In the heart of Los Angeles’ Korea-town, Boo-Young Oh, 75, talked wistfully of the home he left in North Korea, and of how much he wishes that the meeting this week of the two Koreas’ leaders will lead to reunification of the divided peninsula.
“For all these years, we have been praying and waiting for a free, united Korea,” said Oh, who hasn’t seen his native north since he left in 1946. “Now the two top leaders are talking about it in person. That’s encouraging.”
As Oh and his wife, Hyang-rim, 74, watched the coverage of the historic summit of the South’s Kim Dae-jung and the North’s Kim Jong-il on the local Korean-language television station, he was struck by the irony of it all, he said.
“Kim Il-sung [Kim Jong-il’s father] force me to leave my home, and now his son could be letting me back in,” he said. “It’s like a dream.”
Since the two Kims agreed to meet, Korean churches throughout Southern California, which has the largest population of people of Korean ancestry outside Asia, have held countless prayer meetings, attended by tens of thousands.
After half a century of enmity between the two governments— including a fratricidal war and years of talk about reunification but little action—many Korean Americans understandably are skeptical.
“Can 50 years of indoctrination change in one day just because the two leaders shook hands and people saw it on television?” asked Kee-whan Ha, president of the Korean American Federation of Los Angeles.
Ha said he believes that much of what happened this week (of June 12) at the meeting in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang—including hundreds of thousands of people lining the streets to greet Kim Dae-jung—was for show.
“They put on their best clothes and showed up because they were ordered to,” he said.
Regardless, the meeting of the two leaders in itself is an epochal achievement, said Jimmy Choi, chairman of the Los Angeles-based Korean Resource Center.
Choi, a Quaker who has visited North Korea three times since 1981—most recently last year—said he has never been more optimistic about the future of the Korean peninsula.
“I am very excited,” he said. “I know that many Koreans are suspicious—they’re wondering whether Kim Jong-il is putting on an act—but I simply want to trust this time. After all, this is the first time the [two countries’] leaders at the highest level have met.”
What he has noticed during his visits is that North Korean society is a bit more open than before, he said.
He said he was pleasantly surprised that Kim Jong-il came across as much more human than expected. For years, the reclusive North Korean leader, who inherited power after his father’s death in July 1994, has been portrayed in the South Korean press as a dangerous eccentric, allegedly responsible for ordering such atrocities as the 1989 killing of South Korean officials visiting Burma, now known as Myanmar.
During their talks, the two leaders promised to allow exchanges of separated relatives around Aug. 15, the 55th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japan.
Choi said he hopes that Aug. 15 will mark the start of mass visits for separated families.
An estimated 11 million Koreans were separated by the partitioning, imposed after Japan’s surrender in World War II. What was to have been liberation for Korea turned into a divided country, the North under the influence of the Soviet Union and the South under the United States’ wing.
Inbo Sim, 36, a Korean American activist, said he was disappointed that the two Kims didn’t discuss the issue of security. (The South’s Kim, after returning to Seoul, revealed that the two leaders had indeed discussed such issues.)
“Concrete steps to ensure military stability on the peninsula is necessary,” Sim said. “Koreans didn’t divide their country.” Similarly, reunification of the peninsula also will involve the United States, Japan, China and other powers, he said.
Sim said he doesn’t want Korea to be a pawn of power struggles between superpowers.
Joon-bok Kim, 79, who left Pyongyang in 1946 for the South, said it’s too early to judge.
“This is a good development, but we have to wait and see what follows,” he said.
“When you are joyous, you want your joy to be full and complete,” said the Rev. Hyun-seung Yang of Shalom Mission near Koreatown. “But in this case, the joy is mixed because we feel that we need to proceed cautiously; we need sang-froid.”
Yang, who as a delegate of the Los Angeles-based Korean American Sharing Movement took grain to North Korea in 1997, said it is important to remember that what is happening between the two leaders is not solely their doing.
“What has come to pass,” Yang said, “is the result of blood, sweat, tears—and prayers—of countless Koreans everywhere.”