“We stand at a watershed moment. There is a confluence of issues and circumstances that are moving the world and this peninsula in the direction of peaceful unification. All of you here who are gathered here who are owners of the Korean Dream, we seek to allow the Korean people to build their ideal nation that can be the inspiration for the global community. We live at that moment.”
– Dr. Hyun Jin Preston Moon
August 15, 2025, marks the 80th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from colonial rule at the end of World War II. However, Korea is not free.
To the north, 25 million Koreans live without basic human rights under an oppressive regime that threatens regional and global security.
In the South, hyper-partisan divides have left the republic without a head of state while the economy plunges and the nation faces a negative population crisis of its own making as a super-aged society coupled with an average of less than one child born per household.
Yet, Dr. Hyun Jin Moon remains optimistic. For decades, he has called for the Korean people to own the Korean Dream, a vision for a unified Korea rooted in the ancient ethos of Hongik Ingan, what Dr. Moon calls their “providential destiny” to live for the benefit of all humanity.
Based on this vision, Dr. Moon has been instrumental in spearheading the largest civil society coalition for Korean reunification, Action for Korea United (AKU).
He believes now is the time for the Korean Dream to become a reality.
In the current climate of the peninsula, the call rings true.
In South Korea there is an urgency to put aside superficial political, regional, clan differences, to dream together, rise up as a people and nation based on their shared heritage and their spiritual calling to bring hope and new insights for this age in a way that will benefit all humanity. They would fulfill their mandate to be, in the words of Indian Nobel Lauriat, Rabindranath Tagore, “lamp bearers” to the world. The Korean Dream goes beyond the peninsula. It has global resonance as a dream to live as a free people who can bring peace and prosperity to the homeland, the region, and the world.
However, the Korean Dream requires the participation of every Korean; people who can own the vision and are willing to put their lives on the line to pursue this noble aspiration, to push back on the dark clouds of the current challenges to assert, “We will make a new and better way.”
Mansei demonstration on March 1, 1919 (Author: 한국사진사연구소 Source : 공유마당)
It is something the Korean ancestors attempted to do over a hundred years ago. In many painful but instructive ways, Korea has been prepared for this moment.
Hongik Ingan is engrained in their ethos, etched in the veins of their history, and preserved in their family traditions.
An adage repeated in the corner Taekwondo dojangs, the neighborhood classrooms, churches and households are phrases like “필승! (Pilsung!)” roughly translated as “We will absolutely bring victory”; “하면된다! (Hamyeun dwenda!) ”roughly translated as “Just do it! You can find a way”; and “불굴의 정신 (bulgul eh chongshin)” translated as “Indomitable Spirit.” The Koreans know how to dream and the people know how to fight for that dream. We saw it throughout their history, especially during the Korean Independence Movement.
In the aftermath of World War I, despite the overwhelming lack of support from the international community and severe oppression at the hands of their colonizers, Koreans found a way to launch the first, non-violent, people-powered mass movement for independence in the world.
The 33 signers of the Korean Declaration of independence were resigned to be the martyrs of the nation. Leading the charge on March 1, 1919, to assert their God-given right to independence:
“Having back of us 5,000 years of history and 20,000,000 of a united loyal people, we take this step to ensure to our children, for all time to come, personal liberty in accord with the awakening consciousness of this new era. This is the clear leading of God, the moving principle of the present age, the whole human race’s just claim.”
The Declaration launched a nationwide chain of protests that would be remembered as the “Mansei Movement.” Around 2 million Koreans, ten percent of the estimated population of Korea — men, women, girls, boys, from all classes and religions — participated in the non-violent protests. Koreans from the diaspora, especially in the United States, also joined to support from abroad and played a major role in fueling and even funding the independence efforts. TheKoreans put their lives on the line to declare their right to self-determination.
It was a collective cry of the Korean people. They envisioned a new Korea, a model nation rooted in universal principles that married the best of the West and East, the Western style democracy rooted in self-governance of a moral people paired with the rich heritage of Korea built on the Hongik Ingan spirit and the Korean traditional extended family and community foundation. Sparked by the promise for self-determination for all nations presented in U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s infamous Fourteen Points, echoing the promise forged in words centuries ago in similar circumstances in 1776, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights…” This promise found resonance in the spiritual heritage and tradition of the Korean people.
Their ethos of Hongik Ingan urged them to rise up to assert a truth whose time has come. Their Declaration didn’t seek reparation from their colonizers but reconciliation and cooperation for mutual prosperity. The Korean people were resolved to live out their destiny and create a noble nation that fulfilled the Korean people’s mandate from heaven to become a people who would benefit all humanity.
The March 1, 1919 Mansei Movement (Samil Movement) was in a way a march to freedom, not just for the Koreans, but for all the people of the world.
The reprimand that followed was harsh and the fight for independence wore on for nearly three more decades. Many perished with the cry of “Mansei” and a whisper of hope for freedom.
Finally, in 1945, Korea was liberated from Japan. However, as they emerged liberated on the heels of WWII, they met an even larger global conflict that had started. The peninsula was engulfed into the Cold War and torn apart between the larger global powers, without being able to create a new nation of Korea. Instead two Koreas formed and in 1950, North Korea attacked South Korea and a civil war ensued.
Families were torn apart, left separated for decades. Many have died without reconnecting with their lost loved ones. The armistice has frozen the conflict along the 38th parallel, an open wound left bare for the world to witness.
From the tears and ashes of the Korean War, the Korean people in the Republic of Korea created the Miracle on the Han.
The Korean people can even take devastation and suffering and make it a source of strength. They are positioned to intimately understand the struggle of colonization, independence, totalitarianism, and materialism. And their experience drives them to seek something better.
The Korean Dream casts a framework for a nation that builds on the jewel of the Korean civilization: The Korean extended family. The extended Korean family has a specific honor and responsibility granted with their position in the family from the grandfather on father’s side, to the sister of the child of the great-grandchild on the mother’s side. This has cultivated within the Korean people a profound understanding of the unique and precious value of every life.
Korean Dreamers are rising in the South, amongst the diaspora, and even from the North Koreans.
The slow trickle of Koreans escaping from North Korea are offered freedom of conscience, movement and thought and a chance to have hope, love, life and dignity to live a meaningful life. Their plight and their flight bring to light a self-evident truth: the true source of inalienable rights and freedoms, is God, the Creator, and His sovereignty supersedes all human institutions.
The human soul cannot be held back once it comes in touch with this truth and captures a glimpse of what is possible: true freedom unbound from any human or human institution and that the human spirit will fight to live free, to flourish under the sovereignty of God.
This is a deliverance moment of providential proportions.
The fate of the Korean people, rests in their hands, in their choices: the choice to walk free from division, despotism, or even the unfettered rush for profit at the expense of our humanity and to dream together and build a promise land where all can live free.
Dr. Moon is daring Koreans to dream again, to call “Mansei,” for the Korean Dream and to leave behind the vestiges of aCold War era already closed, to have a vision to pull the people of the South out of the hyper-partisan divide to work together towards a new nation for all its people, and to dream big, dream together of a land of freedom, prosperity, andfulfill the enduring promise to live together as one family and benefit all humanity.
Won’t you come along?