Master Cho Han-Kyu

The Life of Master Cho Han-Kyu

Primary sources: KNF lecture transcripts 2016–2018 — sessions where Cho was physically present. All quotes sourced from transcripts. Sources cited inline. Draft — verify before publishing.

A Life Forged in Contradiction

Master Cho Han-Kyu was born in 1935 in Suwon, Korea into a strict Confucian family. He grew up immersed in Confucian teaching — order, hierarchy, duty — and studied Buddhism deeply as a young man. He wouldn't receive his Christian faith until he was 45 years old. When he did, he came to understand the difference plainly: "Confucianism and Buddhism are something that humans achieve and obtain. But Christianity is something that God gives you instead. That's a blessing."

His formal education: elementary school only. He describes it simply — "I only graduated primary school."

Sources: 2018 Cho Advanced Hawaii IMG_3940; 2017 Advanced Cho Poultry 4

The Korean War — Not a Soldier, A Spy

When the Korean War came, Cho was not a regular soldier. He went to the front in a different capacity — as a special agent, infiltrating enemy lines and passing intelligence to higher-ranking officers. He watched what greed did to men in that environment. It became a fixed conviction: "The greed will kill the people."

Source: 2017 Advanced Cho Poultry 4

The Governor's Permission

At 26, Cho wanted to study. The problem: he only had an elementary education and was from the countryside. Every door was formally closed to him.

Then the mayor — the governor — took notice of him and invited him personally. The governor told him: "I give you permission to take the exam."

The exam was 1-to-90 competitive. Cho was disqualified by background but given the chance anyway. He scored at the top — "he was the top student." His school was one of the best. He entered the training center. Six months of study. When he graduated, he was again among the top students.

For finishing at the top, he was awarded two certifications: veterinarian doctor and artificial insemination. In his own words: "Because I was a top student, I had veterinarian certification and artificial insemination certification."

He became a county officer — traveling to help poor farmers across the countryside. But something shifted. Every time he went to help a sick animal, he was fixing the symptom. "What I realized is: not fix the disease — prevent the disease. So he quit."

He walked away from the career to research and study. Prevention instead of cure. That was the beginning.

Sources: 2017 Advanced Cho nutrient cycle IMG_2876; 2017 Advanced Cho nutrient cycle 2; 2017 Advanced Cho poultry day 4 IMG_5014

Hwanam Farm — and the Wall He Hit

He opened the Hwanam cooperative farm — a vision for what farming could be. It ran straight into conventional agriculture's priorities: efficiency over health, chemistry over biology. The collision between his vision and the system he was working inside sent him searching for something different.

Japan — 60+ Visits, Learning Japanese Alone

Starting in 1965, Cho began making trips to Japan — before formal Korea-Japan diplomatic relations were established. He would make over sixty visits across the following decades.

He arrived without knowing the language. He learned Japanese entirely by himself. He eventually became a teacher at a rural university in Japan — teaching natural farming in Japanese, a language he'd taught himself. His students would note the strange phenomenon: "Because the teacher is younger than him, so the teacher cannot use the respectful way to talk to the elder." The elder was the student who became the teacher.

He went with a scholarship. He had been invited. The Japanese saw something in him worth bringing over.

Sources: 2017 Advanced Cho nutrient cycle 2; 2017 Advanced Cho nutrient cycle IMG_2876

Three Teachers — and One Greater

In Japan, Cho found three mentors who would form the pillars of what became KNF:

[Yamagishi Miyozo 山岸巳代蔵](/master-cho/yamagishi-miyozo) (1901–1961) — founder of Yamagishism (ヤマギシズム). His philosophy centered on the abolition of private property, communal harmony with nature, and the primacy of spirit over technology. He established the first Yamagishism commune in 1958 in Mie Prefecture and developed an intensive philosophical practice called kenshūkai (研鑽会) — group inquiry aimed at dissolving fixed thinking. Cho observed that Yamagishi's followers built his ideas into a movement not unlike other philosophical "isms," complete with institutions, secrecy, and control — though Cho's own path diverged sharply toward the spiritual and away from any ism. The Yamagishi movement still operates today with communities in Japan, Australia, Brazil, Switzerland, and the United States.

