Korean-Americans yearn for family in N.Korea after 60 years apart
By Alex Dobuzinskis LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - When 82-year-old Tae Young Kim thinks about the happiest days of his childhood in Korea, he recalls spinning tops on the floor and going sledding with his younger brother. Those are some of the few precious memories Kim has of his family before the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 separated him, at age 17, from his two brothers and three sisters. He has not seen them since. Kim, who now lives in Los Angeles, is one of thousands of Korean-Americans in the twilight of their lives divided from their family in North Korea for more than 60 years, and with little hope of a reunion before they die. While North and South Korea have negotiated tear-filled gatherings between family members a number of times over the years, Korean-Americans except in isolated cases have been left out because Washington has no diplomatic relations with Pyongyang. Yet as their numbers - 100,000 according to some estimates - dwindle with old age, activists and U.S. lawmakers are stepping up efforts on their behalf. Senator Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois, and Representative Charles Rangel, a Democrat from New York, this week wrote to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry asking him to find a way to allow Korean-Americans with family in North Korea to visit their relatives. "Every time the North Koreans open the door a little bit, we want to make sure that Secretary Kerry never forgets the families that are torn apart and to have them on the agenda," Rangel, one of only three veterans of the Korean War in the U.S. Congress, told Reuters. It is unclear how many Korean-Americans with immediate family in the North are still alive. The letter from Kirk and Rangel says an estimated 100,000 Korean-Americans are excluded from family reunions with the North. The lobby group National Coalition on the Divided Families believes the numbers are much smaller, although an exact count has not been taken for some years. FORGOTTEN FACES While the families still have hope, Chahee Stanfield, the Korean-American executive director of the National Coalition on the Divided Families, said that "what has discouraged them is not their age but ... the tense situation between the United States and North Korea." "Even the people who are at nursing homes, they still want to see their sisters or their brothers," she said. The U.S. State Department said this week it is concerned about the separations and has previously raised the issue with the North Korean government. North Korea's Permanent Mission to the United Nations declined to comment. Decades of lost contact, other than a handful of letters exchanged at a cost through intermediaries, have left Tae Young Kim with only a hazy picture of his siblings. "I don't even remember ever celebrating their birthdays, so I don't remember their birthdays," Kim said of his siblings. Kim was in high school and living alone in the city of Hamhung when he was forced to join South Korean troops stationed in the region. He was soon evacuated by the U.S. military from advancing Chinese and North Korean forces, before going on to fight in the Korean War and eventually emigrating to the United States. Sung Shil Kim, 85, fled North Korea at age 19 with her husband because he wanted to study theology and chafed at a lack of religious freedom. Kim, no relation to Tae Young but also a Los Angeles resident, has trouble remembering the physical appearance of her younger brother. Since her escape she has never been able to contact him nor a cherished cousin who remained behind in North Korea along with her parents and uncles, who were farmers and fishermen. She assumes that her brother might have been forced to serve in the North Korean military. "He would be very handsome, because my father was very handsome," said Kim of her brother. "My last hope is to see them before I die." (Additional reporting by Hyungwon Kang in Toronto, editing by Jill Serjeant and G Crosse)
