Decade after separation, Korean-American family reunited against all odds
Rev. Jacob Siung-tuk Kim holds his second daughter Sun-hwa in this photo taken on June 5, 1958, at Washington National Airport, now Ronald Reagan National Airport outside Washington, D.C. The Kim family was reunited after a decade of separation. / Courtesy of Eugenia Kim
By Kang Hyun-kyung
Korean-American pastor Jacob Siung-tuk Kim's life became entangled in Korea's tumultuous modern history heralded by Japan's brutal colonial rule of Korea from 1910 to 1945.
During his life (1909-1987), he had endured an unwanted separation from his family members twice ― first with his newlywed wife that lasted nine years and then with his second child that came only three years after his miraculous reunion with his wife.
His love for his wife, Han Hae-gyoung, was tested hard on the heels of their marriage.
About a month after the couple wed in1936, Kim left then Japan-occupied Korea to study theology at the American seminary to follow in the footsteps of his brother who migrated to the United States years earlier and established a thriving church in Los Angeles.
Han was to follow her husband soon, but her plan met an unexpected obstacle ― her visa was denied. The United States was at war with Japan years later, forcing the couple to live apart against their will.
While their separation stretched into years, Han even suffered the consequence of her separation with her husband. She was jailed for 90 days in the cold of winter.
“After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, my father could not return to Korea because being in America he was considered a spy and for that reason my mother was arrested and spent 90s days in prison,” their youngest daughter Eugenia Kim said in a recent interview with The Korea Times.
Kim, author of the award-winning book “The Calligrapher's Daughter,” revisited the trying times her parents and her entire family had endured in the first half of the 20th century in her new book “The Kinship of Secrets.” Her book will be released on Nov. 1.
After seminary school, Kim's father worked with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the U.S. government's wartime intelligence agency, as a translator of Japanese, Korean and written Chinese.
Eugenia Kim speculated her father's experience in the OSS would have caused him to feel the Japanese authorities would catch him if he returned to Korea to reunite with his wife.
On top of this, back then the Japanese authorities considered Koreans being in the United States as a threat to their colonial rule of the country.
Rev. Kim was part of the first wave of Korean immigrants to the U.S. mainland.
After Korea fell into Japan's brutal colonial rule, around 500 Korean intellectuals migrated to the United States under student visas from 1910 to 1920, according to the National Archives of Korea.
Unlike Rev. Kim, the other Koreans were asylum seekers in the guise of students and later gained legal status to stay there. They became overseas freedom fighters and campaigned for Korea's independence.
The arrest and suffering of Rev. Kim's wife because of her husband being in the United States appeared to have come against this backdrop.
The couple's love, however, survived against all odds.
They were reunited in Seoul in 1945 after Korea was liberated from Japan at the end of World War II.
Kim returned to Seoul in October 1945 to work as a translator for General John R. Hodge, who served as military governor of South Korea during the U. S. Army Military Government from 1945 to 1948.
There Kim miraculously met his wife, ending nine years of separation.
“My father was in a U.S. Army uniform, my mother in an impoverished condition,” Eugenia Kim said.
The couple had a belated honeymoon in Seoul, while living together with Han's mother and her brother, and had led a happy life with three children who were born after their reunion.
Their brief happy life, however, was the prelude to another heart-wrenching separation ― this time an even more difficult one. The couple was separated with their second child Sun-hwa, which continued for a decade from 1948 to 1958.
After his post with the U.S. Army as a civilian field officer ended in 1948, Kim planned to take his wife and three children to the United States for travel.
His plan, however, faced unexpected opposition from Han's mother who feared she would never see her daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren again if they were to leave poor, chaotic Korea for the United States.
To relieve the anxious mother, the couple reached a difficult decision to leave one of their three children behind, so Han's mother and brother could take care of the child as a guarantee they would come back to Korea.
Their second child Sun-hwa was chosen after the couple spent days and nights pondering what to do.