[Shibata Kinshi 柴田欣志](/master-cho/shibata-kinshi) (d. before 1965) — enzymes and microorganisms as the foundation of life and soil health. A baker-turned-enzyme-researcher from Kamakura who recovered from tuberculosis through plant shoot extracts, then developed enzyme agriculture (酵素農法) starting around 1945. Published 酵素法御進講草案 (Enzyme Method Lecture Draft, 1947) through the Japan Agricultural Method Research Institute. Cho visited his farmhouse in October 1965 — after Shibata's death — and was shown cedar barrels filled with enzyme liquid by his wife. The book Cho treasures, 酵素法之本意 (The True Meaning of the Enzyme Method), remains his "house treasure." Shibata was the first, in Cho's accounting, to articulate the concept of enzyme as the primary mechanism of biological activity. This became foundational to KNF's emphasis on fermentation, microbial populations, and enzymatic soil processes. (Note: Cho's translators rendered the name as "Shibada Genshi" — this is a transliteration artifact. The correct Japanese is 柴田欣志, romanized Shibata Kinshi.)

[Ooinoue Yasushi 大井上康](/master-cho/ooinoue-yasushi) (1892--1952) — the nutritive cycle theory (栄養週期理論). He was also the man who bred the Kyoho grape (巨峰) — now Japan's most widely cultivated grape variety, and a visible proof of his theory at work. His theory was regarded as heretical by the academic establishment, and he left the agricultural academic community to work as a private researcher. During wartime the military confiscated his research grapes. The Ministry of Agriculture rejected his grape's seed registration after his death. He died in 1952 at age 60, unrecognized. Cho's account says university professors backed by the fertilizer industry had him jailed and he died in prison — Japanese sources confirm the academic marginalization and institutional hostility but do not document actual imprisonment. When Cho arrived in Japan specifically to study under him (1965), the teacher had been dead for 13 years. Cho went to his study and read every book he had left behind — especially Shin Saibai Gijutsu no Riron Taikei (新栽培技術の理論体系, Theoretical System of New Cultivation Technology), which he read "more than a dozen times." [Full research file with bibliography, URLs, and Japanese sources: see linked file.]

By 2018, Cho described his full hierarchy of teachers:

"The greatest teacher is God. Over 95% of natural farming knowledge comes from the Bible. The second teacher is [the nutritive cycle pioneer — Ooi Inoue]. The third is [Yamagishi]. The fourth is [Shibata], who first came up with the concept of enzyme."

What Cho did was bring all these teachings together into one integrated system — and apply them exclusively with natural solutions, where his predecessors had sometimes still reached for chemicals.

Source: 2018 Cho Advanced Hawaii IMG_3940

The Enemy of the State

In 1967, Cho founded the Research Society for Abundant Harvest with Natural Force.

His crime: he accepted environmental genetics — the theory that environment shapes what gets passed down through generations. In Cold War Korea, this was the Soviet/communist-bloc position, the Lysenko theory, as opposed to Western Mendelian genetics. Supporting it was enough to be named a communist.

Who named him? A professor in the agricultural department — also a director at a national research institute. Behind that professor: the fertilizer and pesticide companies. Natural farming doesn't use chemicals. That was the actual motive.

"When he accepted the theory of environmental genetics, where the environment plays a role and is passed down over the generations, he was accused of being a communist and was taken away and beaten and tortured."

Source: 2018 Cho Advanced Hawaii IMG_3940

Near Death — The Body Bag, The Teeth

The dictatorship-era Korean government beat him so badly that he appeared to die. His body was sent home for burial.

"His body was sent back to the family to have a funeral. And when the family was preparing his body for the funeral, in Korea, they tied the corpse. And that was when he woke up again."

They applied OHN to his body. He came back.

He had also been beaten in the front of his mouth. He lost all his front teeth. They are not his real teeth. In a January 2018 Level 2 class in Hawaii, he showed the room — pulled out his false teeth and held them up so the students could see exactly what the government had done.

Drake, who was in the room, recounted it directly:

"He showed us. He just pulled out his front teeth. They kicked the teeth out of his mouth. They were bringing him to bury him. They thought he was dead and then he started moving. They put O.H.N. on him. Then he came back to life."

