Standoff Heightens Korean Americans’ Fears for Homeland

A standoff between the United States and North Korea over Pyongyang’s nuclear program has rekindled long-smoldering fears and worries among Koreans here--especially those with roots in North Korea--about their relatives and the possibility of a war in their homeland.

Many with families in North Korea have not seen or communicated with their relatives for nearly half a century and do not know whether they are still alive.

“These are truly trying times for separated families like me,” said Kee Deok Kim, 74, who last saw his mother, three brothers and their children nearly 44 years ago. “My only wish is to see my family before I die,” he said.

Almost half of the 400,000 people of Korean ancestry in Southern California trace their origins to what is now North Korea, a hard-line Stalinist state with which the United States has no diplomatic relations.

For Koreans from South Korea, home is a nine-hour plane ride from Los Angeles, and contact with family a phone call away. But for Koreans from the north, their native land might as well be on the moon. For nearly five decades, they have not been able to write or phone their relatives in North Korea.

“My body is here but my heart is still in Pyongyang--a place I can’t even go for a brief visit,” said Bong Keon Kim, 66, president of the Los Angeles-based U.S. Federation of Korean Americans From Northern Korea.

Though separated by 7,000 miles, Koreans in Southern California feel every tense development on the Korean peninsula as if it were happening next door. Because Koreans are generally newer immigrants, struggling with the barriers of language, culture and insulation from the mainstream, they maintain strong ties to their homeland. Their connections are bolstered by the heavy emphasis on the news from home in the local Korean news media and constant communication between relatives here and in South Korea by telephone and visits.

Like 11 million separated Korean families worldwide, Kee Deok Kim, executive secretary of the federation, bemoans the tragedy of his divided homeland, the last remaining partitioned state from the Cold War. There is little he or other Koreans can do to influence international politics. But Kim hopes his organization’s nationwide campaign to ask the United Nations to help locate separated families will finally attract the attention he believes the subject deserves.

During an interview, Kim wept as he recalled how he became separated from his relatives as they tried to escape Communist North Korea to the south in the winter of 1950, when U.N. soldiers were retreating from advancing Chinese and North Korean troops.

They had taken to the rooftop of a train because there was no room inside. After traveling a short distance, the train came to a stop. After hours of not being able to find out when it would leave again, his anxious relatives decided to walk to South Korea. Kim remained on the train with his wife because of their two small children.

“There was no way we could walk, carrying our children and belongings on our backs,” he said.

The train left the next morning and brought Kim to his destination, but he never saw his relatives again. Years later, he heard from a pastor from his hometown, who had escaped to South Korea, that his older brother was sent to a work camp because he was a Christian and that his mother followed him there.

Wiping his tears, Kim said: “I pray to God every day that there will be peaceful reunification of Korea.”

Kim said he came to the United States in 1988 from Seoul because he thought it might be easier to track down his family in North Korea from this end.

Recent months have seemed like an endless ride on an emotional roller coaster for the 1 million Koreans in the United States, be they from the south or north.

They were hopeful in mid-February when Pyongyang reached agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency on inspections to ensure that no diversion of nuclear material took place during the past year. But their hopes were dashed a month later, when North Korea reneged and prevented inspectors from completing their rounds. Then, in late March, when the Clinton Administration announced that it was sending Patriot antimissile interceptors to South Korea, and North Korea threatened to turn South Korea into a “sea of fire,” their disappointment turned to fear.

Now, after North Korea last week angrily rejected the U.N. appeal for complete inspections of its suspected nuclear weapons manufacturing sites, Koreans are once again overcome with the frustration of their homeland’s fate, which has been tied to international power politics because of its strategic location.

“We are haunted by two conflicting emotions and scenarios right now,” said K. W. Lee, retired editor of the Korea Times English Edition and a respected Korean American commentator.

“The very thought of another war is unthinkable because it will destroy everyone and everything in our homeland. But at the same time, we know from our past experience what (North Korean President) Kim Il Sung can do. That’s what haunts us--the unpredictability and ruthlessness of Kim Il Sung and the possibility that, pushed into the corner, Kim will inflict a holocaust on his own people as his last hurrah.”

Koreans are among the world’s most homogenous people, having shared a common language, history and culture for nearly 5,000 years. Korea, which became a Japanese colony in 1910, was partitioned by the United States and the former Soviet Union after World War II. What was to have been a temporary demarcation along the 38th Parallel to receive the surrender of Japanese troops in the north by the Soviets, and in the south by Americans, has lasted nearly five decades.

Since he took power with the help of Soviet leader Josef Stalin in 1948, Kim Il Sung, 81, has purged countless numbers of Koreans in order to maintain control of the isolated state. Kim started the Korean War on June 25, 1950, when his troops, armed with Soviet weapons and riding in Soviet tanks, crossed the 38th Parallel to the south.

As for South Korea, it achieved a democratic government under a civilian leader in 1993, after three decades of military rulers. Since Kim Young Sam, 66, took office last year, South Koreans have enjoyed unprecedented freedom, including freedom of the press.

Chae-Jin Lee, professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and a Korea specialist, said there is still a chance for a negotiated settlement.

He suggested that the United States let North Korea know specific incentives it will provide in return for Pyongyang’s concessions on the nuclear program. Until now, the only concession the United States has agreed to was to forgo the annual U.S.-South Korean war exercises, which is not enough, he said.

But others, including many from North Korea, who tend to be fiercely anti-Communist because of their experience under Communist rule, disagree.

“The only thing the government of Kim Il Sung understands is might,” said Bong Keon Kim of the federation.

He said the United States should dispatch not only Patriot anti-missile interceptors but also warships, and station them in the waters surrounding South Korea as a clear deterrent to possible North Korean aggression.

Although they may disagree on how to handle North Korea, there is no disagreement on the observation that U.S. foreign policy suffers from a lack of a Korean American perspective.

“Blacks, Jews and the Irish all have strong representation in what happens in South Africa, Israel and Ireland, but with Koreans there is thundering silence,” K. W. Lee said.

That, in part, is why Korea has been of “marginal concern” to the United States except when its self-interest is at stake, Lee said.

The continuing standoff between the United States and North Korea has provided the momentum to launch a local petition campaign. The federation’s 2,000 dues-paying members are gathering signatures in hundreds of Southern California churches, businesses and social and fraternal organizations to urge the U.N. panel on human rights to press North Korea to help re-establish contact between separated families. They hope to broaden the effort to other states.

Some of the Koreans in Southern California with relatives in North Korea cannot visit even when they know their whereabouts because they are at the mercy of North Korean officials, who issue visas only to a select group of people, said Meong Shik Ahn, vice president of the federation, founded in 1989.

Since the late 1980s, some Korean Americans have traveled to North Korea through Beijing. But some have returned to regret it because of the spotlight their trips put on their relatives in the north and financial pressures exerted on visiting Korean Americans by North Korean officials.

A well-to-do Korean American who visited her relatives twice said: “I feel like I have to keep giving them money or they’ll mistreat my family.”

If a way could be found to arrange visits under the aegis of the United Nations, such predicaments could be avoided.

“All we are asking of the United Nations is to help us confirm whether our loved ones are still living,” said Bong Keon Kim, who last saw his sister in 1947. “If they’re alive, we want to write to them, and visit them on holidays. If they’re dead, we want to go there, cut the grass on their grave and put flowers on it.”