Saemsori Project Seeks to Reunite Korean Families Separated by War
Alice Jean Suh, the Director of the Eugene Bell Foundation for the Washington DC office, has been meeting with Congressional staff over the past few months to gain support for the Saemsori Project, which seeks to help Korean-Americans get in touch with lost relatives in North Korea.
This project, whose mission is to promote family reunifications and positive human contacts between the U.S. and North Korea, has evolved over years of Korean-American citizens requesting representatives of the Eugene Bell Foundation to find their lost family members in North Korea.
The Eugene Bell Foundation is a non-profit, humanitarian aid organization that has been delivering TB medicine and supplies to various care centers throughout North Korea since 1995. As the Eugene Bell Foundation delivers supplies twice annually to over 40 specific sites in North Korea, its donors continually ask that the medicine be delivered to their families in those specific towns. However, the United States does not have an appropriate channel through which they can make such requests.
Donors of Eugene Bell have been asking for ten years, and “it’s heartbreaking,” shares Alice Suh, Director of the Saemsori project, “They’ve asked us to help them…and after about ten years, it wears on you, and you realize these people are not getting any younger… they don’t have much time left, and this is really their last chance. Many of them have died already and missed that last chance.”
Currently, Korean-American citizens don’t have anyone to help them find their families. In order to negotiate with the North Korean government, Americans need an appropriate channel, but there’s no embassy in North Korea through which American citizens can appeal to the government, as there is in all other countries. Korean-Americans have even tried to go through the South Korean government to get to their families, but the South Korean government cannot speak for American citizens, even though they have tried. In fact, South Korea has assisted 84 Korean-Americans to locate their families, but they were all relatives of South Korean citizens.
Korean-Americans have gone to North Korea to find their families, and they do try to send their families aid, gifts, and presents, but it’s never been through a transparent, official channel. “They can get in trouble in the U.S. if they come back,” Alice explains, “but these are grandmothers, and this is their dying wish.”
Therefore, Saemsori seeks to assist Korean-American citizens in establishing an accountable, transparent channel through which they can submit requests to find North Korean relatives. They act as an intermediary for helpless grandmothers who may not realize they can ask their government for help. Alice says that many would go to their constituent offices if they could speak English and understood that the U.S. government has a responsibility to assist them in these efforts. Alice asserts that “The U.S. does care about this issue, it’s just that no one has been pushing for this. The Korean-American community never knew that this is something they can ask for from their government, and now you do have second generation Korean-Americans who understand that this country is based on people, and that people have a voice in their government.”
As part of this project, Saemsori is compiling an offsite, private database to report cases of divided Korean-American families as a reference for the U.S. government. In addition, they collect letters, photographs, and oral histories to enable these Korean grandmothers and others to tell their stories. Many Korean-Americans may not realize they have North Korean relatives, as many Koreans came to America during the 60s and 70s and never told their children and grandchildren that they came from North Korea, as those with communist ties were blacklisted from jobs.
Furthermore, these histories and stories serve to promote public awareness of and interest in the issue. The media and public have been very responsive and sympathetic to this purely humanitarian cause. “It’s such a compelling humanitarian story…tragedy…really,” which never really gets told. But it is an important part of American history as well, she says, and everyone, including Korean war veterans who watched Korean families get split up right in front of them, has been very sympathetic. “You can’t not be sympathetic to this,” says Alice.
Besides, this is strictly a domestic issue, separate and independent from human rights, human refugees, or any other controversial issue when it comes to North Korea. It’s not a policy decision, nor something that should be attached to any administration’s political agenda, as it is a domestic issue of concern to American citizens.
Saemsori is looking for people who want to help. They welcome help translating these grandmothers’ stories, writing letters in English to their Congressmen, compiling the data for their database, and helping Korean-Americans and others become aware of and involved in this project.
If you wish to know more about the Saemsori Project or the Eugene Bell Foundation, please visit their websites at: www.saemsori.org and www.eugenebell.org.
By Krista Empey
http://www.dynamic-korea.com/opinion/view.php?main=ITV&sub=&uid=200600023458&keyword=&page=