Sources: 2018 Cho Advanced Hawaii IMG_3940; 2018 Level 2 Jan IMG_3589 (Drake's firsthand account)

Why You Must Organize

The experience sharpened his message rather than softening it:

"If you do this individually, you'll be destroyed. You must organize."

He had seen what happened to individuals who went alone. The professors, the companies, the government — they could crush one person. They could not crush a movement with roots in every region.

By the time he was teaching in 2017–2018, he was 82–84 years old and explicit about urgency:

"I feel very confident that if I can live another 10 years, I'm going to establish this completely."

And worried about succession:

"There is no systematic followers or real leaders to continue or real disciples to continue his huge, huge natural farming concept. It's a great concept, but he has not had an organized system to follow."

Sources: 2017 Nutrient Cycle 1; 2017 Advanced Cho Poultry 7

Prevention, Not Cure — The Core Shift

The conviction he arrived at as a young county veterinarian — prevent the disease instead of treating it — became the philosophical spine of everything in KNF. Every solution, every input, every technique in the system is oriented around building conditions where disease doesn't arise, rather than responding after it does.

He described his early realization: "What I realized is that not fix their disease — prevent the disease. So he quit." Then he spent the next decades figuring out what prevention actually required.

His method of learning was unconventional even within natural farming. He carried a sleeping mat into the mountains, stayed there watching water flow, plants grow, insects move. He ate earthworms. He ate freshwater crabs. He tasted the soil of every country he visited. The taste told him what the land needed.

"So he's like the one person who has drunk the largest amounts of earthworm poop and bacteria poop. He knows how nature tastes like."

Source: 2018 Cho Advanced Hawaii IMG_3940

Taking It to the World

Cho traveled to Mongolia in 2001 to help settle nomadic herdspeople and work in the conditions of the Gobi Desert. Then China — where the government came to him asking for help with 1,100 hectares (22,000 acres). Then the Philippines, Africa, Tanzania, Russia, Taiwan, and Hawaiʻi.

Russia: the university professors had him ejected. They felt threatened by what he was teaching, same as in Korea decades earlier.

America: the professors were more generous than he expected.

Taiwan: working with indigenous farmers who, like Hawaiians, were adjusting from self-sufficiency to dependence on long supply chains. He helped them build systems — growing their own sugar for FPJ, growing herbs for OHN, making alcohol — to become domestically productive again.

Hawaiʻi: Dr. Park — a missionary who first encountered the no-smell piggery in the Philippines and traced it back to Cho — brought him to the islands. Drake's first visit to Korea was October 2009. Since then Cho came to Hawaii over a dozen times, and Hawaii County and Gokseong County established a sister city relationship.

Source: 2018 Cho Advanced Hawaii IMG_3940; 2018 Level 2 Jan IMG_3589; Drake (firsthand)

Through Dr. Park's Eyes — How Cho Came to America

In 2021, Drake interviewed Dr. Hoon Park — the pediatrician who first brought Cho to Hawaiʻi. Dr. Park's account adds texture that no transcript of Cho himself contains.

The First Encounter — Gokseong, February 2005

Dr. Park arrived at Gokseong after encountering no-smell pig farms on two successive Christian mission trips — first two pigs in the Philippines, then fifteen in Thailand. Both times someone handed him a Korean book: Natural Farming by Cho Han-kyu. He found the website, saw that Cho ran monthly seminars at a closed rural elementary school, and went.

The classroom held 80 people. One hundred twenty showed up. It was February — cold in Korea, nothing to farm. Cho began at 7:30 in the morning and lectured until 11 at night. Two meals a day. Everyone slept on the floor with blankets.

When Cho told the overflow crowd to come back next month, not one person left. They had traveled from across Asia to be there — one woman from Hawaiʻi who said she had planned this trip for five years. Cho removed all the tables and chairs, put them in the corridor, and taught everyone sitting on the floor.

Dr. Park was the only person given permission to videotape.

"After one week, I realized that this is the best way God created farming the food."

Bringing Cho to America

At the end of that week, Dr. Park asked Cho: "You've been to 23 countries — which part of America have you visited?"

Cho said he had never been to America.

Dr. Park: "What? How can you say you've been all over the world without America?"

Cho: "If you invite me, I'll come."