Mother's anguish
In 1948, they left Korea for the United States by a decommissioned U.S. Navy vessel and arrived in Los Angeles where Kim's brother had a church for Koreans.
Neither Kim nor his wife knew their two-year travel plan would have ended up with their immigration to the United States and separation with their second child for 10 years.
They were unable to return to Korea as the Korean War broke out in 1950.
Rev. Jacob Siung-tuk Kim, his wife Han Hae-gyoung and their children shows the cut-out image, front, of Kim's second child Sun-hwa who was raised by Kim's mother-in-law in Seoul. Han missed her daughter in Seoul so much and spent a decade blaming herself for leaving the daughter behind in Korea until they were eventually reunited in 1958. / Courtesy of Eugenia Kim
Han spent the entire decade blaming herself for letting this tragedy happen.
“Her diaries speak to her longing and her guilt at leaving Sun (Sun-hwa) behind. As the months stretched into years and they could not return for one reason or another, my mother's anxiety and yearning only compounded,” Eugenia Kim said.
To share her mother's deep pain during her separation with Sun-hwa, Eugenia shared part of her mother's diary written in 1949.
“As I listen to news about Korea, the return trip becomes more impossible… what use is it to regret leaving a baby who had just had her first birthday? What use is it for this evil mother? Thinking of an innocent baby, I hear her calling us. 'Umma, Appa' running around the room. Again I cannot sleep.”
Her mother's pain deepened even further on Sun-hwa's birthday in February 1950.
“Today is Sun-hwa's birthday. I am so far away from her. I wept all day. If only I had spent more time with her before leaving, I would not feel such an aching heart.”
Eugenia, the youngest of the couple's six children, was born in New York during the 1950-53 Korean War. Her parents had one child in LA and two others, including Eugenia, after they moved to New York, as the older Kim was hired by Voice of America radio as a translator and broadcaster.
The younger Kim has a clear memory of the day when her family eventually was united with her older sister from Korea on June 5, 1958.
“The day of her arrival was made more memorable because many church members attended, including one friend with a camera who could take color slides and the newspapers sent reporters and photographers to document the unusual story. She told me later something I didn't remember that she had brought on the plane a very small suitcase with a few items including Hershey chocolate bars that Uncle had given her, and when she set it down at home, we children opened it and took her candy, like magpies.”
Sun-hwa, who didn't speak English at all when she arrived in the United States, gradually adapted to her new life there and later became a successful businesswoman.
Rev. Kim passed away in 1987 at 79, 39 years after he migrated to the United States. His wife Han died in 2003 at 94.
“The Kinship of Secrets” by Korean-American writer Eugenia Kim will be released on Nov. 1.
“The Kinship of Secrets” is more than a chronicle of the family's heart-wrenching separation during Korea's turbulent modern history.
The book sheds light on the lesser-known history of Koreans who migrated to the U.S. ― faith-based groups were part of early Korean immigrants to the United States.
Korean migration to the United States began in 1903 when the first wave of Koreans went to Hawaii for jobs working in the sugarcane fields.
From 1903 to 1905, around 7,000 Korean guest workers went to the Pacific island for jobs. The guest worker program, however, was suspended in 1905 as Japan, which later annexed Korea, had suspicion that Koreans overseas would become their enemies.
Later some of the sugarcane workers moved to California seeking jobs with better working conditions, becoming early immigrants to the United States.
After Japan annexed Korea in 1910, there was another wave of Korean immigration to the United States. This time, Koreans moved directly to the United States from Korea.
Many of them were “politically motivated” and obtained their student visas to stay in the United States and launch an overseas campaign for their home country's independence from Japan.
However, little is known that Korean faith-based groups and religious leaders, like Rev. Kim and his brother, were part of the early Korean immigrants to the United States mainland.
“The Kinship of Secrets” is a historically important piece in that the family's unusual separations caused by Korea's tragic history indirectly outline the expansion of Korea's faith-based groups in the United States.