3 South Koreans Find Aid in L.A. for ’80 Wounds

When Sang-Chul Park was 12 in the spring of 1980, he was shot in the back during a pro-democracy protest in the city of Kwangju, South Korea.

Nearly 16 years and 10 operations later, he still suffers from partial paralysis in both legs, an open wound in the back that won’t heal and constant pain.

Now, with the help of Korean American journalist Tom Byun, Rep. Howard Berman (D-Panorama City), Asiana Airline and a host of caring people on both sides of the Pacific, Park and two other victims of the Kwangju massacre are in Los Angeles to receive medical treatment.

“If only I could see my son spared of the pain he’s been living with, even just one day,” said Park’s mother, Duk-Soon Jung, 53.

Park is among more than 3,000 people who, according to a victims group, were killed or injured during the May 18-27, 1980, civilian uprising that opposed the martial-law rule of former South Korean strongman Chun Doo-Hwan.

“My heart ached when I examined him,” said Korean American physician John S. Han, who is donating his services. “And, I felt so angry at [South Korean] authorities who allowed him to suffer without proper medical attention,” added Han, director of the pain center at Tustin Hospital in Orange County.

Until South Korea’s political climate changed recently, the victims of one of the cruelest chapters in modern Korean history were mostly ignored.

But last year, a stunning political development resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of Chun and his successor, Roh Tae-Woo.

Last week, the two former presidents, who have admitted to amassing more than $1.6 billion in political kickbacks, were indicted on sedition charges in the Kwangju massacre.

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Punishing Chun and Roh won’t make Park or other victims whole. But coming to Los Angeles has given Park, and two other victims, Yu-Sung Kim, 20, and his mother, Je-Son Son, 48, new hope. After her son’s first visit to an American medical facility, Jung beamed: “The difference between medicine in Korea and America is like heaven and Earth.”

UCLA surgeon Harvinder Sandhu, who examined Park earlier this week, said he will have a battery of tests done “to see what parts of his nervous system are working and what parts are not working--to see whether there is something we can offer him to improve his current condition.”

Kim and Son, who still have bullet fragments in them, were seen by other UCLA physicians. The day that changed Park and his family’s fate was May 21, 1980--a sunny spring day--a day befitting Buddha’s birthday that year.

While his mother prepared lunch, Park slipped out of their home, around the corner from the provincial capital building.

Schools were closed because of the student protests. The seventh-grader went outside to take a look. Within minutes, soldiers began firing into the crowd, and Park lay in a pool of blood.

When his mother next saw him, the boy was in the hallway of a hospital, overflowing with the injured, his entire body wrapped in blood-soaked bandages.

The next day, in a different section of Kwangju, 4-year-old Kim and his mother were inside an upstairs room when they heard tanks rolling by.

As they approached the window, a bullet struck the boy in the right arm, then his mother in the cheek and neck.

“Nobody knows what we’ve been through except other victims,” said Son, whose cheek remains partially paralyzed.

Like most victims, they sought help everywhere.

“I had heard so much about advanced technology in the United States,” Jung said. But she had neither the money nor the connections to think of taking her son abroad.

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Then to Kwangju came medical anthropologist Juna Byun. Byun had returned home with a Ph.D. from the University of Florida.

As the anthropologist learned of the plight of the Kwangju victims, she decided to help. “I couldn’t let a talented boy like Sang-Chul just die,” she said.

So she contacted Tom Byun in Los Angeles. While working on her doctoral dissertation on Korean American victims of the Los Angeles riots, Juna Byun had met a distant relative, Tom Byun, then managing editor of the Korea Times newspaper.

He contacted Berman, the ranking Democrat on the House subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific.

Moved by Park’s plight, Berman appealed to James Laney, U.S. ambassador to Seoul, to issue a visa.

Juna Byun, who was by then on the faculty of Chonbuk National University in nearby Chonju, launched a fund-raising campaign.

Park got his visa on Jan. 16, even though the U.S. Embassy in Seoul was closed because of the budget crisis in Washington.

Using Park’s case as a precedent, Tom Byun contacted the American Embassy in Seoul directly and appealed on behalf of the other three.

A week later, they received visas.

They left for Los Angeles on the following day, “just in case anybody would try to change their mind,” Jung said.

She says the only thing that would make her feel a sense of justice would be to have the two former presidents experience what she has been through.

The two mothers suggested that the South Korean government use the illegal money amassed by Chun and Roh to enable all the victims of Kwangju to receive needed medical care.

“I have struggled with my hatred for the men because I’m a Catholic,” she said. “Whenever I saw them on TV, I used to want to beat them up. Then, I would go to my priest and confess.”