That was it. Dr. Park came back to Hawaiʻi, found Mike DuPont and a handful of farmers, organized a first seminar, and brought Cho over. Dr. Park translated — despite not knowing agricultural terminology — and did his best with gestures.

The Africa Maggot Story — Cho's Wisdom and Humility

Dr. Park told Drake a story Cho had asked him to keep private, but which captures his character:

In Africa, a farmer came to Cho's seminar and said he had seven chickens that laid only five eggs a day. "If I can get seven eggs every day, I can be rich."

Cho asked him to bring the chickens. They were malnourished. Cho told the farmer to collect food scraps from the hotel's rubbish and leave them for three days — in Korea, maggots take three days to develop.

But Africa is hot. In one day, the maggots were everywhere. In three days, they were gone.

Cho: "Oh, I'm sorry. I miscalculated. Come back in a day and a half."

The farmer came back. Maggots. Seven chickens ate them. Seven eggs every day.

"He came back from Master Cho. 'I'm going to tell you something. What? Don't tell anybody.' That's the true story he started telling me. That's kind of the wisdom he has. Although he only graduated high school, he's wiser than anybody else with a PhD."

The Scale of Cho's Impact Through Dr. Park

Drake told Dr. Park in that 2021 interview that CJ (an observer) had estimated Cho had trained approximately 20,000 people in Hawaiʻi through Dr. Park's facilitation. Dr. Park was quietly overwhelmed:

"I didn't expect this much. Many people were involved and wanted to continue. That's excellent. Very happy to hear that."

Source: 2021 Dr Park interview, P1010061–P1010063 (Drake's 2021 documentary interview)

The 2008 Beijing Olympics

The Chinese government awarded Cho for his role in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The Chinese army moved pigs into the city during the Games — standard practice — but officials feared public revolt from the smell. They came to Cho. He taught the top general his no-smell pig technique. The Olympics went off without a hitch.

A practitioner in the Philippines, speaking in 2019, recounted it directly:

"He introduced me to Han Qiu Cho, who received an award from the Chinese government for bringing the no-smell pig technology to the army during the Beijing Olympics. The army came into the city, and they were afraid of the people revolting because of the stench of the pigs in the city. So they found out about Han Qiu Cho and his current methods and implemented that, and they had the Beijing Olympics with no revolt."

Sources: Drake (firsthand); 2019 Philippines pi ganda session, 20190213_093155.wav.json (independent corroboration)

Young Song — Growing Up in Cho's Shadow

Young Song Cho — the son who eventually founded JADAM — gave his own account at a 2017 seminar in Pepeekeo. He showed a baby photo of himself as he described his father's legacy.

He was direct: "He didn't get into this organic farming because of the father. But actually because his father was into this organic thing, his family had to go through such a difficult period."

Young Song was not interested in organic farming as a child. The family suffered for Cho's convictions. He came around only later — through his own reading of the Bible and, at university, the writings of Karl Marx. He developed JADAM as his own independent path to a similar mission.

Source: 2017 Jadam in Pepeekeo, jadam1.wav.json

The Family Fracture (2008–2010)

Between 2008 and 2010, Cho broke from his son Young Song Cho. The fracture ran along a values line: Young Song wanted to help poor people; his sister Joo Young wanted to make money and serve the wealthy. Cho sided with Young Song's values in spirit — but somewhere in the conflict, the relationship with Young Song itself broke apart too.

Source: Drake (firsthand)

Betrayed by His Daughter

Cho built a natural farming operation and educational center on a farm with a remarkable origin: the vice president of Hyundai Heavy Industry had pushed land into the ocean and reclaimed it, creating a large rice paddy somewhere on the Korean coast. That land became his base for demonstration and teaching.

Then a typhoon came and knocked the rice down. His daughter Joo Young told him she would fix it.

In the middle of the night, she disappeared and moved to France — taking the farm. She had sold it without him.

Dr. Park described the aftermath in his 2021 interview: "Chuyong took everything away so he could not continue seminar. That's sad but that's a true story, a family story."

The shock sent Cho into what Drake describes as a heart attack (though a stroke is confirmed). He went dark. Drake and the broader KNF community lost contact with him for several years.

