It feels like life is coming full circle — or should I say, spiral — as I am very grateful to launch the next phase of Letters to My Hometown. If you’ve followed my journey since the inception of this substack journey, you’ll know that the first phase started in 2023 with my schlepping camera equipment across the country to interview 26 elders in six states on my own with the sponsorship of the American Friends Service Committee. I was much more fortunate to have the technical expertise of the KoreanAmericanStory.org team, getting to facilitate eight (out of nine) intergenerational conversations between Korean American families in Southern California and the East Coast about their elders’ North Korean hometowns. I will forever be grateful for the camaraderie that we shared, especially through the workshops that wonderful folks from ReconciliAsian hosted before and after the interviews.

The third phase of the project involves expanding the scope to divided families across the Korean diaspora -- whether in the US, Latin America, Japan, or anywhere else outside the Korean Peninsula — as well as to younger generations (even if the elder has already passed away. Furthermore, we are launching a crowdsourcing campaign to have participants record and submit videos themselves or via Zoom with a team member. If this may be part of your family’s story, express your interest at form.jotform.com/261865286094064

I’m so grateful for new friends and teammates (especially Catherine for her leadership as I’ve been swamped with PhD studies and CJ for stepping in) to move this forward, especially on this new website:

https://www.letterstomyhometown.com/

This year, participants’ video interviews will become part of a permanent collection maintained by the South Korean Ministry of Unification, with the hope that they may one day be shared with family members in the North.

It feels fitting that we are launching this next phase on August 15, the anniversary of the end of Japanese rule on the Korean Peninsula — known as 광복절, or the “Restoration of Light Day” that is celebrated in both North and South Korea. However, this is the same day that marks the beginning of the enduring division of the Korean Peninsula. May this be an opportunity for many family stories from the Korean War — about family members and hometowns in the North — that have long been kept in the dark to finally come to light.

Most of all, what motivated me to write this post was a series of impeccably timed encounters beginning with my dear friend (and now VP of Divided Families USA) Michael Roh, whose conversation with his parents about his grandparents’ stories from North Korea was just published as we were indulging in some post-sauna scrumptious knife cut noodles at 명동칼국수 Myung Dong Noodle House in Fort Lee yesterday.

It is thanks to Michael that I was able to start Letters to My Hometown in the first place 2 years ago (since he loaned me all of the camera equipment and gave me a crash course in Boston before sending me off on the 7-city journey), and it was even more meaningful to see his family take the leap of faith to serve as the “pilot” for phase two of this project. Even during the pandemic, Michael had helped coordinate regular Zoom meetings for Divided Families USA volunteers – members of a younger generation from across the country – interested in advocacy, storytelling, and engaging directly with the elderly generation of Korean American divided families. Most recently, he negotiated an agreement to have a couple of videos from Phase 1 of Letters to My Hometown included in the South Korean Ministry of Unification’s official archive of video messages that could be sent to family members in North Korea.[2]

Anyways, after rocking up to the Korean American Story gala in New York last month (an inspiring gathering of Korean American excellence and vulnerability), Michael and I were able to visit the cemetery in Connecticut where his grandparents are buried. Knowing how much his grandparents meant to him (which you can also see from the CNN article photo here) and witnessing his efforts to honor their memory, I cried as I watched Michael lay flowers at their grave and listened to the heartfelt letter he read to them.

As we made our way to visit the legendary Korean American matriarch Hesung Chun Koh at the East Rock Institute – where Michael and I first met nearly 10 years ago when I was in college – I was struck by a sense of 感恩 to have a friend and partner who shares a devotion honoring his grandparents. To me, the term “filial piety” always connotes a Confucian sense of duty that comes at the cost of individual freedom, but I wonder if it is fair to reframe it as the desire to give thanks for all the love that we have received.

But the fortuitous encounters do not end there – a few minutes after saying bye to Michael and his family, I bumped into (there’s got to be a better term for this kind of serendipitous reunion) my friend and noona Kate for the first time in several years. Ten years ago, when I was still an undergraduate student, we had teamed up to pitch a project for the South Korean Ministry of Defense’s “Unification and Security Vision Contest” that involved a project to initiate conversations with grandparents who experienced the Korean War, record their stories, and share them around the world (sound familiar?).[3] When I went to the University of Southern California (where Kate and I had presented for the regional round of the contest) last month for a Korean Studies conference for graduate students or to present about Letters to My Hometown, I couldn’t help but feel like things had come full circle (or at least a spiral).

Similarly, I was able to share the stage a few weeks ago with the inimitable Chahee Lee Stanfield at the University of Chicago thanks to the Dear Asian Youth chapter there and our friend Namsik from Alliance for Korea United. As I looked around the room of undergraduate students who chose to spend their Tuesday evening listening to our stories and calls to action for political advocacy and storytelling on Korean American divided families, I could imagine my college-age self in the audience and in the organizers. The most energy and meaning I found at Yale was definitely not in my classes (sorry professors and classmates) but as a member of a student organization called ThiNK (There’s Hope in North Korea), through which we organized speaker events and film screenings to facilitate critical conversations about North Korea.[4]

Looking back, I think my views on Korea as a bounded nation and people have evolved significantly since my days of proudly proclaiming my dream of the political reunification of the Koreas or waving the South Korean flag around the world, from the Camino de Santiago to the Philadelphia Marathon and Baekdu Mountain (I don’t recommend doing that on the Chinese side). Accordingly, my paths – or shall I call it flight patterns – have diverged from working at the policy level to the grassroots (though I guess doing a PhD puts me somewhere in the middle), and from advocating for reunification and human rights to focusing on collecting stories and facilitating conversations of elders. That being said, I think I’ve managed to keep one eye on the nest and another in the heavens while flying to and fro, thanks to family and friends who remind me with their love and presence (you know who you are, and I think some of you may be reading this).

In addition to sending updates about the Letters to My Hometown project, I guess this Substack satisfies my tendency/desire to write in rambling and long-winded sentences – exactly the opposite of how I’m being trained to write for an academic setting. But hey, for those who have managed to make it this far, I will close with an idiom that my mom loves to use: 유유상종 (類類相從), which has the avian translation “birds of a feather flock together,” for I am grateful to have fellow peregrines on this sojourn toward healing, reconciliation, and belonging.[5]

[1] Please stay tuned for more intergenerational conversations as part of LTMH Phase 2 that will be published in the coming months!

[2] Since an agreement with North Korea in 2005, the South Korean Ministry of Unification has collected tens of thousands of video messages from South Korean citizens, but there has only been one instance in 2008 when 20 families on both sides of the border exchanged messages. This is the first year that overseas divided families have been included.

[3] It’s a long story, but the not-so-short short version is that it involved a trip to LA for the regional competition and an overnight stay at the DMZ with fellow contestants who included members of the South Korean military and music students as well as youth from Ethiopia and Australia.

[4] Now I realize much of our activities were caught up in the transnational North Korean human rights movement, given how valuable elite US universities are as platforms for promoting an organization’s agenda. I don’t want to ruffle any feathers, but I think that some of what we did – like collect snippets of everyday life on a US college campus to send into North Korea – is still quite cool (and hopefully more helpful than harmful to the North Korean people).

[5] I guess in sociology, this would translate to homophily. Or as my friend Kimberly used to say, good people coming together are like dragonflies, which are an indicator of clean water.

Fittingly, the show that I’m watching on the plane is “Severance” (thanks Cedric for the recommendation!), which is set in a world where employees at a company choose to be “severed” from memories of their workplace outside of the office building. I wonder, would this selective amnesia of one’s hometown or family members in North Korea be preferable to the lingering scars of separation? While none of the interviewees so far have had Alzheimer’s or dementia, many struggle to remember the contours of their childhoods 75-80 years ago…yet at the same time, they remember certain details clearly – such as their home addresses (down to the exact street), the Japanese names they had to use under colonial rule (1910-1945), and where they were on pivotal dates like August 15, 1945 (when Korea was liberated from Japan) or June 25, 1950 (the start of the Korean War).

“Severed families” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as “divided families,” but it does feel like a more appropriate word to describe what happened to so many Korean families on the Peninsula and in the diaspora. Our society prefers to count things – the number of casualties on the battlefield, the dollars gained or lost from tariffs, or the years and decades of an enduring conflict. I get why labels like “ten million divided families” to describe the number of families separated from the Korean War (the validity of which James Foley has rebutted) or 100,000 Korean American divided families (based on approximating census data and statistics on Korean divided families from the early 2000s) have stuck. On the other hand, I’m realizing through this project that it is hard to standardize or even quantify the impact of severance on a family, much less on a nation. I’m reminded of Pádraig Ó Tuama’s poem “The Pedagogy of Conflict” and how each family is affected by and deals with displacement from one’s hometown in their own way.

Reunion is not free: the emotional and financial cost of rebuilding family ties

Last night, I watched a heart-wrenching and warming film called “Between Goodbyes” at the International Asian American Film Festival in New York City (thanks to Youngsun and KAS for the opportunity!). I laughed and cried through intimate scenes of a Korean woman who was adopted as a baby by Dutch parents as she mends broken ties with her birth family. Though I was relatively familiar with the challenges of transracial adoptees through working on the Divided Families Podcast, what was incredible about the story is that it is not just about a one-time reunion – rather, the film shows how the process of rebuilding relations takes decades of translated letters, video calls, and in-person gatherings in Korea and the Netherlands.

At one point, an advocate for mothers who gave up children for adoption says, “perhaps reuniting and saying goodbye for the second time requires more grieving, because it forces us to face what has changed and what was lost” (my translation from Korean). In other words, mending a relationship that was ruptured by adoption or displacement requires intensive emotional effort over time (James Foley has also written about the harm that the one-off inter-Korean reunions can do for families who have to say goodbye again, but for good). At the same time, Mieke (the protagonist of the story) says she felt an immediate kinship with her siblings (even though they speak different languages and are meeting for the first time) as well as a sense of connection to her birthplace and ancestral lineage.

While the context is different, the film made me think of families like Mr. Yun’s, who we got to interview at his son’s home in New Jersey last week. I had known about his story since 2016, when I had watched footage from his 2007 visit to North Korea to reunite with his younger sisters that was featured in the Divided Families Film. Even though Mr. Yun didn’t remember much about his sisters as children (since they were only a few years old when they separated), he said he recognized one of his sisters right away given the resemblance to his mother, though he wasn’t sure if the other woman was actually his sister. He shares about continuing correspondence with his sisters after returning to the United States until he started to feel like the remittances they were requesting were not being sent to them. While remittances are quite common among immigrant families – and perhaps a natural way to show care and support – it is when government interests get in the way that removes the focus from families themselves (you can also see this at play in Susan Choi’s novel Flashlight between members of a Korean family in Japan who split ways to North Korea and the United States).

