Family Reunited After 47 Years

For weeks, Helie Lee, a 33-year-old author, had been waiting by the phone in her West Hollywood apartment, waiting for the chance to tell a Korean tale in splashy American fashion.

Finally, the call came: A lost branch of Lee’s family--nine members in all--had made a dangerous trek out of North Korea and were safe in South Korea. Lee and her parents jetted off to Seoul, the promised land, where an official South Korean government-sponsored family reunion was held Tuesday on the grounds of an ancient palace.

The months-long exodus of the Lee family members, which involved crossing the Yalu River that borders China and then moving through Korean-controlled safe houses into South Korea through a third country, was one of a handful of successful escapes from North Korea that occur each year. There were deals to cut with shady intermediaries, guides to hire and armed officers to bribe.

What made this journey different was the family’s decision to bring along a South Korean television crew to record portions of the trip, including a secret rendezvous with defecting family members.

It was “the leverage we might need” if the South Korean government balked at admitting her fleeing relatives once they had passed through China and through another Asian country that they declined to identify for fear of endangering those who had helped them, Lee said.

In some ways, the escape was necessitated by Lee’s 1996 book “Still Life With Rice,” a detailed account of the life of Hong Yong Back, her 86-year-old grandmother. The woman had led to freedom all but one of her children, Lee Yong Un, her eldest son and Lee’s uncle, who was given up for dead.

In 1991, Lee’s uncle, Lee Yong Un, was located in the north. In her book, Lee included a letter from his daughter, Lee Ae Ran, committing what she realized after publication was a cardinal sin: naming the relatives left behind.

Earlier this year, she began plotting ways of helping her uncle and his extended family to escape.

She decided that their journey would become her next book, and set forth to promote it. Her article about her uncle, “In Absence of Son,” is the cover story of this month’s English-language KoreAm Journal. South Korean television is scheduled to air the documentary of the escape. At least one American TV news magazine wants a piece of the story. Helie Lee hopes to crown the saga with a talk-show appearance.

“Oprah,” said Lee, a UCLA graduate who was born in South Korea but grew up in Los Angeles. “She has the biggest impact. She’s like my idol. She would really bring attention to the problems in North Korea.”

A tiny but increasing number of desperate North Koreans--70 last year--have been bolting their impoverished homeland through the minefields at the border with South Korea, fleeing by boat or crossing the Chinese border.

On Tuesday, the reunion between the North Korean and Los Angeles branches of the Lee family took place in a media blitz on a patch of lawn in front of one of the dark crimson, traditional wooden buildings of the Toksu Palace complex in downtown Seoul.

Lee Yong Un’s eyes were wet with tears. Ae Ran, his daughter who was holding her baby son, Koh Chol Hyok, was smiling.

Then the four family members from Los Angeles emerged: Helie, her father, Jay Hak, 62, mother Lily Fa and grandmother Hong Yong Back.

“God, I thank thee!” shouted Back, who said she had been praying for this moment for decades.

Then the two groups rushed toward each other, hugging and wailing.

The planning had begun early this year through a network of intermediaries. In April, Helie, her father and grandmother flew to Yanbian, China, near the North Korean border, with the goal of simply glimpsing the lost relatives. Helie and her father made the 10-hour ride to the heavily guarded Yalu River. But all either group could do was wave to each other.

“I yelled out, ‘Grandmother has never forgotten you!’ ” Lee said.

They left emboldened, vowing to return with an escape plan.

Helie’s father, a retired electrical engineer, said it took five visits to China and nearly $80,000 before all the arrangements were made.

On one visit after the relatives had crossed the North Korean-Chinese border, Helie showed her uncle an old crumpled photo to make sure of his identity.

“He looked at the picture and said, ‘You think I can’t recognize my own handsome father?’ ” Helie recalled, smiling. “That’s when I knew he was really my uncle.”

The refugees had divided into two groups when they crossed the river to better avoid detection.

“There were [North Korean] guards, but we were guided by a [ethnic Korean] Chinese,” said Ae Ran, Helie Lee’s cousin. “We were caught by the border guards, but I told them I needed to cross the border to be paid by the Chinese Korean, and that my father was there to help me get the money. The guards believed the story and let us leave.”

Lee Yong Un, a steelworker, had given up hope of finding his family.

“After the [1950-53 Korean] War, I was left alone in North Korea,” he said. “All my family was heading south. At the Daedong River [in Pyongyang] the bridge was destroyed. I was 16. I somehow ended up on the boat alone, with my family still on shore. I went back to Pyongyang in search of my family. No one was there. Since then I was alone for 47 years.”

Lee Yong Un’s whereabouts remained a mystery to the family that eventually found its way in 1968 to the United States, where they became citizens in 1975. After repeated attempts to locate him, he was given up for dead. His name was never mentioned.

Helie Lee said she wasn’t even aware her uncle existed until she began asking questions for her book about her grandmother.

Lee Yong Un’s pain was so great that he never told his family about his American relatives.

“My father had never told us before 1989 that he had brothers.” Ae Ran said. “We received a letter from my [American] uncle in 1991. After that, we received letters and money from him. Because we were a family whose members had gone south, we were discriminated against. But we could not dream of leaving North Korea.”

Mitchell reported from Los Angeles and Holley from Seoul. Researcher Chi Jung Nam also contributed to this story.