A Man Who Heals the City
Embodying the spirit of immense generosity this New Year.
“If poop is piled up, it smells bad, but if you scatter it, it becomes fertilizer and makes flowers bloom and bear fruit. The same goes for money; if you share it with those around you, society will flourish.” - Jangha Kim.
So it was that, while on a 10 hr flight from Incheon, South Korea, to Sydney, Australia, I was browsing the list of in-flight movies and one of them in particular caught my eye. The title seemed flawed, well, at least the English translation. A Man who Heals the City. The Korean title was simpler: 어른 김장하 (The Honourable Jangha Kim). The blurb stated it was about a Korean herbalist in the city of Jinju, North Gyeongsang province, who had spent his entire life's fortune helping others. Having a newfound fondness of herbalism myself, my interest was immediately piqued. Why would a Korean herbalist suddenly decide to dump his life’s fortune into others?
The film-length documentary was directed by Hyunji Kim. The narrator and primary researcher was journalist Joowan Kim. He commenced with the immense difficulty of his journalistic quest to obtain this particular story: how was he, a seasoned journalist, to gather information about this enigmatic, reclusive individual, Jangha Kim, a man who was well known as being so fiercely humble, so immaculately quiet about his lifetime of giving, that he refused every single request for an interview by every media organisation his entire life to date? That is no easy task for a researcher.
Joowan reflected that, as a journalist, when he pursued other stories such as stories of crime, corruption and cover-up, interviewees are often tight lipped, deflective and evasive, unwilling to speak of the subject at hand. But this was, refreshingly, not the case when Joowan began the task of collecting stories and evidence, circumstantially and anecdotally, of the many hundreds of Korean lives deeply touched, many wholly transformed, by this skinny, reclusive herbalist from Jinju. These witnesses were only all too eager to share their experiences of the incredible, almost unbelievable, life of completely unrestrained generosity lived for 65+ years by this one man. To that story we now turn.
Jangha Kim came, to repeat an oft-exhausted trope, from a desperately poor family. Born in Sacheon, Gyeongnam, in 1944, he made his way through early childhood to middle school where he found his first job as a herbalist’s assistant, mostly cutting and weighing out traditional Korean medicines in the suburb of Samcheonpo. At night he progressed towards formal qualification as a Korean herbal medicine specialist.
In 1963, at the mere age of 19, using the experience gained while working as a herbal assistant, he opened his own Korean herbal medicine clinic in Seokgeori, Sacheon. Around 1972 the clinic moved to its final location in Dongseong-dong, Jinju, a location Jangha Kim would practice Korean herbal medicine until his retirement in May, 2022. In the early days his popularity was such that he would, on occasion, see as many as 800 patients per day, often working until 2 or 3 am in the morning to prepare the required herbal prescriptions.
His guiding philosophy for his medical practice was as simple as it is profound:
“[I]f I make money while working in the herbal medicine business, it will be the profits I made from the sick of the world, those who are more unfortunate than anyone else.” Jangha Kim, Chairman Resignation Speech, Myungshin High School, 1991.
Thus, he reckoned, to take the money he earned through his humble business and reinvest it into “those who are more unfortunate than anyone else.”
Besides giving personal, interest free loans to the poor and needy, Jangha Kim used his wealth to fund a huge number and variety of social and educational foundations, with the goal to reform some of the negatives of Korean society, or to keep important cultural institutions or businesses financially afloat. Notable examples of this include:
Building Jinju Myeongshin High School, which was later donated to Korean State control;
The Namseong Cultural Foundation;
The Jinju Newspaper, an entity he personally funded to ensure local government accountability in Jinju;
Adviser of the Jinju Environmental Movement Federation;
The Equality Movement Commemoration Project;
As Jinju Culture Love Group Vice President;
Korea Family Law Counseling Center Jinju Branch;
Gyeongsang National University Development Support, a fund which allowed prospective students from poor backgrounds to achieve tertiary qualifications;
Yeongnam National Action to Save Jirisan;
Jirisan Life Solidarity;
Jinju Ogwangdae Preservation Society, a company tasked to preserve Korea’s traditional masked dance;
Jinju Culture Research Institute.