So while I am all for allowing Korean Americans to travel freely to see their family members in North Korea, I am starting to realize that the act of reuniting (whether as a family or a nation) does not mean reconciliation. In Korean, there can be at least two ways to say “reunion”: 재회（再会）or 상봉 (相逢). The latter is usually used to describe the dramatic North-South Korean reunions (이산가족상봉), whereas the former simply refers to meeting again. Interestingly, the latter also suggests a serendipitous or chance encounter, whereas the former (to me at least) feels more neutral. So, I guess what I am learning (to borrow the language of Father Greg Boyle) is that these elderly Korean Americans’ desire for visiting their hometowns again or for the reunification of North and South Korea are not necessarily ends in themselves; rather, they point to a deeper desire for wholeness and healing.

Toward wholeness as an individual, family, and nation

It is thanks to my friend Michael Roh that I was able to start this project two years ago in Boston. This time, he not only hosted me again but facilitated the interview with Mr. Tae-hyok Kim (born in 1932!), who with his granddaughter Nicole wrote an amazing memoir called Beyond the Border (which can describe the details of his life much better than I can). What struck me was how this man – who has endured separation from his family in North Korea, torture and interrogation by the South Korean military after being wrongfully accused as a communist sympathizer, and a whole new set of challenges upon immigrating to the United States – can have such a gentle look in his eyes and give such warm hugs!

Despite the difficulties caused by a stroke he suffered a few years ago, Mr. Kim was able to read out his heartfelt letter to his parents. He closed his conversation with his daughter and granddaughter by expressing his wish, “that Korea…become…whole.” Not one, not reunified, but whole. Michael had introduced me to a book called “No Bad Parts” about internal family systems (IFS). While I’m far from being an expert on this topic, my understanding is that it involves accepting and integrating all different parts of our self, from the kind to the violent. What would it look like to approach family separation or national division through this lens?

It is impossible to recover the lost time and what-ifs that these families could have enjoyed had they not been separated due to the division of Korea or the Korean War. Individuals have tried to cope and rebuild on their own, whether through solidarity with others who have similar experiences, or by looking forward to the future instead of thinking about the past. But what could it look like to acknowledge and grieve this loss, especially with others who share this experience?

A space to grieve and heal outside of family conversations?

Several, if not most, of our interviewees have been deeply religious, with many having dedicated their lives as pastors in Korean immigrant churches around the US. Accordingly, perhaps the most common response that we get to the question, “what do you want to say to your family and future generations (in the US and North Korea)” is something along the lines of believing in Jesus Christ. As we were finishing up our last interview of the month in Flushing with a 96-year-old pastor, HJ and I reflected on the complexity of the celestial orientation of many people from that generation. On one hand, believing that one’s true “home” is in heaven and that we are only temporary sojourners on this earthly realm could help cope with the pain of displacement or separation. In fact, I remember asking the Dalai Lama (who himself was separated from his own family upon exile to India) a few years ago what he would say to Koreans separated from their families, and he said not to be so attached to the permanence of family ties (which I guess is a very Buddhist thing to say). On the other hand, unless we are enlightened bodhisattvas, doesn’t our imperfect human nature keep us fixed on the land we come from and bodies we are related to?

Since my grandfather passed away in 2014, my grandmother has recited a Catholic prayer called 위령기도（慰靈祈禱）, which consists of the characters 위 (“we”) which means “to console or comfort” and 령 (“ryeong”) which means “soul” every single day for the repose of his soul. The prayer consists of a few psalms of praise, followed by an incantation to the litany of the saints for the deceased. At this point, she has memorized the entire prayer by heart, which probably takes about 10-15 minutes to finish. What means more than the words of the prayer is the fact that it has become a ritual of remembrance – something that she does on her own, as well as something our family does together whenever we visit my grandfather’s grave in Paju. Toward the end of Han Kang’s novel “We Do Not Part,” the protagonists uncover news clippings of a 위령 (we-ryeong) event for the bereaved families of targeted by anti-communist violence during the early days of South Korea’s authoritarian rule (in the mid to late 1940s) to remember and lament the loss of their beloved. What would it look like to console the souls of Korean American divided families?

One reason the “grief transmutation circle” from Washington DC two years ago left such a deep impression on me is that I saw Korean people coming together to wail and dance (while completely sober!). Perhaps the biggest challenge that I’ve faced while facilitating family conversations this summer is encouraging those from the oldest generation (especially grandfathers) to talk about their feelings and show emotion. I’m questioning whether conversations – especially those that are recorded and with one’s children and grandchildren – are really the right place for these elders to grieve. Perhaps it is too much to ask someone in their 90s who has never expressed his emotions to suddenly do so, especially in front of a camera and his children/grandchildren. At the same time, seeing how grateful the families have been for the opportunity to have these conversations gives me confidence that it can complement other forms of processing and healing.

Bringing it back home: as people, rather than a place?

I’m realizing how long-winded this is getting (I guess I’m starting to become like the pastors we’ve been interviewing, and the rare opportunity to focus on writing), but I did want to close with one last reflection on home. When I originally conceived the title of this project – “Letters to My Hometown or 고향에게 보내는 편지” – I had assumed that people would have a singular idea of what constitutes their hometown (i.e. their birthplace in North Korea). Well, I sure was wrong. I should have known better, given how difficult the question “where are you from” is for myself, but I quickly learned that responses have varied from Pyongyang to Seoul, from Los Angeles to Toronto, from a farming village in rural Hwanghaedo to the busy streets of New York. Daniel, who has lived in the same apartment building as his mother and grandparents his whole life, said that for him, the dining table where the four of them came together for dinner every day is home, and seeing how hard he tried to communicate with his grandfather in Korean moved me deeply.

One of the best books I read this past year is “Everything We Never Had” by Randy Ribay, which tells the story of three generations of a Filipino-American family (with the help of a dog named Thor) forced to come together and open up to each other during the pandemic. It seems like there was a similar process among many of our interviewees of reaching out to parents and grandparents during the pandemic. I’m understanding that many younger generations of Korean Americans (including myself), connecting and learning more about their ties to (North) Korea is pointing to a deeper longing to connect with their parents and grandparents (despite all the cultural and language barriers), and find a more integrated sense of self.

As we walked around Flushing after the interview with his family, we saw a florist proudly display a photo from Janice’s Han in Town project, which captures the nostalgia of small Korean-owned businesses in the neighborhood. Of course, oral history archives and photographs can save a moment in time, but I do believe that what is generated from the daily rhythms of coming together for a meal or saying the same prayer for 11 years can endure just as much as any video or image. I never thought I’d write out the cliché, “home is where the heart is,” or wax poetic about terms like jeong/정/情 (and I should really wrap up before this gets any sappier), but as my professor Dong Jin Kim said to me recently, perhaps jeong is an attachment that builds with a place or a person over time (whether you want to or not).

That’s how I now feel about New Jersey, whether it is sleepily dragging my feet to mass at the Korean Catholic church, running along the brackish waters of the Hudson with the Manhattan cityscape in the background, or driving back and forth across the majestic steel beams of the George Washington Bridge with the Little Red Lighthouse guiding the way. So this journey (both for this project and my own life) is to be continued, but I will end with this image of a nest that a bird built on our front door in South Bend at the end of my first year there. She constructed the nest with whatever she could find – twigs, a paper straw wrapper, and strands of human hair – to build a home for her eggs. While the eggs ended up disappearing (according to Chat GPT, a predator like a crow could have snatched them), it remains a symbol of enduring love, care, and wholeness in times of vulnerability, uncertainty, and isolation. What are the nests that we have been a witness to in this world, whether they are still physically intact or not?

I’ve made it to Japan now, so I’ll say matane (until next time), rather than sayonara (goodbye forever)!

I just got back to New Jersey after spending a full week in Southern California with four amazing team members from KoreanAmericanStory.org – HJ, Youngsun, Janice, and Cedric – as we recorded intergenerational conversations with four Korean American families with connections to North Korea who welcomed us and all our camera equipment into their homes with open hearts and cut fruit. The last time I was in California for this project, it was the most difficult part of my journey – physically, mentally, and emotionally – as I struggled to carry the weight of painful memories and multitask my way through unfamiliar terrain (on public transportation).

This time around, I felt an overwhelming sense of being together – le chéile in Irish, which reminded me of what former US Ambassador to South Korea Kathy Stephens used to say as a toast: 같은 가치로 같이 갑시다 (let’s go together with the same values). Since starting to work with Divided Families USA in 2016, I have been blessed to work with amazing people (some of whom I was able to reunite with on this trip). While many have moved on to start families of their own and work on other projects, I have doubled down – now as a full-time pursuit as a PhD student, along with my positionality as the grandchild of a divided family member and representative of DFUSA. After feeling a bit like a lone wolf for a while and questioning whether it’s worth continuing the work, I feel like I have found in these kindred spirits a renewed sense of purpose and vision about the mission of this project: to heal broken relationships that stem from the legacies of violence and division on the Korean Peninsula through the practice of story telling and listening.

We were also able to reunite with Jennifer (whose support and belief in this project has made it possible) and Sue (who has been supporting participants in how to have trauma-informed conversations with Korean American elders), who let us dwell us in the shade of their presence (as the Irish saying goes). Though it was an intensive week with long days, I felt like I was able to live out my personal mantras (to lead with love; take it slow; and it can be fun) in the ordinary and extraordinary moments thanks to such an amazing team.

Anyways, while we have more interviews left on the East Coast this month, I wanted to reflect a wee bit on what is lingering from interviews with the four families in Southern California.

What does it mean to “care” in the Korean American context?

First, it was remarkable that in all four instances, it was the middle-aged daughters who reached out about wanting to participate and have their elderly parents’ stories recorded. While their backgrounds differed – from supporting acting careers to writing historical fiction novels – it was clear that they shared a desire to not only pass on their parents’ memories to their own children, but also to have genuine conversations with their parents. While I won’t go into the details of the stories here, I can say I am inspired and encouraged by the courage that these four women had to engage their parents in challenging conversations about the past, present, and future of their family. I think I am more aware now not only of who is present in the room, but also who is absent – in other words, what is it about these women that has led them to sit down with their parent(s), (even compared to some of their own siblings)?

One of the interviewees mentioned how there’s not a direct or easy translation in Korean for the word “care,” which is what I would use to describe what the family members in each interview had for each other. Is it 걱정 (to worry)? Or 돌보다 (to look after)? Or even something like 관심/상관 (關心/相關), which suggests a level of interest? I think the closest term would be 신경 (神經) 쓰다， which literally translates to “to use one’s nerves” – a very visceral image for something that can seem as mundane as wondering if someone has eaten. This reminds me of what Stephen Colbert said in a recent interview with Father James Martin, where he draws from a scene in the film Lady Bird in quoting, “don’t you think maybe they are the same thing? Love and attention”? While I knew that elderly Korean Americans (the “first generation”) had a lot of wisdom to offer from my interviews two years ago, what really moved me this time was the care, attention, and love that their children have devoted. While I know that these interviews are neither the beginning nor the end of a process of healing, reconciliation, or transformation, I trust that they can serve as anchors for deeper conversations in the future.

