experience,” Gina said.
Their enthusiasm was contagious, and we all got happily and thoroughly soaked as we stomped around the island’s mountains, taking in the stormy scenery, rain-drenched flowers and ominous spiders. Of course, it wouldn’t be a proper Korean hike with snack stops every few minutes. We’d been at it for no more than 10 minutes before they whipped out melons and cucumbers. Half an hour later, we stopped for some sweet potato dumplings stuffed with red bean paste.
We came across a Buddhist temple, and Kiana taught me how to bow in the proper Korean way and put some money in the offering box so my wish would come true. I don’t remember what I wished for …
Eating the day away
At that point, we’d been without food for nearly an hour, so it was time to find the famous jampong restaurant. Jampong is Korea’s version of Chinese food – noodles and a wide variety of shellfish in a spicy, red broth. Just the thing to warm you from the inside out.
We continued hiking, arriving at Last Eden and ending back at the port, but not before another snack time of grapes and carrots. There were chips and chocolates on the ferry, a dinner of jolmyeon – cold nice noodles and raw veggies in a chili sauce, -- honeyed tea, dried squid and red bean and walnut cakes on the car ride back to Busan.
It was midnight by the time I made it home, thoroughly, but happily, exhausted. And wouldn’t you know it – I was hungry.
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