Steve Kang had had a difficult year.
In the middle of South Korea’s 1998 financial crisis, his father—once a wealthy man with a chain of prosperous businesses—was relegated to a life of poverty virtually overnight.
Kang was attending the University of California, Irvine while residing in the United States. All of a sudden, he had to apply for a scholarship, get a job, and locate a place to live.
He was quickly dragged into the drug culture at the age of 19, despite being a diligent student and devout Buddhist up until that point. “During that entire summer, I do not remember being sober for more than an hour here and there,” he told the Daily Mail. We partied and got into trouble. “I was so addicted and affected by drug use that I did not even have the mental strength to go to class when the fall 1998 semester started.”
Then, during a party during his first week back at college, he used a bong that contained what he believed to be marijuana but was actually a deadly concoction of heroin, cocaine, and PCP, referred to as a “death bowl.” He claimed that “something in there messed with my brain.” I was awake for ten days in a row. After that, I didn’t sleep for a single second.
Kang didn’t sleep for ten days after smoking the death bowl.
He believes his soul went to hell after those ten days of suffering.
After a suicide attempt at the conclusion of those agonizing 10 days, he feels as though he has fallen into the depths of hell.
In his new book, 8 Hours in Hell: A Shocking Firsthand Experience of What Really Awaits in the Afterlife, he goes into great detail about what he witnessed there. “By the fifth day of my ordeal, I didn’t know what time of day it was,” he wrote. “By the sixth and seventh day, when I looked in the mirror, I saw that my pupils were so big and black, the white parts of my eyes were hardly visible.”
He sought assistance from the Buddhist monks who had been guiding him back in Korea out of fear for his life.
“We are in the middle of a silent prayer,” was their reply. We are unable to assist you.
“It was a very dark time,” he recalled, adding that he had never felt more alone. During those ten days, it was my birthday, and friends would say, “Steve, happy birthday,” to which I was unable to respond. I continued to attend classes, but I was unable to comprehend a single word that my friends and teachers were saying. “Where am I?” was a question I kept asking myself. Which class am I enrolled in? I was unable to read a single sentence when I opened the textbook.
He believes he was being attacked spiritually throughout that time, and he even says a poltergeist haunted him.
Kang (upper right) with his family; during South Korea’s financial collapse in 1998, his father fell into poverty.
“Cups were just falling from the bathroom,” said Kang, who now works as a preacher and aims to assist others in avoiding suicide attempts. We purchased a poster from the temple to hang on the wall, and it was producing a lot of metallic sounds.
Kang claimed that on the eighth day, an Asian grandfather with bushy eyebrows and a long, white beard appeared to him as what he thought was a Buddhist spirit.
He claimed to have been informed that he would spend 50,000 less years in hell if he offered his body as a sacrifice.
“At the time, it seemed like a good deal,” he remarked. “I apologized to my mother in a letter for not making her proud and expressed my hope to see her in the afterlife.”
Two days later, exhausted both psychologically and physically, he repeatedly stabbed himself in the neck and stomach with a kitchen knife.
When his scared mother discovered him in a pool of blood, she promptly dialed 911.
He experienced what he now believes to be an out-of-body experience as he drifted in and out of consciousness. But instead of ascending to paradise as he had anticipated, he began to fall. He believed that his Asian grandfather would go with him to nirvana, but he was nowhere to be seen. Kang thinks Satan has paid him a visit.
He was fighting for his own soul while the surgeons battled to save his life. “I immediately felt betrayed.” He remarked, “I knew I was dying and I felt so lonely.” It seemed like an elevator and a roller coaster when I started to go down. You’re just falling, and the tension and panic intensified. I landed and took a look around after what seemed like five minutes of falling. I was in hell.
He painted a picture of complete darkness, a desolate, fractured landscape teeming with lost people.
According to Kang, hell is a desolate, fractured place devoid of vegetation and grass.
Additionally, he claimed that he was encircled by caped demonic spirits, some of which were as tall as buildings.
