The Tunnel of Destiny: The True Story of a Family’s Walk through an Age of Turmoil

Astonishing Experiences of a Family from 1870s to the 1960s,
the Most Tragic Moments in Modern Korean History

Twin brothers believe they were born into an inseparable destiny, only to be betrayed by fate. Kim Hyung-cha is conscripted to serve as a student soldier during the Japanese occupation under conditions of severe cruelty, while his older twin, Kim Hyung-tae, who remained in the North after liberation, goes missing in the turbulence of the Korean War. Kim Hyungcha joins the allied forces and advances to the Yalu River with the war, where he miraculously finds his brother’s family and manages to evacuate them to the South.

Beyond stripping Korean contemporary history bare, this book forces an introspective look into the common yet esoteric concept of human destiny. Through a most peculiar interlacing of events and encounters that confront the family, leading towards an uncanny untangling of ties, readers will walk the “tunnel of destiny,” where mere coincidences are proven to be indisputable fate.

• Kim Hyung-cha, Author

  Kim Hyung-cha was born in 1915 in Hamgyeongnam-do (now North Korea) during the Japanese colonial era. He set off to Japan in 1941 to study and graduated from Waseda University with a degree in law. While in school, he was conscripted and trained as a student soldier of the Japanese army, and, after liberation, he worked at a trading company called Chunwoosa. During the Korean War, he served as one of the first KATUSA (Korean Augmentation to the United States Army) soldiers. He later became the head of Chunwoosa’s Japan and Philippines branches and served as an elder of the Seoul Sungnam Church. Kim spent most of his later years in New York and New Jersey before passing away in 2003.

• Allen D. Clark, Translator