The stories that our faces and our feet hold

In a Zoom session with participants on trauma-informed conversations, Sue and her colleagues - Korean American mental health professionals - had introduced the Korean notion of “얼” (eol) or the “spirit/soul” of a person or people as a counterpoint to the sorrow/trauma of “한” (han). Sue’s husband, Hyun, later explained to me that the word for “face” in Korean, 얼굴 (eol-gul), originates in the character “eol” and the word 꼴 (kkol, or shape). In other words, someone’s face is supposed to be the shape of their soul or spirit. What does it mean when all that’s left of someone is a photo or memory of their face, frozen in time?

Many children and grandchildren have described their elders (especially men) as “stoic,” or not expressing much emotion. On this trip, I had a serendipitous encounter with Mr. Byun (whose interview from two years ago you can find here) at an event honoring Korean War veterans. During our interview, Mr. Byun hadn’t even mentioned the fact that he was a veteran of the Korean War, nor did I see him express much emotion when talking about being separated from his wife and daughter in the North. Yet as he bid me farewell saying that he had to go pick up his wife (I hadn’t realized he had remarried in the States either), I wondered, what stories are beneath those wrinkles – stories that are beyond words?

Perhaps the most striking image that stayed with me is of the feet of one of the interviewees (a 90-year old retired pastor), as he was recounting the story of crossing the frozen Taedong River in Pyongyang with his mother. Later, his 9-year-old grandson was edging him on – “faster, haji! faster!” – as he was pedaling on a stationary bike. I thought of the feet of so many other elders – including my own grandparents – which have carried them as they fled from violence, across long commutes to and from school, and eventually to their final resting place. As with the wrinkles on Mr. Byun’s face, I thought to myself, perhaps the elders needn’t – or can’t? – pass down all that their bodies and souls have experienced across growing up under Japanese colonialism, displacement during the Korean War, and having to resettle again as minorities in the United States. Is it better for their feet (and those of their grandchildren) to rest more comfortably in plush slippers?

As I prepare for the next round of interviews – this time on the East Coast – I am dwelling on this image of faces and feet. I am reminded of what is written on the entrance to the Buddhist Church of San Francisco – “please remove your ‘shoes.’”

The character for sect or clan 宗 is pronounced like ‘shoe’ in Japanese - and the irony of citing this for a Korean American project is not lost on me). While taking off my shoes when entering a Korean/Asian home is something I have often taken for granted, I realize there is something symbolic and special about taking off one’s shoes and putting on slippers when entering one’s home for these conversations. How can we cultivate slipper-clad spaces where there is mutual sharing and listening, rather than Cold War-era shoe-thumping diatribes?

I’ll close with a poem that I wrote on the flight back from Orange County (I realize this is the first time I am sharing my own poetry here, so please indulge me, especially if you’ve made it this far!)

Lessons from the Desert

The orange hue of golden hour arrives

onto the sun-kissed canyons, long scorched

by the searing flames of silence.

The foggy lens of a visiting crew

appearing from the free-way

neutralizes the blinding beams

of a long absence

and reveals a blank slate of presence.

We are invited to take off our dusty shoes

offered cushioned slippers to soften

our soles, hardened from the journey here

but once we start walking around for some time

we find our footing in the labyrinth of love.

Each step we take together –

whether facing the ghosts of the past at last –

are whispers of care

spoken and unspoken

they fire through our nerve endings

carrying us in and out

of the memories of a not-so-forgotten war.

Scenes from MPI (photos from myself)

Overall, I would say that I am left feeling humbled, reinvigorated, and connected by what I saw and heard from my fellow participants, who included staff from the Philippines’ Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation and Unity (OPAPRU), representatives from various indigenous communities in the Philippines, Buddhist monks from Laos, and colleagues from Germany’s Civil Peace Service. While I had heard great things about MPI – which was celebrating its 25^th anniversary as a hub for training peacebuilders from all over the Asia-Pacific – from friends from the Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute and the Kroc Institute, I was amazed by the unexpected synergies that I found in new friendships and encounters: a sign that we are walking the right path. It was not only a re-grounding change of pace to leave my academic bubble at Notre Dame and enter into new rhythms – albeit temporarily – with people for whom violent conflict and poverty are part of their everyday life. Most of all, I felt connected to the nodes of a broader movement – stemming back from Eastern Mennonite University’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute, which served as a model for programs like MPI and NARPI – of peacebuilders engaged across borders of time and space.

Action shot from the closing ceremony of MPI (taken by MPI staff)

On one hand, the vibes were quite familiar, like the cultural curiosity and warm energy I had felt at the United States Institute of Peace’s Generation Change Fellows Program trainings or at NARPI trainings across Northeast Asia (adding in some extra karaoke, seaside meals, and new flavors like durian and tubá). On the other hand, I was very much an outsider, as one of the only individuals hailing from the United States and given the additional responsibility of representing South Korea (a part of me that was celebrated like I’ve never seen before in my life). Seeing how people’s faces lit up when I told them I was Korean, proceeding to profess their passion for Korean dramas and Kpop idols – left me dumbfounded of this newfound “Korean privilege” that I didn’t even have growing up in one of the biggest Koreatowns in the US.

The centerpiece of the classroom: a “wave of love” plant (which endured the heavy air conditioning better than I did)

Anyways, given that the point of trainings like MPI is for participants to take lessons back to their own communities, I thought it might be valuable to reflect on what I thought were the most salient learnings as we continue “Phase 2” of the Letters to My Hometown Project this summer in New York and Los Angeles, this time featuring conversations between elderly Korean Americans and their grandchildren.

TRAUMA(S) and how we deal with them

Though I’ve written about “han” before here, I’ve felt that it’s one of those terms that has almost become a wee bit cliché to describe the sorrow held by “the Korean people.” That being said, it’s interesting to look at the etymology of the Chinese character – 恨 – and see the character for “heart” on the left and a character that means “tough” or “stop/pause,” and looks like a person peering over their shoulder. Perhaps this kind of wound has us stuck in our hearts and constantly looking back to the past. I think I prefer another word that one of my interviewees mentioned – 응어리 or eung-uh-ri, which refers literally to a knot in one’s muscles or figuratively to an unresolved issue lodged in one’s heart.

In any case, I think it’s clear that many people – whether Korean or not – experience this kind of trauma, whether on an individual or collective level. However, I think what makes case of Korean American divided families exceptional is that there is an intersection of so many sources of trauma – including experiences of Japanese colonialism, displacement from hometowns and separation from family in North Korea during the Korean War, poverty and military dictatorships in South Korea, to alienation as immigrants in the United States. They have not only faced marginalization in society, but also with their own children and grandchildren, with some of whom they do not share the same language or faith. As I’m starting to understand just how complex the traumas of the Korean American community are, I am realizing that one intervention will not be “enough” to break through these cycles of violence and silence.

I do think it is worth discussing the “typical” way Koreans have been lauded for dealing with their “han” – through 인내/innae, which can be translated as “patience,” “perseverance,” or “fortitude.” If you look at the Chinese characters, though – 忍耐 (each meaning to “endure” or “bear” something) – you will see a knife held above a heart in one character, as well as two characters that spell out “and another inch.” This is exemplified in films like “Ode to My Father,” which laud the virtues of sacrifice despite suffering for the sake of one’s family and nation. Yes, gritting one’s teeth and enduring may have led to economic prosperity, safety, and stability…but at what cost?

I would argue that freeing ourselves from the multiple “hans” of history requires transforming the culture of 인내/innae toward one that loosens the grip of those knots on our bodies and souls. Could it be through 정/Jeong/情？ The connotation of the Korean word of the Chinese characters for letting one’s heart free(放心 방심), however, is being negligent, absent-minded, or even underestimating. What would it take for one’s heart to truly be at ease (安心 안심)? I sadly don’t have the answers now, but I think I’m asking better questions…

FORGIVENESS: it was there all along

While I was learning that forgiveness – the decision to let go of bitterness, anger, and resentment – was key to finding freedom and a sense of agency, I really struggled for most of the two-week program to find the concept of forgiveness relevant for Korean American divided families. For unlike in the rido of revenge killings between communities in Mindanao or the Rwandan genocide, it is difficult to assign a name or face to a single “perpetrator” for an event like displacement or family separation. Who would these elderly Korean Americans need to forgive – the North or South Korean military? US or Soviet government officials?

It was only when I rewatched clips from the interviews I did two years ago that I noticed that when I asked interviewees, “what do you want to tell your family in North Korea?” many of them would get emotional and say how sorry they are for not being able to visit them again, or for the fact that only part of their family was able to leave the country. Perhaps behind these apologies were feelings of unresolved guilt, contrition, and self-blame that I believe reflect a desire to be forgiven by their family members (even if it was not their “fault” that they were divided).

Perhaps the intergenerational conversations this summer can also provide spaces for grandchildren to “forgive” their grandparents for whatever harm that was done through this culture of silence, shame, and endurance. Even from recent experiences with members of my own family, I am starting to accept that forgiveness is possible even without explicitly saying the words “I forgive you.” Rather, if we understand forgiveness as “the final form of love” (attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr),” perhaps we can find forgiveness in ordinary and extraordinary gestures, such as unexpected tears over a homecoming meal.

RECONCILIATION as a Bittersweet Symphony: Transcending Polarization and Translation

The Statue of Brothers at the War Memorial of Korea in Seoul (photo by myself)

From statues of two individuals embracing in Belfast and Seoul, or even in artwork like Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son, it seems that the most popular image of reconciliation features a dramatic in-person reunion event. But what does reconciliation look like if one or more parties are no longer alive or able to reunite (such as in the case of Korean American divided families)? I am trusting that reconciliation is still possible even while structural barriers like division and conflict are still in place – a more spiritual kind, and one that requires a radical transformation of the “ideal” of reconciliation. I am becoming increasingly affixed on “transcendence” as the key to truly healing from the wounds of conflict – not simply resolving or managing trauma, but finding the strength and solidarity to rise above a singular story of victimhood.

Reframing Psalm 85, John Paul Lederach describes reconciliation as the “meeting place” of Truth, Justice, Mercy, and Peace. But what if there are multiple versions of “truth,” different struggles toward “justice,” various levels of “deserving” mercy, and politicization of the term “peace”? Given the numerous understandings of such broad terms that are often lost or misinterpreted in the process of cultural translation (like in the US or South Korea, where the very concepts of “truth” or “peace” spark entrenched divisions in society), it is clear that multiple versions of each of these concepts (the various Truths, for example) need to reconcile with themselves before they can begin the process of reconciling with each other.

