Koreans End Sympathy Hunger Strike

A group of 25 people protesting the actions of the South Korean government ended a four-day hunger strike Wednesday at a South-Central Los Angeles church.

The demonstrators, who ranged from students and businessmen to ministers and a 12-year-old girl, began their fast Sunday to coincide with a hunger strike begun a day earlier by a young South Korean woman.

The woman, a 20-year-old college student named Im Suk Yong, was denied permission to return to her country after visiting North Korea.

Her local supporters held their protest at the Good Samaritan United Presbyterian Church on Adams Boulevard. The demonstration was one of five hunger strikes held by Korean Americans in various cities.

The woman’s fast in North Korea drew attention in Los Angeles--which is home to more than 200,000 Korean immigrants--to the emotionally charged issue of the reunification of communist North Korea and its capitalist neighbor to the south.

“To Koreans, the matter of reunification is the number one concern,” said Noh Kil-nam, president of the Los Angeles-based Korea Study Council, a sponsor of the hunger strike. “It’s a very hot issue with not only Koreans in Korea, but Korean residents in Japan, the U.S. and in Europe.”

The original fast overseas began after the South Korean government issued a directive prohibiting Im from crossing the demilitarized zone that divides North and South Korea.

She had attended a banned youth festival last month in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. As a symbol of openness between the two Koreas, Im intended to return home by walking through Panmunjom, the village separating the north and south, but she was stopped by security forces.

The South Korean government, claiming that she had violated its national security laws by the visiting the north, would not allow her to pass through the zone.

In protest, Im last week launched a fast and her cause was soon taken up by Koreans in various countries.

The young woman, however, called off her fast Wednesday, stating that she had “won a great victory” and that she would continue to struggle for reunification and her return to the south.

“Support for reunification is widespread,” said Yuk Dae Sung, a Los Angeles student who took part in the hunger strike here. Yuk told a press conference that he met Im at the North Korean youth festival last month, and he held up photographs showing Im surrounded by a large group of students.

Yuk said Koreans do not dispute that reunification is their primary issue. “How to achieve it is the important matter,” he added.

A local Korean minister agreed that the reunification issue is of prime importance to his community, but disputed the methods of Im and other student protesters.

“Nobody knows what is reality, or what is propaganda, when governments talk,” said Mark Song Matsumura.

“Almost 99% of Korean immigrants feel Im Suk Yong is wrong,” he said. “Korean Americans say she is part of a farfetched student outcry for immediate reunification. They think she has been pushed into it.”