The Summit Meeting in Pyongyang proved it was a cooperative effort by Koreans. Not one walked away from or stalked out in high dudgeon. It’s what is called a fait accompli, with Koreans cooperating for the common good. Significant was the absence of the Foreign Powers. If memory serves rightly foreign powers for over a century hovered over the countryside, the principals China, Japan, Tsarist Russia, now the USSR, and the USA. They left a monument, however. It is the DMZ, the 38th Parallel. South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il undoubtedly prepare to mend fences together for Korean interests, What and how do they cope with the DMZ? It isn’t exactly a fence that makes for good neighbors. However, the first step (cooperation) has been made by Koreans themselves. There’s hope. Where there is a will, there is a way too.
Which leads back to Pyongyang in 1907. A long time ago, for sure, but the events happened and the memory remained for those involved in the freedom of Korea. These men and women today are not living. One name stays alive. That of Ahn Changho. His credentials are impeccable and are not lost in time. He returned from San Francisco where he organized Koreans into forming a fraternal association. It brought the scattered Koreans together, making their lives easier jobwise and their living conditions bearable. Koreans learned to help each other, to share their problems. It was a cooperative venture. Ahn Changho led families to Pachapa camp, in Riverside, California. Pachapa camp worked successfully until the failure of the orange crop in 1913, but the ten years was proof the experiment worked. Koreans lived their lifestyle, cooperatively. Now in his homeland, he pointed out cooperation was imperative if the country was to be free. Local business people heard and heeded. His grandson, Philip Cuddy, noted of this 1907 visit: (Ahn Changho) — "Returns to Korea via Tokyo. Moves audiences with patriotic speech at the Taeguk Institute, a Korean student organization, while staying in Tokyo. Organizes the New Peoples’ Association, a secret organization, with Kap Lee in Seoul. Establishes the Daesung Academy in Pyongyang; Taeguk Bookstore in Pyongyang, Seoul and Taegu; the Masandong Ceramics Factory in Pyongyang. Interview with Hirobumi Ito, rejects his offer to form a cabinet."

There was a 16-year-old student in Pyongyang, who came to hear the Korean leader, with other students. His name was Choon Har Kim. He and the others listened to Ahn’s stern warnings, his voice eloquent and stirring. His message was always the need for cooperation at every level of Korean life, and patriotic discipline in face of the coming Japanese takeover of their country. The 1905 Portsmouth Treaty was the go-ahead signal. Kim told how he and the students followed Ahn Changho’s movements even when he went swimming in the Tadong River. He said their idol was a fine swimmer, and had a fine figure. Then Ahn Changho left the city to tour the country, giving never-ending talks for the next few years he was there. He had to leave with the annexation, 1910.
Choon Har finished his schooling at the Christian academy, founded by the Presbyterians; the Kims were Christian. The Japanese were surveying every inch of the ground in Pyongyang. Kim was curious to learn what surveying meant and went to an engineering college, receiving his civil engineer’s degree. He applied to the government for a position. Of course, it was a Japanese position, and he was turned down because he was a Christian. Then he applied for a teaching post, where he taught third graders. He married; his wife bore him a daughter and then a son. He did not see them grow up. The Student Movement occurred in 1919, when he was 28 years old. He joined the young marchers as a courier in the planning stages and was deeply involved. The Japanese were after him. Kim fled to China; there he visited the provisional government in Shanghai. Support for the exiled government came from the overseas Korean, from the Koreans at home who had difficulty sending money, and Koreans in Manchuria, the largest body overseas, who were not generous, apparently having grown remote from their homeland. Kim found he could do little in Shanghai to help the provisional government and traveled north to Nanking. He was fortunate there. The head of the YMCA had a daughter in Korea who knew Kim. His name was Gillette and was from Los Angeles. He quickly obtained a visa for Kim to go to America. The year was 1924.
Kim found work immediately in Los Angeles. Koreans had opened fruitstands on the highways and there was a living in the business. He was to hold many jobs, he said, and meet many Koreans in the Korean National Association, among them Jacob Dunn and George Kim. He also learned his wife’s father was a worker in the oil fields in Taft, near Bakersfield, north of Los Angeles. Working, he found he could send his wife income to carry on in Korea. It was to be a long separation, but it was broken with a six-months visit in 1928. INS refused her an extension. It wasn’t until 1965 she was permitted to emigrate under the new immigration laws of the early ‘60s. Asked why she was so patient and long enduring, she said, her husband translating, "Only main thing (was) independence of Korea." Their experiences may seem commonplace today. Not so. Every word told was a story, a human story.
He told about his boyhood in Pyongyang. Going to school, living three blocks from there, and there to learn Hangul (Korean alphabet) and counting, singing hymns in Korean, and learning the American alphabet but no American words! In the autumn the road was cluttered with beautiful colored leaves, mostly maple trees, cedar and oak. The school division was similar to the American system, with a slight difference: elementary school was for six years, then senior high school, a missionary school and a college. All the facilities were in walking distance. And intrigued with the Japanese surveying around Pyongyang, he added the engineering school to his list of schools.