The Gymkhana at the Elisabeth Morrow School, one of my first experiences of playing in an orchestra (photo by EMS)

What, then, would be a more appropriate image to represent the process of reconciliation – one that can reflect its temporal and multitudinal complexity? Perhaps it could be a quilt (like Chilean arpilleras or those made by Mennonites), a free-form dance circle, or a lush garden. From my own experience playing cello in groups my entire life, I would have to describe it as a chamber orchestra (coordinating among themselves without a conductor), beginning with each section going from utter cacophony to tuning (perhaps the brass section could be truth, percussion section could be justice, the woodwinds could be mercy, and the strings could be peace) to producing a collective sound that can be witnessed by an audience and recorded for posterity. Some orchestras are bigger and better funded than others, while some play certain kinds of music in opera halls to open-air venues. But even when they play the same piece, I’ve appreciated how each rendition is different, resonating more with some than others. To me, this miraculous process of harmonization of sounds and bodies breathing in sync without everyone having to play the same note or instrument is the essence of reconciliation. For now, let this mark an “intermission” and please stay tuned for the next movement of this ongoing symphony…

It’s hard to believe that one year ago, I had just completed my monthlong journey across the US and was getting ready to begin my sojourn at Corrymeela, thinking of it as an extended retreat where I could not only work on peace and reconciliation projects I found meaningful, but also go on an inward journey in finding respite and spiritual growth. While I did find repose (안식), whose characters in Chinese 安息 translate to “breathing in peace,” I wanted to reflect on some learnings from the year that I found relevant to the Letters to My Hometown project.

On Hope

I started this newsletter with a reflection on the Irish words for hope and heritage (dóchas and dúchas), noting the hope of divided families to return to their homeland and reunite with their kin. My time at Corrymeela have helped me understand hope in other ways as well – through experiencing firsthand rather than through intellectualizing.

望: Hope in gazing

At my final morning pause of silence in the Croí at Corrymeela, I was blessed to learn from Mary Lynne of the word “offing,” or where the sea meets the horizon. So many times over the course of the year, I would look out from the beach in Ballycastle or behind Davey Village at Corrymeela onto the great expanse that lay in the offing beyond Rathlin Island and Scotland. I would like to say that this gazing led to some great epiphany or enlightenment, but it was more like what the great Winnie the Pooh said:

One thought that did arise was how in Korean/Japanese/Chinese, the words “hope” (희망/希望 or “admiring 望”), “disappointment” (실망/失望 or “losing 望”), “despair” (절망/絕望 or “cutting off 望”), and “longing” (갈망/渴望 or “thirsting for 望”) all share the character 望, which can mean to “gaze” or to “look towards.” According to this formulation, perhaps the question of losing or finding hope depends on how well we can nurture and cherish the gift of seeing.

Esperanza: Hope as (a)waiting

One of the most memorable groups that came to Corrymeela this past year was a delegation from the Colombia Truth Commission’s Legacy Project, which is actually housed at the University of Notre Dame. Hearing from various advocates, magistrates, and scholars working on archiving sounds and narratives from those affected by the armed conflict in Colombia (including stories of those in exile) and how eager they were to learn about lessons from Northern Ireland left me in awe.

What touched me even more than the incredible work of the delegation was the humanity with which they did their work; I still remember how vividly and emotionally someone on the Search Unit for Missing Persons described the process of recovering the remains of a body and returning them to a family member. Unlike in English or Korean, where there are different words for hoping (희망하다), expecting/looking forward to (기대하다), and waiting (기다리다), I was struck by how the Spanish word “esperar” encompasses the verb to “hope,” to “wait,” to “wait for,” and to “expect” (and I’m certainly not the first one to point this out!). Unlike a cheerful optimism, which suggests that things will get better, perhaps the sliver of hope is found in a belief that a change can come, even if it may take generations.

Hope in hospitality

Though “hospitality” at Corrymeela initially felt synonymous with the greeting “you’re very welcome” and serving refreshments to guests, the word took on a much deeper meaning for me over the course of the year. Henri Nouwen contrasts hospitality with hostility, defining it as the “creation of a free and friendly space where we can reach out to strangers and invite them to become our friends.”

When my dear friends Sue, Hyun, and Rhoda from ReconciliAsian came to Corrymeela for their sabbatical, I experienced an even more radical version of this hospitality, where the guests could feel comfortable and free enough to become the hosts (which in this instance, was a ramyun and yutnori party!). Similarly, in the Nurturing Hope Summer Learning Journey, a 5-day residential program of nearly 80 participants from 16 countries that capped off my year, I loved seeing spaces where participants felt enough ownership and agency to express themselves, whether it was through sharing their stories, going sea swimming, or performing at the ceilidh.

Hope in moving beyond victimhood

At this culminating residential program, there was a breakout session by region, including one for “Asia” that I joined. One participant in the group raised the question of where we can find hope in Asia, and I realized that I find hope when individuals and communities start to move beyond the single identity of being a “victim” and recognize how sometimes, these same people can become victimizers in other contexts. Of course, in some cases there may be a clear victim and perpetrator, but in many other instances, I have found the truth to be more nuanced than a monolithic victim narrative.

For example, I have seen time and time again how governments in South Korea have portrayed itself as a victim of Japanese militarism (without acknowledging its own military’s atrocities in Vietnam), North Korea as a victim of US-led neo-imperialist sanctions and isolation (without recognizing the restrictions it places on its own citizens), Japan as a victim of the atomic bombs (without mentioning its violent colonial legacy), and China as a victim of its century of humiliation by Western powers (without considering how it may be replicating similar strategies at home and abroad). While this rhetoric certainly stems from a lived history of suffering and may suggest a need for healing, I am most hopeful when I see people starting to accept that those who have been harmed can end up harming others, and when being a victim no longer dominates their identities.  

Hope in relationships

My primary project at Corrymeela was coordinating a pilot program called Seeds of Hope, bringing together a cohort of young adults (18-27) from across Northern Ireland every month for the past year. This was the brainchild of Derick Wilson, former center director and longtime community member who was the first one to welcome me to Corrymeela – I will forever be grateful to Derick for enabling me to have this opportunity and for being a firm yet loving grandfather figure. Anyways, something that Derick often said about the program was that instead of referring to the individual participants, Seeds of Hope referred to the relationships that formed between them when they were able to move beyond polite chit-chat to challenging conversations.    

Someone from the Notre Dame Legacy Project group shared a poem by Colombian poet Gonzalo Arango called “Manos unidas,” which translates to:

One hand

And another hand

Are not two hands;

They are hands united.

Link your hand

With our hands

So that the world is not

In few hands

But in all hands.

As I witnessed firsthand how these seeds of encounter sprouted into transformative relationships, I was also able to see how these links between hands started to form a full circle – a circle that was tight-knit enough on its own, yet had the capacity to include more hands.

I first heard of Corrymeela and Northern Ireland back in 2019 through Pádraig Ó Tuama, celebrated poet and theologian speaking the On Being Podcast – well before I could even conceive of living there. At the time, Pádraig Ó Tuama was the face (and voice) of Corrymeela and Ireland for me. As fate would have it, I ran into Pádraig (well, chased him down a Belfast street corner) in my last few weeks in Northern Ireland. It was a brief and lovely encounter, but at the farewell gathering for me, I realized that now, Corrymeela refers to the circle of kind, humorous, and warm-hearted human beings that no individual can represent fully.

I’ve heard people call Corrymeela many things – a healing well, a mirror, an ecumenical Christian community, a space of transformation through encounter. For me, it’s been all of those things, but at its core, it has helped me find confidence in my own vision while understanding that: 1. I cannot see everything on my own;

2. I will always need others to help fill in my blind spots;

and 3. There are some steps that I must take without seeing fully what’s on the other side.

One of the questions I was asked most often at Corrymeela by visitors was, “so are you enjoying it here?” Now, I would respond that my experience was beyond enjoying or not enjoying – it was after walking the road that I see how I was in the right place at the right time with the right people.

So, in my attempt to not-so-neatly tie this all together after starting writing this from a library, I am reminded of one of the most poignant memories from this past year – a St. Patrick’s Day celebration at Mussenden Temple (a former library perched on a cliff on the north coast of Ireland with panoramic views of the sea) featuring (believe it or not) Korean songs and poetry, including an 8^th century style called hyangga 향가 鄉歌 (literally translating to “village song,” with the first character found in the Korean word for hometown 고향, homesickness 향수) called Jemangmaega 제망매가 祭亡妹歌 or “Lament for a Dead Sister” that I think reflects these various aspects of hope:

The English translation (with some help from Wikipedia) is as follows:

Were [you] so afraid when you got to

where the paths of life and death crossed

that you left without even saying "I must go?”

Like leaves that will be blown hither and thither in an untimely autumn wind

though we come from the same branch,

we know not where we go.

Ah~!

Until we meet again in the netherworld,

I will wait, seeking the truth on the Way.  

With hope and in transition,

Paul

As my grandmother reminded me, June 1 marked the tenth anniversary of my 외할아버지 (maternal grandfather)’s passing, which motivated me to get involved with Divided Families USA in the first place. I grew up hearing my grandfather (a veteran who had been injured in combat) call the Korean War the “June 25 War,” or 육이오전쟁, to mark the date in 1950 when North Korean forces invaded the South (whereas I remember seeing a museum in Dandong, China call the conflict 抗美援朝战争/항미원조전쟁, or “the war to resist America and support Korea.” In “Defectors” (one of the most memorable and poignant films I’ve seen this year), the director’s father (an elderly Korean man originally from the North) talks about how he becomes sad whenever June 25 approaches, because nothing on the Korean Peninsula has changed (when it comes to resolving the conflict or division). 

Now that a decade has passed, I’ve found myself reminiscing on our memories together (which in Korean I’d call 추억/追憶, literally “chasing the memories), rather than recalling the exact details of them (기억/ 記憶) - and the former was the word I used when asking my interviewees about memories of their hometown and family members in North Korea. At a recent conference, I was struck by how a professor I highly respect challenged commonly held binaries, arguing that the opposite of war (the absence of violence) is not necessarily peace, and that life defined simply as the opposite of death cannot be called living. I wonder as well if the opposite of the word “remember” is not necessarily to forget - is “neglect” a better antonym? 