“I could still see for some reason,” he remarked. “How can you see if there’s no sunlight?” people ask me. However, you are still able to see supernaturally. Sand and pebbles are all over the place. Grass, flowers, plants, food, and even a drop of water are all absent.I could see purplish-red cliffs to the left. Both the top and the bottom of the cliff had people. I was in a great deal of spiritual and emotional pain when I looked to my right. When I looked up, I saw wicked spirits, and they weren’t tiny like in cartoons. These creatures were wearing capes, were as tall as buildings, and I could tell they were in charge of this world.
And because there were caves that resembled prison cells, I knew I was going to be tortured. I thought, “I’m next.”
He claimed that the pain was the worst he had ever felt.
In the meantime, two lengthy procedures to repair his ruptured arteries and blood vessels took place over the course of eight hours. At one point, the doctors even warned his mother to prepare for the worst.
She prayed to all the gods she could think of to save her son, including Allah, Buddha, Muhammad, Confucius, Taoist gods, and Shinto gods, but she refused to let him go without a struggle. Then she recalled that her friend in California, Mrs. Kim, was a Christian. She then gave her a call.
Kang’s neck still bears a huge scar from the knife strike.
His attempt at suicide left a significant scar on his stomach, and medical professionals claimed it was a miracle he survived.
After claiming that God had visited him a second time, Kang met his wife, Goeun Kim.
“I heard a voice in my heart, a voice I have never heard before,” Kang wrote in the book, expressing his conviction that those prayers were what rescued him. He said, “No more Buddhism, no more drugs… I love you.”
“The doctor said it was a miracle that I awakened,” he told the Daily Mail, expressing his belief that he was visited by Jesus.My skin was held together by staples around my neck and stomach, and tubes were inserted and removed all over the place.
Even though he was still alive, it took him an additional ten years to recover emotionally and physically.
He gained weight and experienced frequent anxiety attacks because he was unable to exercise. He suffered from chronic sleeplessness, and even when he did manage to fall asleep, he was plagued by nightmares about damnation.
Xanax, lithium carbonate, and other antidepressants were among the twenty medications he was using to manage his anxiety.
I didn’t get a good night’s sleep for ten years. I saw demons making fun of me in my visions.
“I still vividly remember all the details,” he stated, believing that God visited him twice during this period in the shape of a vision of heaven. He was burned up and spent. The mountains, farmland, and valleys stretched out before my eyes as I stood on a hill.
“A brilliant, celestial light glowed in every direction. I could definitely hear the Father God’s voice in my own ears. No human choir could sing that brilliantly, so when I heard the celestial choir of angels adoring God, I realized they were not human.
He feels he was finally healed following the second “visitation” around Christmas 2012.
His sleeplessness eventually subsided after the medications were thrown out. He even met his current wife, Goeun Kim, while serving as a chaplain in the US Army.
He is a 46-year-old evangelical pastor who still has severe scars on his neck and stomach. He feels that God spared him from hell in order to stop others from making suicide attempts. In 2024, it ranked as the tenth most common cause of death in the United States.
Kang feels he has been healed after receiving a second “visitation” from God. His insomnia eventually stopped when the medications were thrown in the trash.
Kang and his spouse, Goeun Kim, are still residents of California.
“That can be a common objection,” he remarked, adding, “I love objections.” Of course, skeptics have said his experience was only a hallucination, the product of acute stress paired with the enormous quantity of hard-core narcotics he’d used. I enjoy engaging in meaningful conversation.They make the same case for Jesus Christ’s resurrection. They claim, “Oh, the 12 disciples hallucinated, because they wanted to see him so much.”
“Evidence is everything to me.”
“Same exact story,” he added, citing studies conducted by megachurch pastor John Burke, who has spoken with around 1,000 people who claim to have experienced a near-death experience. “The same life turnaround.” I respect everyone’s opinions and skepticism, but what they saw is what I saw and what the Bible says.
He added that he had no prior awareness of the Bible’s descriptions of heaven and hell because he was raised as a Buddhist.
“So, it can’t be a hallucination,” he thought.
Steve Kang’s book 8 Hours in Hell: A Startling Firsthand Account of What Actually Awaits in the Afterlife is released by Destiny Image.