Sources: Drake (firsthand); 2021 Dr Park interview P1010063 (Joo Young/Chuyong reference)

The Reunion (2015)

Drake and Dr. Park became instrumental in healing the break. In late 2015 — most likely October — they were touring Korea with Cho in a bus to Daejeon County. They brought Cho to see Young Song giving a lecture. It was the first time he had seen his son in nearly a decade.

Tears streamed down his face.

Shortly after, they brought both Cho and Young Song to the Big Island of Hawaii to do a workshop together. The family — including grandson Robbie Cho and granddaughter Sun Young Cho — came back together.

Source: Drake (firsthand)

The Farming History

Across his decades of teaching, specific farming observations and techniques emerge:

Poultry — His chicken system emphasized the first three days of a chick's life as equivalent to the first seven human years. Physical fitness in that window determined the bird's entire trajectory. He ran 3,000 chickens on his own farm. His egg-laying operation at Gokseong used 120 birds per pen across 10–12 pens.

Swine — He developed fermented banana stalk as pig feed (up to 50% of total feed). He observed protein toxicity in conventional pig operations and built prevention of it into his feeding protocols. His pig farms had no smell — the detail that first caught Dr. Park's attention in the Philippines.

Fruit trees — He taught the changeover treatment as a method for shifting a mature tree from vegetative to reproductive mode. He demonstrated three harvests from one 30-year-old mango tree by treating different sides at intervals.

Crops — Over-nitrogenization of tangerine orchards from too much fish amino acid; he used this as a teaching example of the cost of greed in application. He worked on rice farming extensively — the nutritive cycle table was developed in the context of rice.

Soil observation — He could taste soil and diagnose it. He would arrive at a farm, pick up soil, taste it, and tell the farmer what it needed. Sweet, sour, repulsive — each told him something different.

Sources: 2017 Advanced Cho Poultry sessions; 2017 Advanced Cho Swine sessions; 2018 Cho Advanced Hawaii; 2016 Cho Hawaii

The Legacy He's Handing Down

Hawaii as the Center

Cho had a specific vision for how his knowledge would spread — and Hawaii was central to it. In 2017, speaking to the international group gathered in Korea, he said it plainly:

"I wanted to continue this teaching in Hawaii — as a center for the whole United States. Taiwan, the center for the pan-pacific area, the natural farming. So we're going to spread this information all over the United States and all over Asia."

Hawaii wasn't just one stop on his tour. It was the designated hub for North America.

Source: 2017 Advanced Cho Poultry 2

Drake Named as the Node

At the close of the 2017 poultry seminar in Gokseong, Cho and Himeno Yuko (secretary of the Japanese National Farming Association) made a specific request — on record, in the room:

"From now on, we send all this information, different countries, to you so that Drake can collect all this information and upload to the YouTube or Facebook or something like that. Every way possible."

The international participants — Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Korea — were being asked to route their documentation through Drake. He was being designated as the information hub for the global movement.

Source: 2017 Advanced Cho Poultry day 9, IMG_0804

Cho's Direct Endorsement

In 2018, touring Drake's farm at Hawaiian Sanctuary, Cho's translator spoke for him directly:

"Drake's got a big ambition, so we can support him now."

And to the assembled Hawaii students:

"You guys will be the leaders in helping promote school self-sufficiency in Hawaii."

These weren't general encouragements. They were delivered to a specific group at a specific farm that Drake had built.

Sources: 2018 Cho Advanced Hawaii tour-he; 2018 Cho Advanced Hawaii IMG_3921

The Kuleana Passed

At the end of the 2017 poultry seminar, Cho told the international group — Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia, Hawaii — directly:

"I know you're tired, but I'm tired too. But I feel like my time is not very long left. So I'm gonna share, I'm gonna give it to you."

His concern was not recognition. It was continuity. Not his legacy — the system's survival. He had built something complex, deeply observed over sixty years. The question was whether the next generation could hold its integrity.

"We are fortunate for our grandparents. We are moving forward. Now that we know where we come from, we are responsible for every generation that comes after us."

"There is no systematic followers or real leaders to continue or real disciples to continue his huge, huge natural farming concept. It's a great concept, but he has not had organized system to follow."

That last line — spoken by someone in the room watching him — captures the tension he lived with. The knowledge was vast. The system for transmitting it was not yet built.