I also appreciate how Korean offers much more variety in the verb “to forget.” 잊다 would mean an active and intentional act of forgetting, whereas 잊어버리다 literally means “to forget and throw away, though it can be more accidental, and 잊혀지다 refers to a passive process of being forgotten. I wonder which form of forgetting would apply for my own grandparents, my interviewees for this project, and so many other Korean elders from their generation…    

While I’ve been in Northern Ireland, I’ve been wondering how re-opening windows into the past can contribute to healing (or risk re-traumatization). Corrymeela, along with organizations such as Healing Through Remembering, hosts an annual Day of Reflection on the 21st of June in order to "acknowledge the deep hurt and pain caused by the conflict in and about Northern Ireland, to reflect on our own attitudes, on what more we might have done or might still do, and to make a personal commitment that such loss should never be allowed to happen again." I’ve heard that June 21 was chosen because it is the summer solstice and longest day of the year, and that any other date (such as the 30th of January, the day of “Bloody Sunday”) would be too politically sensitive. The event makes me wonder, what would it mean to have an opportunity for collective reflection for the Korean War, especially among the diaspora? 

I love the symbolism of the logo of Healing Through Remembering, which is a plant called gorse in Northern Ireland (and called whin or furze in other regions). I think gorse was chosen not just because its pointy spikes are like reminders of the uncomfortable past, but also because it is one of the first plants to bloom into yellow flowers (tasting like coconut), signaling the transition from winter to spring. If I were to come up with an analogous plant for Korea, it would probably be 쑥 (mugwort), whose bitter green leaves are used for traditional Korean medicine (nowadays, it’s being used in tea, ice cream, kimchi, you name it!). I’m finding myself reminiscing on how when I was a kid, my grandmother used to pick fresh leaves and knead them into patties of glutinous rice flour to make 쑥떡, a chewy snack that tastes even better when pan fried and dipped in sesame oil…Anyways, mugwort plays a key role in the creation myth of the Korean nation (which I won’t go into in detail, but it involves a female bear outlasting a tigress in a cave for 100 days with only mugwort and garlic to eat and birthing the father of the Korean people…) I also love that if you repeat the word in Korean (쑥쑥), it becomes an onomatopoeic adverb that you use when referring to people or plants growing swiftly! 

I’ve seen events that commemorate the service of military veterans from the Korean War (like my dear noona Hannah Kim’s project Remember727), but I hadn’t seen many spaces of collective remembrance for the families who were separated by the conflict. I’m very excited to participate in an upcoming event at the US Institute of Peace in Washington DC that I hope can serve as an opportunity to re-member Korean American divided families into the narrative of the Korean War and re-mind government officials that time is running out. If you are in the DC area, it would be great to see you in person! (if not, there’s a livestream link/recording available on the event page: https://www.usip.org/events/korean-war-legacies-healing-trauma-korean-american-family-separation 

One of my biggest influences this past year - both for my thinking of spirituality and peacebuilding - has been the teachings of Richard Rohr, who writes that “If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it—usually to those closest to us.” In the context of the Korean War, I have been thinking about the intergenerational trauma from family separation, and what role recollection (through story-telling and story-hearing) can have in breaking out of this cycle. I can’t say I’ve cracked the code to this puzzle yet (or ever will), but I’m starting to find hope in these everyday acts of remembering, reminding, and reminiscing, rather than grand terms like reunification, restoration, and even reconciliation, which may be out of our control (and may suggest a rosier picture of the “original” state). 

Funnily enough, being in Ireland has made me appreciate wordplay more, especially in Korean. For example, the word to describe the family reunions between divided families is called 상봉 相逢 (which suggests a chance encounter), rather than 재회 再會 (literally “to meet again”), which my grandmother used to use when saying that she believes that she will reunite with my grandfather again in heaven (천상재회). 

I’ll close by sharing one of the poems that has stuck with me this past year and challenges my own understanding of closure: Korean-American-British poet Suji Kwock Kim’s poem “Searchlight.”

Thank you for helping me collect these stories of recollection and re-present them to the world!

With a renewed sense of hope, determination, and re-spect (looking again) for our elders,

Paul

In about an hour, I’ll be leading our time in the Croí (Irish Gaelic for “heart”) this evening, which is the space at Corrymeela where residents and visitors come together at 9am and 9pm every day for silence, prayer, and reflection. 

The Croí at Corrymeela

I’ll be introducing Lunar New Year, and sharing some traditions and practices associated with it in Korean culture, including 세배인사/bowing to elders in our family, 윷놀이/yutnori, and some food (I’ll be attempting to cook some 떡국/tteokguk and 잡채/japchae…) I’ll also be playing a song called 임진강/イムジン河/Imjingang, which I discovered back in 2017 when I was learning about the Korean community in Japan. The song was originally written in North Korea in the late 1950s, then popularized through a cover by the Japanese band the Folk Crusaders. It’s been used as a protest/folk song in both Japan and South Korea (where it was banned during the military government period until democratization in the 1980s). The title refers to the Imjin River, which flows from the north of the Demilitarized Zone (the same latitude as Pyongyang) to the south (near Seoul). 

Imjin River highlighted in yellow (map from Wikipedia)

My translation of the lyrics are as follows:

The clear waters of the Imjin River runs downstream 

Waterfowl fly freely to and fro 

But I can't visit my hometown in the South 

So the waters of the Imjin River flow on (carrying this “han”)

And here is a link to a cover of the song (in both Japanese and Korean). 

This image of a bird being able to fly freely across the Demilitarized Zone that separates tens of thousands of families on both sides has stayed with me. Last month, I was able to help host a group of teachers from South Korea here in Northern Ireland for a week. We stopped for lunch near the border between Northern Ireland and (Southern) Ireland, which you could only tell by a text message about your phone network and speed limits indicated in miles vs. kilometers. The people driving the cars whizzing by must have been wondering why a group of Asians were walking along the side of the road, but what was remarkable was just how unremarkable it was! 

A snapshot of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland

As part of the visit, I also helped organize an exhibition of drawings by children from North and South Korea (as well as diaspora in the US and Japan). The drawings that touched me the most were from kids on both sides of the border who wrote messages about their hope to see each other again to play together and show each other around their hometowns. 

My time here in Northern Ireland has only deepened my sorrow about the severance, sundering, and separation of Koreans (as a people), more so than Korea (as a state). More so than ever, I am seeing the sad reality about the division of and conflict over the Korean Peninsula: that there are barriers that prevent both elderly citizens as well as young kids from communicating with or seeing each other. 

I am very glad to share that the first video from the Letters to my Hometown project is now live! It features Marn Cha, a longtime professor at Fresno State who recounts his memories of growing up in his hometown in the northeastern part of Korea (including skiing!) as well as returning there to visit his relatives as an adult. While the plan is to release a new video every month until September, I’m starting to think about how to further what I envisioned as the two primary objectives of this project:

1. To facilitate a platform for closure and healing for Korean American divided families

2. To raise awareness about memories of the Korean War and the urgency of reuniting divided families  

The good news is that there have been some major political developments - in just this past week, a bill (the Divided Families National Registry Act) was introduced in Congress and passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee. If signed into law, the bill would establish an official national registry for Korean American divided families and require any future dialogue between the US and North Korea to include discussions on family reunions. While I had no part in the formulation of the bill, I feel very hopeful that it would not just be a symbolic show of support, but a tangible commitment to this community. 

With this momentum and attention, I’m hoping that the Letters to My Hometown video message archive can help humanize the issue and center the elderly citizens, for whom time is running out. If anyone has any ideas about sharing these stories with your community (through an in-person or online event) or would like to support this bill, please let me know! 

I need to go lead this session now, so I’ll sign off with an observation, a song, and a blessing.

1. For Lunar New Year, I’m reflecting on the Chinese character for filial piety, 孝 (효). Maybe I’m reading into this too much, but I just noticed how a line separates the character for earth/land 土 with 子, the character for child…what does it mean to honor one’s family while being in a far-off land?

2. Here is a Taiwanese song called 轉年 (welcoming the new year) that I played with my friend Meredith at our Chinese language program in Taipei back in 2016. Its lyrics describe "a little swallow who is learning to fly dreams of going south" and the "people who miss you, dream about you, and go home to celebrate the new year"

3. I wanted to share a blessing by the late Irish writer John O'Donohue that particularly resonates with me at this time (and I hope some of you as well)

May the spring bring you warmth, joy, and hope,

-Paul

It’s hard to believe that I was only gone for two months, during which my life felt so high-octane and itinerant that it felt more like an entire year squeezed into that time.

It’s even more surreal because only two weeks ago, the view outside my window consisted of horses and two-humped camels inhabiting the rocky slopes of Terelj, Mongolia, where I was participating in the Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Initiative (NARPI):

I guess this is kind of an “epilogue” post from my journey this past summer, as I finally start to settle into a routine in a place for more than a week and think about what’s next (so I apologize in advance for the length and rambling nature of this post, which might be the last one for the foreseeable future…)

You might be asking, what on earth do Northern Ireland and Mongolia have to do with the focus of my project, which is on Korean American divided families? Well, perhaps this is just a fanciful rationalization of my travels, but I think the short answer is that these experiences and places have helped me understand better on both a personal and a societal level of the question,

What is closure?

For example, my master’s dissertation was on “How Community-Based Story Archive Projects Facilitate Healing and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland.” As part of my master’s program, I had been interning/volunteering for an organization in Belfast called Healing Through Remembering (HTR), an organization dedicated to dealing with the legacy of the conflict in and about Northern Ireland, including through exhibits, remembrance ceremonies, and archives. Through HTR’s Stories Network, I started to learn about the robust civil society that filled the vacuum of government action on memorializing and processing the often traumatic stories of past conflict.

Even though the circumstances of the conflict and division in Ireland and Korea are quite different, I interviewed 13 practitioners of oral history/storytelling projects in Northern Ireland in the hope that I could glean some best practices for my own project this summer, especially regarding ethical principles, methodologies of story collection, and to what extent storytelling actually contributes to closure. I found that some organizations prioritized the catharsis and healing for the storyteller, while others wanted the recording to serve as an intergenerational touchstone for family members after the interviewee passed away. Others wanted their projects to make more of a macro-level impact by challenging and adding nuance to monolithic narratives of the conflict, which put an emphasis on the curation and dissemination of stories to a public audience.

While I was already a firm believer in the potential of storytelling for positive change, this research helped me be more clear-eyed about the challenges involved, especially regarding privacy and security concerns and the risk of entanglement in politics. In other words, I became more conscious about the fact that while storytelling cannot be a panacea for dealing with a traumatic past (for example, it can never completely replace the need for justice or truth regarding missing family members), it can have a positive effect on both storytellers and listeners if done properly. I also became wary of the risk of having “spokespeople” for a particular community, for whom the act of repeatedly telling their story can be more harmful than healing for processing their trauma.

This was all fresh in my mind as I was actually completing the dissertation while I was in Mongolia, where I was taking a course on “Optimizing Peacebuilding by Addressing Traumas in the Body.”

