ABSTRACT
“Are you sure you are interested in studying Iryŏp no sŭnim’s life after she entered the mountain?” a gray-robed, tall woman, with a powerful face and tonsured head, asked incredulously when I met her at a hotel coffee shop on a late June evening in the village of Tŏksan near the monastery of Sudŏksa. The woman asking the question was Wŏlsŏng (sŭnim), 1 Kim Iryŏp’s pŏpson (lit. “grandson” in Buddhist tradition), a disciple. Wŏlsŏng sŭnim was with another nun, Chŏngjin, also a pŏpson, and four other novitiates. Disbelieving that someone from America should be interested in the deceased old nun, but nevertheless overjoyed, Wŏlsŏng sŭnim continued: “We are so glad and grateful that you are interested in Iryŏp no-sŭnim (“old nun”). We have always believed that she deserved a serious study. She is too significant a figure in recent Korean history to be forgotten.” 2 Wŏlsŏng and Chŏngjin were two of Kim Iryŏp’s closest associates and disciples during her years at Sudŏksa. Wŏlsŏng sŭnim, who just turned sixty this year, did graduate work at Tong’guk University (a university of Sŏn Buddhism) in Seoul, and also in Japan, and edited, compiled, and published Ŏnŭ sudoin ui hoesang (Recollections of a Certain Nun) in 1960 and Miraese ka tahago namtorok (Until the End of the Future World and Beyond) 3 in 1974. The latter is a posthumously published two-volume collection of her ŭnsa (vocation master), Iryŏp sŭnim. Wŏlsŏng sŭnim went on, “She is truly a rare person not just in Korean history but in human history. She succeeded in organizing and ordering her spiritual life and thus succeeded in life itself. But it’s a shame, so little is known about her after she joined the order.”