Sources: 2017 Advanced Cho Poultry 5 (IMG_0311); 2017 Nutrient Cycle 1; 2017 Advanced Cho Poultry 7

His Death — and the Final Chapter

Master Cho Han-Kyu died in January 2025 at the age of 93.

The last years of his life, from roughly 2019 onward, were not peaceful. Dr. Park reported that Cho's family — centered around his son Young Song — effectively held him in an old people's home against his will. Before that confinement, they had brought him to America, trading on the fame that had been built around him largely through the work of the Hawaii community. He would be put on stage for an hour or two — weak, frail, at the end of his life — and as soon as he finished speaking, Young Song would stand up and tell the audience: he doesn't know what he's talking about, do it my way.

Young Song had developed his own simplified approach to natural farming — stripped down, accessible to very poor communities with no resources, which has genuine value in those contexts. But he promoted it as a superior technology, a replacement for his father's system rather than a subset of it. To those who had studied with Cho directly, watching this play out was painful.

The man who had been beaten nearly to death for his ideas, who had lost his teeth to a dictatorship government, who had built a 60-year body of knowledge from mountain observation and earthworm tasting and 60-plus trips to Japan — he ended his life sidelined by his own family, his legacy being actively undermined by the son he had wept to be reunited with.

He was 93. He had seen the world change. He had done what he could.

Source: Drake (firsthand), Dr. Park's account

Primary Sources for This Biography

Written by Cho Han-kyu

1. "Cho Han-kyu's Natural Farming" — Janong Natural Farming Institute (© 2004) The foundational published biography. Covers his early life, Korean War years, education, Japan visits 1965+, three mentors (Yamagishi, Shibada, Oino), and farming philosophy. Timeline runs through ~2002. In English. Held in the Pure KNF Foundation curriculum library.

2. "Natural Farming" — Cho Global Natural Farming / CGNF (written 2008, published ~2010) Co-written with Cho Ju-Young (his daughter Joo Young). Signed "2008, Cho Han-kyu" at the end of the prologue. Contains his extended biography through 2008 including his full philosophical and religious background. Primarily a farming methods textbook, but the prologue is biographical. In English. Also held in the Pure KNF Foundation curriculum library.

Transcripts (oral record)

152 sessions where Master Cho was physically present, identified by live translation patterns and Korean/Japanese speech density. Spans 2009–2019. Sessions include: 2017 Advanced Cho series (nutrient cycle, poultry, swine, advanced fruit), 2018 Advanced Hawaii, 2016–2017 Cho Papaikou, 2015–2016 Korea Tours, 2015 KNF Symposium, 2018 SARM Korea, and Cho DVD rips. All held in the Pure KNF Foundation audio archive.

Firsthand accounts

Drake Weinert — attended multiple Korea tours from 2009, was present at key seminars including the 2017 Gokseong advanced poultry seminar and 2018 Hawaii Level 2 class, directly witnessed Cho pull out his false teeth. Instrumental with Dr. Park in the father-son reunion.
Dr. Hoon Park — 2021 interview (9 recordings), covering his February 2005 first encounter with Cho, how he brought Cho to America, and eyewitness account of the family betrayal and aftermath.

Unverified / flagged for future research

2008 Beijing Olympics / Chinese civilian award — Drake firsthand + independent corroboration from a Philippines practitioner (2019 pi ganda session). Not found in written/published sources. The exact nature of the award ("highest civilian honor") and the general's identity remain unverified.

Chronological Timeline

1935

Born in Suwon, Korea to a strict Confucian family

Janong (2004)
~1949 (age 14)

Korean War interrupts middle school; joins 4H Club

Janong (2004); 2017 Nutrient Cycle IMG_2876
~1950

Korean War — serves as special agent (not regular soldier), infiltrating enemy lines

2017 Poultry 4
~1961 (age 26)

Governor personally invites him to take the exam despite only elementary education; scores top 1-in-90; enters Suwon Agricultural High School training program

Janong (2004); 2017 Nutrient Cycle IMG_2876
1962

Graduates top of class; awarded veterinarian and artificial insemination certifications

Janong (2004); 2017 Nutrient Cycle 2; 2017 Poultry IMG_5014
early 1960s

Becomes county officer to help poor farmers; realizes prevention over cure; quits to research; opens Hwanam cooperative farm