Beyond the content of the course, NARPI was what a friend of mine called a “healing well” of precious people building peace and for me, the embodiment of a Korean word called 인간미 (inganmi/人間味 in Japanese), which refers to the human warmth that we share with both community members and strangers (I sense this feeling at Corrymeela already as well).

I’ll never forget swaying together to a Mongolian lullaby, arms interlinked with all of the participants in a ger (Mongolian tent), and the founder of NARPI telling me his hope that someday in my generation, people from North Korea would be able to participate…).

One phrase from my friend deting (who co-facilitated the course) really stuck with me:

Healed people heal people, and healing people heals

While I’m not under the illusion that I have the capacity or authority to heal others, hearing the positive reactions of many of my interviewees and their family members after sharing their stories made me believe in the healing power of storytelling. At the same time, the course also reminded me of what I mentioned in my last post, of how in Korean, trauma manifests as 응어리 (eung-uh-rhee), or lumps and knots in our bodies and hearts, and the need to (re)engage our physical sensations in dealing with them (I’m resuming writing this as I got back from swimming in the sea/running along the beach just down the hill from where I’m living, which felt amazing!)

Before starting the project, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) asked about providing trauma informed mental health resources for my interviewees, which I tried to learn about through this course. However, I’m still left with the unresolved question of how I can engage with elderly Korean Americans using this language, for whom suggesting things like therapy or somatic practices would not only seem foreign, but also disrespectful (especially if coming from a younger person like myself).

The course also made me reflect on how in Korean, there’s no direct translation for the word “closure” – rather, perhaps the closest translation would be 한을 풀다, or to “relieve one’s ‘han’.” On the other hand, there are multiple translations of the word “healing.” There’s the English loanword 힐링 (literally “healing”), which people these days love to refer to relaxing getaways in nature or at the spa, but there are also the words 치료 (chi-ryo/治療) and 치유 (chi-yu/治癒), which perhaps is comparable to what some call the difference between curing and healing.  My understanding is that the former refers to treating an physical ailment (such as through chemotherapy or surgery), while the latter refers to a holistic restoration of well-being, including that of the mind and spirit.

While one’s maladies could be cured through external interventions, perhaps healing requires internal growth where one’s identity shifts from being solely a victim to various other roles in which they can find meaning. I think true closure for Korean American divided families would require both curing and healing – that is, the physical act of seeing their loved ones and visiting their hometowns, as well as the lifting of emotional and spiritual burdens of finally knowing what happened to their lost family members and sharing what they wanted them to hear. So while I think it’ll take much more than sharing their story for many divided families to “achieve” closure (if that’s even possible in this life if so much time has passed and family members have already died), I hope that this project can contribute to the gradual and organic process of healing, not just for the first generation, but also for second and third generations who are indirectly affected.

I’m happy to share a preview video from one of my interviews from this past summer, Mr. Ki-Shin Lee from Philadelphia who is looking to reunite with his siblings in North Korea (thanks to the editing of our partner Korean American Story), as well as an accompanying blog post on the issue of Korean American divided families for AFSC:

https://afsc.org/news/families-remain-divided-korean-war-more-70-years-later

Over the next year, I’ll be working with Korean American Story to edit, translate, and transcribe all of the interviews and archive them for posterity. I’ll also be exploring ways to have the video messages delivered to family members in North Korea, which seems to be showing signs of creaking open to foreigners. There’s still a general ban on US passport holders traveling to North Korea, but the State Department recently revised its language to allow those seeking to reunite with their families in North Korea to apply for special validation passports – I see this as a positive sign that the US government is making this issue more of a priority.

Finally, I’m starting to think about how to expand the project beyond disseminating them online. I was especially touched by the work of an artist from Jeju named Jeram, who has done amazing work for marginalized communities in South Korea through physical installations, children’s books, and even perfumes. I’d welcome any ideas and suggestions for how to engage a broader audience with the stories from my project, especially through creative platforms.

Clearly, my work here is far from done – in fact, it feels like it is just beginning! So while the weight on my shoulders feels heavier than it did before this summer, I feel relieved to know that I’m now carrying this responsibility together with amazing partners, and that there’s only so much we can do to facilitate healing – the rest of the process is up to the individual themselves as well as to forces perhaps beyond our control.   

I’m going to make my friends in Northern Ireland cringe by closing with a quote from Seamus Heaney’s famous poem, “The Cure at Troy” (the line “hope and history rhyme” has been repeated ad nauseam by politicians, especially this past year at events commemorating the 25^th anniversary of the peace agreement).

What is often overlooked, however, is the beginning of the poem, which goes:

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured

And the middle of the poem, which mentions:

Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.

So while much irreparable harm has been done and there’s still much uncertainty about what’s ahead for the fate of Korean American divided families, I am as hopeful as ever in the healing power of these stories – for the story tellers, for the story listeners, and for those who have kept their stories in the silence of their hearts. Thank you to each and every one of you for your support throughout this journey, which is to be continued…!

At times, my heart has felt quite heavy to carry the weight of these stories of separation and longing for reunification that may not be possible in their lifetimes. Yet at the same time, my soul somehow feels lighter knowing that I tried my absolute best to honor the lived experiences of these elderly members of my community.

In Atlanta, I was able to meet most of my interviewees through the local chapter of the Association of People from Five Provinces of North Korea, led by Mr. Kris Chong (who is originally from Pyongyang himself). If this were a marathon, it was definitely a sprint to the finish, as he hosted a gathering of members from his organization and drove me to other members’ homes for a total of ten interviews. Many of the members were quite excited that the US Senate had recently confirmed the nomination of Julie Turner as the US Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights, a position that had been vacant since 2017, which they saw as a sign that the US government would be able to do more on the issue of reuniting Korean American divided families. In the past, Julie Turner’s predecessor Robert King had tried to push for family reunions in his engagement with the North Korean government, though these efforts never came into fruition. Given how North Korea state media immediately attacked her identity and her role), I’m not sure how effective it would be to approach the issue of divided families through the lens of human rights.

I imagine there’s some level of cognitive dissonance among this first generation of Korean American divided families, many of whom hold quite anti-communist views and don’t want to support the North Korean government, yet many still want to visit their hometown (whenever that’s possible) and meet with their relatives. For example, multiple people who have visited North Korea have mentioned how their relatives have kept asking for money; while some of them don’t want to deal with these remittances, others are happy to do so, even while being aware that not all of the money may end up in their family’s hands. All this is to say that one of the most challenging and saddening realizations from this trip is just how politicized and polarizing an issue as ostensibly “harmless” as elderly divided families can be.

Anyways, that’s enough about the politics! (I thought I left that behind in DC, but alas…!) Another thing that struck me about the trip was the concept of kinship and connection that sometimes extends beyond shared memories or even shared heritage. For instance, two of the interviewees were born in South Korea, but both of their fathers’ last wishes (유언) before they passed away was to find their relatives in the North. Even though they have never seen these relatives before, they have both taken on this goal of visiting their fathers’ hometowns as a personal mission, perhaps with even greater passion than some of the members of the first generation who I’ve met. A kindred spirit I was able to reunite with in Atlanta was Sharon Kim Soldati, who has written beautifully about how her father (who I was able to interview) wants to find his father, older brother, sister-in-law and niece in North Korea.

Speaking with these members of second generations of divided families reminded me just how deep and wide these familial relationships can extend, especially given the importance in Korean culture of paying respects to one’s ancestors through 제사 (jesa) or give a proper funeral burial rite in one’s hometown. As one interviewee warned me, however, there might not be the same standard in North Korea, especially given how many of these family members may have remarried and tried to erase their links to South Korea or the United States (which the North Korean state considers as the enemy). Given the lack of information about North Korean society, I can’t make any assumptions about the needs of the family members in North Korea (nor do I think it is fair to project the needs of those in the US or South Korea onto their counterparts in the North).

I guess some wounds, like separation, civil conflict, or division – especially if they are not treated for so long – are impossible to heal completely. As so many of my interviewees who have visited their relatives in North Korea have said, neither their relatives, themselves, nor their hometowns are the same as they were during their childhood – in fact, they may be barely recognizable. Yet at the same time, I think there is inherent value in preserving these memories and sense of connection, even for the sake of educating younger generations about their roots and breaking out of this cycle of strife and severance that has plagued the Korean Peninsula for the past century.

I knew this would be a meaningful trip, but I didn’t expect just how personal it would be. I think I mentioned that my original motivation for this project came from learning that my maternal grandfather’s family came from Hwanghae Province in North Korea, while my paternal grandfather recently passed away without knowing what happened to his older brother, from whom he was separated during the Korean War.

Yet I made another shocking discovery in Atlanta, when I found out at the dinner table with my great aunt (my maternal grandmother’s 88-year old sister) that she had lived in what is now North Korea for a few years, where she was separated from her older half-sister, brother-in-law, and nephew. Incredulous, I asked my great aunt why she had never told me or my cousins this story before, and she just replied, “well, nobody ever asked, and I never had the opportunity to share…” and before we knew it, I was interviewing my own great aunt – the personal and professional had melded together. It felt like I was coming full circle in a way and encapsulated the goal of this entire project by unlocking a piece of family history I had never known and bring different generations together.   

There are multiple ways to say the word “family” in Korean: there’s the word 가족 (家族/gajok), which is also used in Japanese and Chinese, and refers to those who share a bloodline and heritage (there’s also the word 살붙이sal-buchi to refer to this “skin-ship”). Yet as my friend Eugene pointed out to me in Virginia, there’s also the word 식구 (食口/shikgu), which is often used interchangeably but literally refers to the mouths to feed in a household. I’ll have to do more research on the etymology of this word, but I imagine that the experience of conflict and colonialism shaped its usage, as parents could take in children from the street or live in community with others. Sometimes, the people we are related to are the ones we share meals with regularly, but most of the time (at least in my experience growing up on the East Coast of the US), we only reunite once or twice a year during Thanksgiving or Chuseok for a meal with our relatives. I think it’s beyond the scope of this project to change family dynamics, travel schedules, and dining patterns in the US and Korea, but I think it’s fitting in a way that I learned this about my great aunt while dining with her, my aunts, and my cousin.

So what now? On my last day of this trip, I got to catch up with my first boss from DC, Dan, who now lives in Atlanta with his wife, kids, and parents-in-law. As I recounted the various 우여곡절 (迂餘曲折/ooh-yuh-gok-juhl, or twists and turns) from my trip, he likened it to the literary narrative of the “hero’s journey,” in which someone (like Luke Skywalker or Frodo Baggins) undergoes trials and tribulations (both internal and external) in the depths of the unknown (I guess that would make Dan a Master Yoda or Gandalf kind of mentor character…). While I’m cautious about placing myself at the center of this story or think of myself as any kind of hero, the part that resonated with me (as the reluctant narrator of this journey) the most was how the protagonist eventually must return to the surface with something (whether a magical elixir or treasure) to share with the community. So while I feel a sense of relief and personal fulfillment after completing this marathon (gratitude for all those who supported me along the way, and appreciation for the opportunity), I understand now that there’s a lot more work to be done in order to share these lessons with others, across borders and generations. I can’t promise anything about the future of this blog (I’m surprised at myself that I was able to keep it up as often as I did), but please stay tuned as I work others on the Divided Families USA team, our partners at Korean American Story and the American Friends Service Committee, and many other advisors and allies to produce, archive, and share these stories.   

