Messages and Signs from Naju, Korea

The Way of Love for the Lord
(Julia Kim's intimate Conversations with Our Lord by His Guidance)

Chapter 31. I got a new beauty parlor. (April 8, 1982)

As my beauty parlor was far away from home, I was afraid of leaving work late at night and I also had a problem in educating my children. After much consideration, my husband and I got a new beauty parlor. It also had one large room for our family to live in. But all our family could not live together in just one room, so we divided it into two by installing a sliding door in its center. A laundry shop and restaurants were on the left side of my beauty parlor, and on the right were a motel, a public bath, and a high class bar. There were warehouses across the street.

Not long after I opened my beauty parlor, many bars started to open in the nearby area. Every bar has seven to ten girls waiting on male customers. Their behavior was embarrassing even for me, a woman. Even though there were many other beauty parlors around, most of them persistently came to my beauty parlor. My ordinary customers detested them coming, but I could not turn them away because I felt sorry for them.

One day, a hostess of a bar located across my beauty parlor brought her bar girls and asked me to set their bangs for 500 won each. I agreed to do it as was requested. A few days later, she asked me to set the sides of their hair including the bangs for 500 won each. Another few days later, she asked me to set all the parts of their hair except the back part for the same price. After that, she demanded a massive discount from me: setting all the parts of hair for only 250 won. In fact I should have received at least 1,000 won for it. But I agreed to do it, because I felt so sorry for the bar girls and also for the following reason; while attending to their hairdo, I was going to offer the Prayers of Life for their sake as I had always done for other customers.*

When a few more days passed, she came to me again. This time she asked me to do their hair on credit, on which I agreed. As I did their hair at a massive discount and plus, on credit, they came every day afterwards, making my beauty parlor crowded. As a result, I had to turn away my ordinary customers many times. There was no problem when I was attending to the bar girls’ hairdo. But as I was frequently absent from the beauty parlor to work for the Lord, there were many times when my employees did their hair on my behalf, which they much disliked. So I had to appease them. In 1970, the year of my engagement to my husband, I had been working as a hired hairdresser. At that time, I had also regarded bar girls as filthy people, so I had refused to do their hair no matter how long they might have waited.

After I came to know of God, I made efforts to be kind to them with a heart of making reparations for the mistakes that I had made then. I embraced and consoled the bar girls like their mother or their elder sister. I told them many good words so that they might commit as less sin as possible. Whenever I turned on music, I selected sacred music and filled my beauty parlor with religious books and not secular magazines so that it could benefit their souls.

* For more details, refer to chapter 2.