A Bittersweet Farewell : Families: A matriarch’s death ends her dream of a reunion with a long-lost son. But for her relatives, his rediscovery provides some solace.

In my dreams, my dearest mother, I miss you. During my waking hours, during my sleeping hours I miss you. . . . To learn that you are still alive brings me joy, to know that you are coming to see me is a dream come true . . . .

--Kang Dae-Yong, in a letter to his mother.

Kang Dae-Yong’s dream--to see his mother one last time--has come to an end, about two months after he learned she was still alive and 41 years after the Korean war separated them.

Kang Dae-Yong, 60, had hoped to reunite with his 80-year-old mother, Haeng-Ok Kang, this summer in North Korea, shortly after they found each other through an exchange program for Korean families separated by the war.

Before she could make the trip, however, Mrs. Kang suffered a stroke and went into a coma. She died Aug. 1.

Initially, her family--four generations of whom now live in Los Angeles, negotiated with the North Korean government to bring Kang Dae-Yong here to visit his mother in the hospital.

The North Koreans finally agreed to let Kang Dae-Yong come, with an escort, but they canceled the trip once they learned that his mother had died.

The family then tried to get the North Koreans to let him come for his mother’s memorial service or, at least, to say goodby to her before she was buried.

Final rejection of their request came Tuesday, the day before her service. Burial is scheduled for Saturday.

State Department officials say the Kang family’s story is like that of thousands of other families split during the Korean War. Haeng-Ok Kang, who emigrated with her five other children in the mid-1970s, spent four decades searching for her eldest son through queries to officials, veterans’ groups and refugee camps.

Kang Dae-Yong was 19 in 1950 when he left his family home to return to school in Seoul. He disappeared. Forty-one years later, he learned his mother was living in Los Angeles. He wrote her that he had been drafted into the North Korean army. He now lives in North Korea with his wife and family.

A State Department spokesman said that although visitors are allowed into the communist country, only diplomats and members of North Korea’s Observer Mission to the United Nations are granted visas to come to the United States.

Nonetheless, Haeng-Ok Kang’s second oldest son, Dae-Yang Kang, said, “Ever since my mother went into a coma, I really believed my brother was going to make it here.” Dae-Yang Kang, 57, who owns an Inglewood service station, says he and other family members are considering a trip to North Korea.

“This has been a bittersweet ordeal for my family,” he says. For the next seven weeks, he will sleep next to a shrine for his mother he has set up in his house--a Korean tradition symbolizing grief and repentance.

“We are saddened by my mother’s death, but at least now we can console each other by knowing my brother is alive and well,” he says.

Relatives and friends paid their last respects Wednesday night, at a service at the Korean Funeral Home in Los Angeles.

At the front of the incense-filled room, 10 grandchildren led a procession, carrying the casket, a huge red banner with their grandmother’s name in glitter, large portraits of her and a tray of fruit and rice wine that symbolically invited her spirit to the farewell service.

The tributes included the reading of a letter from Kang Dae-Yong that arrived after his mother lapsed into the coma.

“Now that you have learned of my well-being after such long periods of heartaches and worries,” he wrote, “I dearly wish that the flower of laughter blossoms and blossoms on your face and sets your heart at ease.”

Friends and family recounted her struggle to keep her family together after her husband was killed during the Korean War. Widowed at 39, she supported her children by working in the fields. At night, hunched over a sewing machine, she stitched clothes for village children to supplement her income.

In a tape recording played at Wednesday night’s service, Kang’s grandmother said: “You will only be treated well if you treat others well.”

Two years ago, Haeng-Ok Kang gathered a group of family women to help hand-stitch her burial garments, made of delicate white handmade silk and lined with hand-woven hemp cloth. She had asked her sister in South Korea to bring the fabric during a visit.

For several days the women diligently stitched a long robe, trousers and a floor-length skirt, resembling garments worn by a goddess in Korean mythology.

They also sewed two thick blankets, a pair of oversized, pointed-toed socks called buh-sun , scarfs to wrap her hands, neck and chin and a mask to cover her face--to protect her in her journey to juh-seung , the next world.

Wednesday night, Haeng-Ok Kang was dressed in those garments.

At her side was a small silk pouch. Inside were her reading glasses and the first letter she received from her long-lost son.