It’s difficult to encapsulate the whirlwind of events, meetings, and feelings from the past week (I was able to attend several events commemorating the 70^th anniversary of the armistice that marked the ceasefire of the Korean War) into a single cohesive post, as I’ve had very little 여유/余裕 (yuh-yoo), which I guess I could translate as “bandwidth” or “capacity” (both in terms of time, energy, and resources). In many ways, it was like nothing had changed from back when I was living in DC, as I was zipping around the city on my old bike wearing dress clothes in the crushing heat and humidity. I think I was handed more business cards in the past week in DC than I did during my entire year in Belfast! While it would take too long to list everyone I saw and everything I did, I do want to note an overwhelming feeling of gratitude for old and new friends in DC, from those who let me crash on their couch, drove me to interviews, and invited me to meals, to those who offered feedback, advice, and moral support on my project.

On recording versus chasing memories: 기억 (記憶）vs. 추억 (追憶)

The first two questions I have been asking for my interviews (15 done so far!) are “What memories do you have about your hometown (in North Korea)?” and “What memories do you have about your family members (in North Korea)?” In English, the word for “memory” is pretty straightforward. In Korean, however, it can be translated as either 기억 (記憶/ghee-uck or literally to “record memories”) which implies a cognitive recollection of events as they happened, or 추억 (追憶/choo-uck or literally to “chase or pursue memories”), which has a connotation of nostalgia and fondness (in some ways, it feels like I’ve been chasing my own memories from childhood and adulthood on this trip). It may seem like a pedantic difference, but I do think which word I use in Korean shapes the framing of this entire project – rather than trying to capture all of the “facts” of what happened, I think the contribution of this oral history project is to give a taste of how first generation Korean Americans from North Korea look back on their hometown and families.

Given the advanced age of all of the people I have interviewed (who are in their 80s and 90s) and the fact that most of them have not been able to return to their hometowns or see their family members in over 70 years, it is unsurprising that some of them struggle to remember specific details, such as one’s address, the names of nephews and nieces, or the exact date of a battle (though I have been amazed by how clearly some people do remember these facts). On the other hand, it’s been truly heartwarming to hear about some of the other kind of memories (추억), such as memories of skiing as a child, an older sibling’s care during a sickness, or a mother’s last words to “stay alive” before separation. On a more meta level, I guess this is what this blog is becoming – rather than a record of everything I did and everyone I met in chronological order, I am trying to select the themes and scenes that feel more resonant.

On processing the knots of our collective “han” and conflict

Something that left quite a deep impression on me (i.e. left me in tears) was in Philadelphia, when Mr. Ki Shin Lee, a 89-year old man from Hwanghae Province, shared how seeing his younger siblings again as adults (after last seeing them as children) made him truly understand the meaning of the phrase 기가 막히다 (in Japanese, 気が詰まる, which describes feeling speechless or in disbelief, but literally refers to your “chi” or energy being constrained or blocked. I’m by no means an expert on this concept, but I wonder if it is possible to free these points of division and blockage. I attended a “Grief Transmutation Circle” that focused on recognizing the concept of “한/恨/han, or the collective grief of the Korean people given their/our history of separation, conflict, and occupation. I’m not sure just how unique this feeling is to the Korean people (as Vamik Volkan writes, each nation establishes their own “chosen traumas,” which I have certainly seen in how Irish identity has been shaped as well. But what did resonate with me was when one of the speakers at this ceremony talked about how as Koreans, “we are often not taught how to cry, nor why we are crying.” After I asked at a subsequent event of how we can teach future generations how to deal with this “han” and collective trauma in a constructive way, an elderly member of the community shared how “not everyone cries through their tears” – in other words, there are different forms of lament that should each be respected and honored.

My latest interviewee – a florist in New Jersey who says he weeps (대성통곡/大聲痛哭) about the unresolved conflict and division of the Korean Peninsula every week – talked about the various manifestations of his han as 응어리 (eung-uh-rhee), which can literally refer to the lumps and knots that form in our muscles, or figuratively to the emotional baggage that we often keep pent up deep in our hearts. It reminded me of one of the words for “conflict” in Korean – 갈등 (葛藤), which literally refers to an arrowroot vine entangled in a wisteria tree. During this trip (but especially in DC), I was reminded of the various layers of conflict that make an issue like family reunions (that should be simple in theory) into one that it is so politically charged and complicated. These layers range from deep strife between members of the first generation of Korean Americans on Cold War attitudes, to the spectrum of activists working on North Korea (from security and human rights to humanitarian aid and engagement), to the geopolitical interests of the US, China, South Korea, and North Korea (among other countries). I do think that at their core, most of these various groups share a common goal, whether to improve the lives of the people of North Korea or the reunify the North and South, and there’s an energy in places where people of similar beliefs gather together (or, as my mom likes to call it, 유유상종/類類相從, the Korean idiom that refers to birds of a feather flocking together). However, I’m saddened to see that they are sometimes unable to even share space together, often due to clashing egos and zero-sum attitudes about how to address the conflict.

Even after four years working in this space in DC, perhaps there’s still some peacebuilding idealism left in me (honestly, I think thanks to working in other spaces like the Taiwan Strait and Northern Ireland) that leads me to believe that a conflict as deeply rooted and enduring like that on/over the Korean Peninsula and between the Korean people requires a profound transformation of the existing dynamics, rather than trying to apply the same tactics that got it entangled in the first place. I remember how Dan Jasper (who used to work on North Korea issues at the American Friends Service Committee and was a trusted advocate for Korean American divided families) once said something along the lines of how being a bridge involves people on both sides stepping all over you. As I approach the end of my journey across the country doing interviews this summer, I’m realizing there’s a much longer road ahead in terms of how to produce, store, and deliver these stories. So, as I try to play a bridging role between families, generations, political factions, and governments, I hope that I can remain steadfast and grounded in the overarching values of healing, humanity, and reconciliation.

P.S.

• In DC, I got to meet Gaisu Yari, an Afghan human rights activist who started Afghan Voices of Hope , a collection of memories and messages from Afghans in exile around the world like herself. I’ve already learned so much from Gaisu and her project in terms of how to hold and curate heavy stories to a broader audience.

• I’m so glad that we are partnering with Korean American Story, a nonprofit organization dedicated to capturing, creating, preserving and sharing the stories of the Korean American experience - I can’t think of a better organization to work with to share these stories with the Korean American community.

I’m not going to be able to name all these sources of support and replenishment here, but here are some that feel most top of mind. The first was in Fresno, where I stopped for seven hours on my way down to LA from San Francisco to meet with Dr. Marn Cha (a professor originally from Chongjin, North Korea who wrote a book on Koreans in Central California) and Jennifer Deibert (DPRK Program Director at the American Friends Service Committee, the organization sponsoring this project). A few months ago, Jennifer had connected me with Dr. Cha after reading his book and discovering that he had been able to visit his hometown to meet his relatives in 1992. Jennifer not only let me use her organization’s office space for the interview, but also provided some much-welcomed refreshments (including fresh peaches from her farm and chilled Korean corn tea) that made us feel comfortable and welcome.

It was clear that Dr. Cha has a strong emotional connection with his uncles and cousins in North Korea, which he has preserved meticulously through photos and letters despite not being able to see them in almost 30 years and losing contact for the past 20 years. But Dr. Cha’s sense of kinship extends beyond his shared bloodline or Korean heritage – in his closing message, he encouraged younger generations to broaden their understanding of family separation to include refugees and migrants from more recent conflicts.  I couldn’t agree more with this call for solidarity and empathy for divided families around the world and throughout history (the main reason Eugene and I started the Divided Families Podcast) and how knowing this history helps me navigate my own identity.

In LA (arguably the epicenter of the Korean American community), I had tried reaching out to various associations of people hailing from North Korea, each with their own agenda, politics, and leadership structure. In the end, I was able to meet with representatives of two organizations – the LA chapter of the Korean-American Assembly for Reunion of Separated Families (일천만이산가족위원회) and the Southern California Council of Korean Americans from the Hamgyung Namdo Province (남가주함경남도민회). Through the former, I was able to interview Mr. Seung Suk Byun, a 95-year old retired electrical engineer from Hwanghaedo who was separated from his pregnant wife and was only able to visit his hometown in the mid-2000s, after she had already passed away. My heart swelled as he shared how he ended up giving his relatives all of the things he brought with him on that trip, to the point where he only returned to the hotel that evening with a toothbrush and the clothes that he was wearing that day.

His memoir, titled “65 years after a fortnight” (보름 후 65년) includes a prologue, in which he understands and forgives the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) which has separated North and South Korea since 1953, but asks for it to please go away. As we said goodbye, one of the leaders of the organization gave me a warm hug and said “we’re proud of you, Paul,” bringing tears to my eyes that someone meeting me for the first time could put such confidence in me.

The latter organization introduced me to Mr. Seong Joo Kwon (who I realize I had actually met the last time I visited LA), for whom a promise with his older brother to come back to Hamhung in three days has turned into 73 years. Mr. Kwon shared how he cries whenever he listens to his brother’s favorite classical music composers like Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, or Mendelssohn*

Perhaps the most moving part of my time in Southern California, however, were the two interviews that I had that brought together multiple generations. Thanks to Angie Pak from the Pacific Century Institute (which is also supporting some of the costs of this project), I was able to meet a college student named Faith, who encouraged her own grandmother to share her story of being separated from her father. Part of what made the interview so special was that Faith’s father allowed us to use his office space. As she said a final prayer for her relatives, expressing her hope that her granddaughter can carry on her legacy and visit North Korea someday, I realized how this kind of precious encounter between grandmother, father, and granddaughter is so rare, yet embodies the kind of intergenerational understanding that this project hopes to facilitate.

I felt similarly in the last interview that I had, in which I was able to visit the home of Mrs. Hyo Sun Yang from Kaesong, who hasn’t seen her father since 1950. What truly inspired me was how her daughter (who first came to the US as a nurse and lives with her mother in Glendale) actually encouraged Mrs. Yang (who was initially hesitant to contribute her story) to speak up so that younger generations don’t forget this history.