Some of the organisations he funded had immediate societal impact. School and university scholarships impacted lives of a generation of poor, giving them opportunities that would have been denied otherwise, one of whom was Hyungbae Moon, now a chief justice of the Constitutional Court of Korea. Another example was Kim’s funding for discrimination reform pertaining to the butchery trade, an occupation that was so despised and hated in pre-1970s Korea that to be a butcher was worse than slavery (it is now a respectable, well-paying profession in Korea). Kim built a Women’s Refuge and Legal aid centre to supply help to the many Korean women who were (and are) victims of domestic abuse, a societal reform that saw significant cultural opposition by many male adherents of Korea’s traditional Confucian code of ethics which saw no issue in “putting women in their place.” Korea, like many western nations, still has a long way to go in that regard.
Jangha Kim never owned a car. He used his bicycle to get around Jinju, and utilised public buses and intercity trains for occasions when his work as a herbalist. So while his peers, CEOs and executives of now-megacorporations like Hyundai, Samsung, Lotte and Shinsegae, hurled their money with wanton abandon at their lives of lavish luxury, this humble millionaire herbalist was doling out interest-free loans, scholarships, building schools, domestic abuse shelters and funding the entire running costs of the much-needed, independent Jinju News, as well as bailing out local bookshops in danger of financial ruin. He otherwise lived a frugal, simple life, his wealth constantly being doled out to everyone else. And, fortunately, he had an equally generous wife who supported his generosity and humility.
Jangha Kim consistently reiterated his dedication to people, not politics. He refused appointment as Jinju city mayor despite being nominated and elected for the role by his peers. In the 1980s a major dispute arose between the Korean Teacher’s Union and the government of the day, resulting in the Korean government forcibly standing down thousands of union-affiliated teachers around the country (public education in Korea is federally controlled). Kim steadfastly resisted government pressure to stand down the union-affiliated teachers employed at Myeongshin High School, much to the chagrin of the government and ultimately escaped retribution for doing so.
But how to process all of this? It just so happened that a mere day after watching the film,
published an essay on the means to demolish the concept of a “scarcity economy” through acts of abundant, reciprocal giving:
In Gavin's essay, he primarily meant the reciprocal relationship we have with our food providers in the complex, interwoven tapestry of a sustainable, regenerative food forest ecosystem (which, ironically, as Gavin has repeatedly argued in multiple essays with convincing persuasion, is what colonialism destroyed in all the countries touched thereby). Gavin's ecological argument, however, is in essence the same as Jangha Kim's sociological one. Receive in order to give. Give, in order to receive. It is an infinite cycle of communal reciprocity ingrained by the Creator into the very fabric of creation itself, which Gavin illustrates so splendidly in his essay. Indeed, I would add, the Creator's generosity is on constant display in the things He has made, and it is why greed is such an oft-repeated societal sin refrained down the ages in the writings of both prophets, apostles, philosophers and many in-between.
Jumping back to the 21st century, there is a lot of thought about how (not if!) the destructive, death-promoting allopathic medical systems of “modernised” nations, both eastern and western, could be reformed. Has not Jangha Kim burned a light brighter than a million suns, illuminating that very path? Is it not to take the money the sick, what “those more unfortunate than anyone else” spent, and give it back to them as life-promoting beneficence? And this, I argue, must first start with the individual, before we can think about overthrowing corporate and oligarchical structures greed. Could you imagine a city with a hundred, a thousand, no, 10,000 Jangha Kims and Gavin Mounseys living in it? A city where the poor and needy can be fully supplied with their daily needs, abundant food forests overflowing with plenty, children funded to tertiary education to break the poverty cycle (if we value such things, as Jangha did), and interest-free loans supporting local business and families doing it tough? What would our world look like if profit was recycled back into community instead of into corporate coffers and bank vaults where it remains hidden away forever?
It sounds like communism, you say. That was exactly the accusation hurled countless times at Jangha Kim. “How can you support those who undermine the fabric of our culture?” the Confucians complained when he meddled with their ability to bash their wives. But what if the culture is wrong? Where is the place for cultural critique, to point the finger at a moral vice enshrined in the social fabric of life and say, “No, no more of that; it is time for that practice to end.” And, specifically in the case of Korean social stigmatism of the butchery profession, it was overthrown.
Yet in a sense it is “communism” to genuinely emphasise returning one’s wealth to the many hands of the commune that gave it, and thus enrich all, not just self. This is not Marx’s communism, which only served to replace one elite, hierarchical ruling class order with another more murderous, vicious, paranoid, propagandistic, totalitarian. No, to me, the life of Jangha Kim was a temporal snapshot of another ancient account where “…all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.” (Acts 2:44-45) That is not Marx’s communism. It is love, in action; it is smashing the “scarcity economy” with acts of exuberant generosity and reciprocity.