He described his life as happy and peaceful when he was growing. His father and mother were good people and everybody knew each other where they lived. Holidays were celebrated and were happy occasions. New Year’s was observed on the old-time calendar (lunar). Tano or May Day was spent at the park, with swings going up and down, and games of all kinds played by the children. Kim remembered being happy. In the fall there was Thanksgiving, it was in October. The Kims were Christian; Chusok was considered heathen by their religion. For Christians there was Christmas but not like what he was to see in America; also Easter. He recalled there was no special celebration in Korea for either events.
He still dreams of his boyhood in Pyongyang, he said, sitting in his San Fernando Valley home, talking about his Pyongyang experiences. The Kims lived in the city when families lived on farms! They grew productive foodstuff, and lived off the land. Amazing to think about today. He recalled the weather — the cold winds in November, called "Siwa", which he did not translate, not knowing its meaning. But, he said, for him it meant snowfall and skating on the ice of the Taedong River. Then there were the mountains around the city that looked like California’s low-lying foothills rising to become higher distant mountains, where big oak trees grew and pine trees which seem to be everywhere in Korea. He had not been to Diamond Mountain, the goal of all Koreans; but he read about the beautiful Diamond and loved it as he dreamed of seeing it one day, but never did. And North Korea’s own Paektu-san and its beautiful glacial lake ("Tundee", the name sounded).
He described how his parents grew rice; it was the dry farming method. The method required less work and less space. First, he said, the land was cultivated, prepared for sowing. Everything was by hand. Seeds sown by hand, dropped into furrows, where children came after the planters and covered the seeds with soil. A rainy season followed the planting; dependence on natural rainfall — without paddies — was the reason for calling it dry farming. The crop was harvested by hand. A small-handled scythe used to cut the stalks, and the rice stalks tied together and taken to the farmer’s yard for drying. There grinding machines used for separating rice from chaff ("brown part" was Kim’s expression) and was called winnowing, a process which took several weeks’ work, with everybody helping, like a cooperative team, and finally the rice stored in special barns, with the surplus sold. Rice, he said, was served with every meal; there was nostalgia in the words. Kimchee his mother made at home. But she bought the pacha from vegetable growers who, she claimed, grew better greens and radishes than did her own garden. Anyway, the pacha growers had a living to make like everyone else.

The interview with Choon Har Kim was remarkable. He spoke with so much heartfelt emotions about his Korean world. Listening to him was like listening to poetry. I had gone in search for Korean material, specifically on Pyongyangdo people. He made me glad to be born of Korean parents from the north. What we were taught in the American world was about the "gentleman of the old school", a man of integrity. Responsible, honest, decent. Not easily swayed. This was Choon Har Kim.
Choon Har Kim was born in 1891. The interview with him was taped in 1977. He was 86 years of age. His voice firm, his English often better spoken than mine. We met in his home on Fox Street in San Fernando, with the afternoon sunlight turning everything white and shining in the room. It was a shining moment. A young man came in to say he had come to take them to their doctor’s appointment. Both the people rose to greet him. Kim said, "Our grandson Michael Kim. He is County engineer, works in big white building downtown." There was pride and a feeling of accomplishment. And I remembered when Choon Har Kim explained about his son, Michael’s father, who had been an agricultural lecturer at a Seoul university when the Korean War broke, and he disappeared in the first days of the onslaught. Kim explained simply, "The Reds come and catch my boy. After that we don’t know more."