I’ve tried to pack in too much already into this post (and my flight is landing soon), but with eight interviews now complete, I feel so incredibly grateful not only to the interviewees themselves for being vulnerable and courageous enough to contribute their stories, but also to their family members and friends who believe in the importance of this project and encouraged them to speak up. Sometimes holding these stories and emotions feels quite heavy (like when I broke into tears in the car after one of the interviews), but for now, they feel like blessings that keep me moving forward despite the unexpected obstacles along the way.

Filled with a sense of (be)longing,

Paul

*For a more detailed feature on Korean American divided families in LA like Mr. Kwon, check out this documentary from Voice of America

The first was with Dr. Hung Kyu Bang, a 95-year old former professor who was separated from his older sister in North Korea and was able to travel to his hometown in 2014 to meet with her children (but only after she had passed away). He shared stories in English, Korean, and Japanese about how his sister had accompanied him on his hourlong commute to school and how when he was 14, she had stayed up two nights in a row to nurse him back to health after a severe illness. He told me about how wishes he could contact his older sister’s family in the North like he regularly calls his other siblings in Seoul.

The second interview was with Mr. Heang Ki Paik, who arranged the gathering on behalf of NCCKANK. Mr. Paik left North Korea for the South when he was only 1 year old, served in the Vietnam War, and immigrated to the US to run a Tae Kwon Do school outside San Francisco. Since hosting a group of North Korean athletes in 2007 and making a connection with North Korea’s Permanent Mission to the UN in New York, Mr. Paik was able to fulfill his mother’s final wish to find her family in North Korea, not only visiting his hometown in 2010 but exchanging 37 letters with his relatives. I had met Mr. Paik only once before (back in 2018), and I felt touched by how he has gone out of his way not only to reconnect with his own relatives, but to facilitate informal reunions for others (such as Dr. Bang).

We also got to meet up with Dr. Jason Ahn, who took time off from medical school to make a documentary on Korean American divided families, which was released in 2014. It was through watching the film and reaching out to Jason back in the summer of 2016 that I started to get involved with Divided Families USA and the issue of divided families in the first place. It’s heartening to know that I’m following in the footsteps of people like Jason (and so many others who I haven’t named here) who have dedicated so much of their time and energy toward the issue of reuniting elderly Korean Americans separated from their family members in North Korea.

After a layover in Fresno for a few hours, I’m off to LA for a few days for what may be the most intensive part of the trip, which has already felt like quite a whirlwind constantly trying to plan the next step. I’m extra grateful to people like Dr. Bang and Mr. Paik for being willing to share their stories, especially because I’m realizing that not everyone shares their desire to reconnect with their families in North Korea – some have told me it’s better for them not to know at this point in their lives, while others are worried about the political and financial repercussions of contact with North Korea. Most of all, this experience has made me appreciate the fact that I can freely visit my own brother and stay in touch with him even after saying farewell, unlike Dr. Bang. If I feel like few days isn’t enough to spend with my own family and I don’t want to leave, I can only imagine how painful it must be for these divided families, even those who are able to reunite, only to be separated again permanently…

• Read this article in the SF Chronicle about how Mr. Paik connected with his relatives in North Korea and helped others to do the same through this channel

• Check out this podcast episode in which my co-host Eugene interviews Jason about his experience making the Divided Families Film and this profile by Korean American Story

The biggest update is that I was able to do my first interview, which actually came about quite serendipitously. After making dozens of phone calls and emails to try to find an elderly Korean American with family in North Korea to interview, I had initially been worried I wouldn’t be able to find someone. On my first full day in Boston, I was meeting up with Kathy Moon, a renowned professor of Korea and politics when I learned that mother, Dr/Reverend Ae-Ra Kim, left her hometown in North Korea as a child and was willing to speak with me.

What amazed me was not only how eloquently Dr. Kim switched between English and Korean (which is uncommon for an 85-year-old first-generation immigrant) but also how clearly she recalled the journey her family made from her hometown of Ganggye (at the northern tip of the Korean Peninsula) to the South when she was barely 7 years old. While she didn’t have any photos, I could imagine the enormous home she grew up in (which she says was later seized by the new Communist government). Though her mother (originally from the South) was glad to leave a town where she faced such hardship and cruelty from her husband’s side of the family, Dr. Kim recounted how her father made what must have been a painstakingly difficult decision to leave his brothers and mother to join his wife and kids in the South. Though she no longer remembers the faces of her uncles or grandmother, she shared how she still wants to see them, holds no malice toward them for treating her mother so poorly, and would want to hear how they’ve been after losing contact for almost 80 years*.

I was quite nervous given that it was my first interview for this project, but fortunately (?) I only had to use audio equipment, given that Dr. Kim preferred that she doesn’t appear on camera. But when she started talking about her message to her relatives in North Korea, I started to tear up (while sitting on her living room floor) and affirmed just how heartwrenching and important these stories are for Koreans, wherever they are on the Peninsula or in the world, and whatever age they may be.

Now it’s full steam ahead for the West Coast leg of my journey, and I hope I can maintain this delicate balance between making the most of where I am now and planning the next stage of the trip with the precious and limited time I have! Will try to write again on my next plane/train/automobile journey.

Feeling proud of myself for writing my first-ever second blog post and hopeful that I can turn this into a habit,

Paul

*I should note that North Korea might be the least accessible country in the world, given extremely tight regulations on communications with the outside world (including a lack of outward-facing internet and no email, phone calls, or social media for a majority of its citizens), a ban on travel for US citizens (since a controversial incident in 2017 involving a student who was detained and later died), and halting of regular mail correspondence as well (the South Korean Ministry of Unification reports having a repository of thousands of written letters and video messages that they have not been able to deliver to North Korea since the mid-2000s.

I recently returned to the US from spending the past year in Belfast, Northern Ireland — an experience that I am trying to process through this platform something that I have always wanted to do. There are too many experiences that deserve their own post, such as waking up to birdsongs every morning overlooking a lush forest and relishing the near-complete silence in the evenings in my wee dorm room in the leafy corner of South Belfast, engaging with various community organizations building peace and reconciliation like Healing Through Remembering or the Cross-Border Orchestra of Ireland, to activities that have tested my physical and spiritual endurance, such as running the Belfast Marathon or spending three days fasting at Lough Derg (otherwise known as the “Ironman of Pilgrimages” and “St. Patrick’s Purgatory”), as well as my recent decision to return to Northern Ireland in September to live and work at the Corrymeela Community (an ecumenical center for peace and reconciliation overlooking the north coast of Ireland) instead of accepting a job offer from the US foreign service (much to my family’s chagrin…) But nothing feels as urgent or as important as this current project before me, which I’ll try to explain here.

After spending the past few days back home in New Jersey/New York, I’ve hit the ground running on what feels like the most daunting marathon that I’ve faced so far. I’m writing this now in Boston, where I’m beginning a journey across the US (San Francisco, Fresno, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago) to start an oral history project for elderly Korean American divided families from the Korean War. I’ll be collecting messages they’d want to share with their families in North Korea so that one day, they could be delivered to their relatives through a channel such as the Red Cross and serve as a form of reconnection and closure. But in the meantime, I hope that this archive can serve as a touchstone of memory and awareness for younger generations to understand the impact of the enduring division and conflict on the Korean Peninsula, especially for those who did not grow up with their grandparents like I did.

I’ve also enjoyed trying to learn a bit of Irish (the language that some people outside Ireland know as Gaelic), which I feel like has helped me understand Irish culture, places, and history on a deeper level (though given how difficult it is, I’m still very much a beginner unlike some of my gaeilgeoir friends). There are two words (that sound quite similar) that resonate with me now: dóchas (which translates to “hope”) and dúchas (which has multiple translations, such as heritage, ancestral home, or what a longtime coordinator of the West Belfast oral history project calls “the experiences that make us who we are”). I couldn’t help but to draw a parallel with the hope that countless Koreans (both on the Peninsula and in the diaspora) have to return to their homelands, reconnect with their heritage, and reunite with their loved ones.

I’m inspired by similar initiatives, such as multimedia or photo exhibits on families separated from the Korean War such as Still Present Pasts or A Long Separation, documentary films such as the Divided Families Film and Memory of Forgotten War, as well as projects with similar methodologies such as the Remember 727 project with Korean War veterans around the world, the Shoah Foundation archive for Holocaust survivors, or the Afghan Voices of Hope project for displaced Afghans living in exile.

Since starting to work on this issue through Divided Families USA seven years ago, this feels like the most urgent, important task that I need to tackle. Ultimately, I’m doing this in honor of my two grandfathers who passed away, in the hope that this project can serve as a form of paying it back to their generation of elders while also paying it forward for future generations.

I’ve felt quite overwhelmed and stressed preparing for this trip, making dozens of calls to the various chapters of the Committee for the Five Northern Korean Provinces and the Assembly for Reuniting the Ten Million Divided Families (and random contacts) to try to find elderly Korean Americans to interview (many of whom have already passed away), finding the proper audio and video equipment, and planning the logistics of the itinerary on my own. What worries me the most is that I won’t be able to collect enough messages or produce them to the standard that these families deserve, given that I lack both time and technical expertise. I’m not sure how I can reconcile this sense of responsibility and desire to produce a high-quality archive while reminding myself to “not let the perfect be the enemy of the good” (as former mayor of New Haven John DeStefano used to say in class…)

Fortunately, I’ve received funding for the project through the American Friends Service Committee (a Quaker organization that works on humanitarian aid in North Korea) and the Pacific Century Institute, which has allowed me to work full-time on this project for the summer. (well, I also have a master’s dissertation to write on oral history projects from the conflict Northern Ireland, but that’s another story…)

I’ve also received so much help already from so many friends, advisors, and mentors (you know who you are), whether it’s through proofreading and translating documents, providing accommodation, borrowing camera equipment, and providing moral support and encouragement.

After dozens of cold calls and emails to elderly individuals and organizations, I also feel buoyed by the generosity of strangers, such as the Korean American Senior Citizens’ Association of New Jersey, who welcomed me in as a prodigal son of the community, offered their office space for interviews, and invited me to their barbecue the following day.

So, as I embark on this journey, I will try to remind myself that “it can be fun” – a phrase that my late spiritual mentor Father Bob Beloin had written on his office door – and convince myself of 인연/緣分/ご縁, the idea in East Asian cultures that we are meant to meet (or not meet) each other at a particular time and place. I also hope to document my process, highlights, and learnings as much as possible through this platform and social media (while doing my best to be present in the moment!)

With trepidation, anticipation, and appreciation,

Paul

Some other resources on this issue:

• This issue brief I wrote for the National Committee on North Korea

• Three op-eds (the most recent one, one from 2018, another from 2020)

• This 2-minute video I made of a (now-deceased) Korean American man in Virginia asking Trump to help him reunite with his family in North Korea

• The podcast I co-host on stories of family separation (@dividedfamiliespodcast)

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