The ‘all’ gave; now I give all.
The city of Jinju formed its own social security network that was funded and supported by the herbal apothecary of just one man, Jangha Kim. In this, too, Korean culture itself must be critiqued. Why was there only ever one Jangha Kim? Many of those interviewed admitted they could not live as Jangha Kim had done. Many of these were lawyers, engineers, musicians and journalists whose tertiary degrees had been entirely funded by Kim. But they could not live the same life of self-deprecating, sacrificial humility as their generous donor, and many admitted to such during their interviews. Why is that? Why is a life of such sacrificial giving so very rare, so very difficult, that there was only ever one Jangha Kim doing so in just one city, Jinju?
Obviously I am ignorant of other “Jangha Kims” speaking other languages and living in other cultures where the ideas of reciprocity and generosity are far more ingrained than in English-speaking Australia, or Korea. There are some ancient cultures where reciprocal safety nets were once entirely ingrained in the social fabric, reinforced with oral law, as
recently argued, and don’t let the title scare you at all:Old Yolngu men could once rely on their nephews to supply their food after their strength and powers had faded, only for that system of mutual reciprocity to be annihilated by “mandatory school,” the (often ignorant) government-funded teacher being the means by which the former lifetime bond between educator uncle and student nephew was and continues to be ruined.
You want to know how we turn this “globalism” tyranny around? Start giving. Destroy their usury-based, scarcity economy. And yes, you may be discerning. Jangha Kim would thoroughly interview those who requested his help, in order to discern the true validity of their requests. My own personal method, that cuts right to the heart of greed, is the question, “What do you need [it for]?” Then when they tell you what they need, immediately offer to get it for them if it is in your power to do so.
A middle-aged lady at a train station once asked me for money. “What do you need it for?” I quizzed politely.
“A train ticket.”
“Sure, I’ll buy you one right now. Where do you want to go?” I said, turning towards the ticket booth.
“Oh… uhhh… never mind…” she muttered as she walked away in search for another dupe. Greed exposed.
“What do you need it for?” I said to a stringy man who approached me in Haymarket, Sydney. His eyes immediately fell downcast and he sighed.
“To be honest, man, I just want to buy a beer.”
I lost an opportunity that day. I should have rewarded his candour, sat down and had a long chat over a pint. But I was weak. I, too, am flawed.
“What do you need it for?” I said to the sweaty teenager who had just run into the church at 7am after our prayer meeting.
“I just flew here from regional Western Australia and I got a call from my sister; my mother was just killed in a car accident and I need to go back. I don’t have any money left. I was hoping to start a new life here in the east and now my mum’s dead.”
“Sure, let’s go to Central train station and buy your ticket to the airport. Let’s get you back to Perth.” You should have seen how his eyes filled with hope, not just tears. At the time, I only had $40 in my bank myself, being a poor student at a theological college. I overdrew my account to pay his way; no-one else in the church offered or wanted to help (sigh). The next week, after losing my jacket, I received the whole amount I had paid for his trip back west stuffed into one of the pockets, someone having found the jacket and returned it to my pigeon hole (mailbox) at the college. To this day I do not know who put the money there other than God. I’m tearing up just remembering this story. Even the universe gives reciprocally.
Towards his retirement, Jangha Kim did not even have any money to give away, as Korean herbal medicine was giving way to the allopathic, all-consuming monster. That happens. But there are other ways to reciprocate. Cultivate an abundant, regenerative garden and give your excess produce (and seeds!) away to needy neighbours. Use your skills, be it mechanic, carpenter, nurse, artist, author and give another person a breath of hope with a free vehicle repair, new table, health care check, oil portrait, poem.
Let us make 2025 the year when humanity rekindled its desire to be kind, compassionate and generous to one another. By God, the world needs it right now. You probably need it right now. And I know my own hardness of heart must be the first to melt away after four years of propaganda, lies and mass delusions has drained the desire to be compassionate and generous to my fellow man, however undeserving, however foolish, however brutal they have been to me. Let that die in 2024. It is time we rise from the dead once more and face this new quarter century with courage, boldness, endurance, respect, humility, grace, warmth and love.
“And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.” Matthew 24:12-13
Happy New Year.
My philosophy too. But, unlike Jangha, at 82, I am still broke and have influenced no one. One can but try.