Mixed Emotions in U.S. Over Summit

For most of his adult life, Garden Grove resident Kyung Kim has felt a schism in his heart because of the history of his homeland.

Kim, now 62 and retired, left North Korea and much of his extended family when he was a boy, first moving to South Korea, then immigrating to the United States in 1970. Since then, politics and geography have separated him from his family and his heritage.

The historic summit this week between South Korea’s Kim Dae Jung and North’s Korea’s Kim Jong Il has raised hope for him and other Koreans in Orange County and across Southern California that they might someday revisit their birthplace.

“It is very, very shocking after all this time to see that the Communist side and the Democratic side might reunify, to see the two leaders together,” Kim said Thursday as he unfolded a Korean-language newspaper in a Garden Grove game parlor. “It gives me hope, a chance to consider going back to my home. I can’t believe it.”

Since the two leaders agreed to meet, Korean churches across Southern California, which has the largest population of people of Korean ancestry outside of Asia, have held countless prayer meetings, attended by tens of thousands.

After half a century of enmity between the two governments--including a fratricidal war and years of talk about reunification but little action--many Korean Americans understandably are skeptical.

“Can 50 years of indoctrination change in one day just because the two leaders shook hands and people saw it on television?” asked Kee-Whan Ha, president of the Korean American Federation of Los Angeles.

Ha said he believes that much of what happened this week at the meeting in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang--including hundreds of thousands of people lining the streets to greet Kim Dae Jung--was for show.

“They put on their best clothes and showed up because they were ordered to,” he said.

Regardless, the meeting of the two leaders in itself is an epochal achievement, said Jimmy Choi, chairman of the Los Angeles-based Korean Resource Center.

Choi, a Quaker who has visited North Korea three times since 1981--most recently last year--said he has never been more optimistic about the future of the Korean peninsula than now.

“I am very excited,” he said. “I know that many Koreans are suspicious--they’re wondering whether Kim Jong Il is putting on an act--but I simply want to trust this time. After all, this is the first time the [two countries’] leaders at the highest level have met.”

The fact that the two sides are talking is encouraging, others said.

“We are one race, we speak one language, we share one culture. If it just becomes so everybody can visit, that is much better than not being able to visit, like it has been,” said Nam Kyong Park, director of the Orange County Community Service Center in Garden Grove.

Said Jay Park, a Garden Grove lawyer: “If nothing is achieved, the fact that the two leaders got together and opened the door, that alone is a great achievement. We don’t want to get too greedy with our hope. But I’m sure everybody would like to visit their birthplace before the first generation passes away because of their age.”

During their talks, the two leaders promised to allow exchanges of separated relatives around Aug. 15, the 55th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japan.

An estimated 11 million Koreans were separated by the partitioning, imposed after Japan’s surrender in World War II. What was to have been liberation for Korea turned into a divided country, the north under the influence of the Soviet Union and the south under the United States’ wing.

Koreans like J.W. Park, a retired Garden Grove doctor, say they cannot help but hope that they see their hometowns and relatives again.

“I would like to see my old town again,” said Park, 62, who was 10 when he left North Korea with some of his family. “Maybe it has changed a lot. It probably has. . . . But I would like to see it. It’s my town.”