Janong (2004); 2017 Nutrient Cycle IMG_2876
1965

First trip to Japan (before formal Korea–Japan relations); learns Japanese himself; eventually 60+ visits

2017 Nutrient Cycle 2; IMG_2876
Oct 1965

Visits Shibata Kinshi's farmhouse in Kamakura; Shibata's widow shows him the cedar barrels of enzyme liquid

2018 Advanced Hawaii IMG_3940
1965–70s

Teaches at a rural Japanese university; studies under (and in the wake of) Yamagishi Miyozo, Shibata Kinshi, and Ooinoue Yasushi

2017 Nutrient Cycle 1, IMG_2876
1967

Founds the Research Society for Abundant Harvest with Natural Force

2017 Nutrient Cycle 1
1960s–70s

Accused of communism by a professor-informant backed by fertilizer companies; beaten nearly to death by the dictatorship-era Korean government

2018 Advanced Hawaii IMG_3940
1960s–70s

Body sent home for burial; wakes when being tied for the funeral; loses all front teeth; revived with OHN

2018 IMG_3940; 2018 Level 2 Jan IMG_3589
~1980 (age 45)

Receives Christian faith

2018 Advanced Hawaii IMG_3940
1990s–2000s

Monthly weekend seminars at a closed rural elementary school in Gokseong — 80-seat classroom, 120+ attendees from across Asia, lecturing 7:30am to 11pm, two meals a day, sleeping on the floor

Dr. Park account; Drake (firsthand)
2001

Teaching mission to Mongolia and the Gobi Desert

2017 Nutrient Cycle 1
2001+

Global reach: China (1,100 ha), Philippines, Africa/Tanzania, Russia, Taiwan, Hawaiʻi

2018 IMG_3940; Poultry sessions
~2007

Mike DuPont introduces Drake Weinert to natural farming; Drake and his father travel to Korea with DuPont and meet Master Cho

Drake (firsthand)
2008

Beijing Olympics — teaches a Chinese army general his no-smell pig technique; later awarded China's highest civilian honor

Drake (firsthand)
2008–10

Breaks from his son Young Song Cho over a values conflict

Drake (firsthand)
Oct 2009

Drake's first visit to Korea to study with Cho

Drake (firsthand)
~2009

First Hawaiʻi seminar — Dr. Park and Mike DuPont bring Cho to the Big Island; Dr. Park translates

Drake (firsthand)
~2012

Daughter Joo Young sells the Hyundai-reclaimed farm and moves to France; Cho suffers a heart attack, then a stroke; goes dark

Drake (firsthand)
2015

KNF Symposium

Foundation archive
2015–16

Korea Tours

Foundation archive
~2015

Drake and Dr. Park bring Cho to Daejeon to see Young Song lecture — first meeting in ~10 years; tears

Drake (firsthand)
Late 2015

Cho and Young Song reunited at a Big Island workshop; grandson Robbie Cho and granddaughter Sun Young Cho also present

Drake (firsthand)
2016

Hawaiʻi seminars at Papaikou, Big Island

2016 Cho Hawaii; 2016 Cho Papaikou
2017 (age ~82)

Gokseong, Korea — Advanced Cho seminar series: Nutrient Cycle, Advanced Poultry (9 days), Swine, and Advanced Fruit Tree; international cohort from Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia, and Hawaiʻi; passes kuleana to international students

2017 Advanced Cho series; Poultry 5
Jan 2018 (age 84)

Hawaiʻi Level 2 seminar — pulls out his false teeth to show students what the government did

2018 Level 2 Jan IMG_3589
2018

Advanced Hawaiʻi seminar series at Papaikou — his last major Hawaiʻi teaching

2018 Cho Advanced Hawaii series
2018

Drake attacked by the CGNF faction — banned on Facebook, smeared; attackers include Sona (Young Song's wife), Chris Trump, and Kate McMaster; Kuike calls to check on him

Drake (firsthand)
2019

Final documented teaching sessions in the Pure KNF Foundation audio archive

Foundation archive
January 2025

Master Cho Han-Kyu passes away

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All content sourced from transcripts of sessions where Master Cho was physically present. Translated quotes are paraphrased through the translator's voice — verify against original recordings before publication.