Untold stories about Korean War orphans in Europe

Then North Korean leader Kim Il-sung, center, the late grandfather of current leader Kim Jong-un, speaks to a Korean kid at an orphanage in Swider, 100 kilometers north of Warsaw, Poland, in this July, 1956 file photo. Kim paid a visit to the secluded Polish city on the sidelines of his state visit to Eastern Europe. The orphanage once housed 600 Korean War orphans until 1959 since the first batch of 200 Korean children arrived there Nov. 23, 1951. / Photo from Lee Hae-sung

South Korean kids believed to be among orphans sent to NK

By Kang Hyun-kyung

In the wake of the 1950-53 Korean War, many Korean children were mired in the twists and turns of Korea's turbulent modern history.

After their parents died on the battlefield, some orphans were discovered and protected by North Korean soldiers and initially sent to North Korea. From there, they were loaded onto a train heading to China, then transferred to another train for their destination in Eastern Europe.

The children, aged from 4 to 13, spent their childhoods at orphanages in Eastern European countries, including Poland and the Czech Republic, for years of education and training. They learned local languages and other coursework, as well as North Korean history.

All children sent to Eastern Europe during and after the Korean War were repatriated to North Korea by 1959 and participated in the post-war reconstruction of the country.

Little is known about their lives after they were sent back to North Korea.

There is no accurate information about the number of Korean War orphans in Europe. But some experts estimate it could be nearly 6,000.

In South Korea, there have been media reports about North Koreans in Eastern Europe since 1992. And all of the Korean War orphans in Eastern Europe were reported to have come from North Korea.

Some experts, however, challenge the long-held view, claiming that South Korean kids were among the orphans sent to Europe in the 1950s.

Lee Hae-sung, professor and director of Korean Studies at the University of Wroclaw in Poland, said he has evidence showing some of the orphans were from South Korea.

"One of the children I found during my research of the orphans was from Seoul," he told The Korea Times in an email interview. He said her name is Kim Yeon-sook or Kim Young-sook, noting he didn't know which one is correct, mainly because the Polish pronunciation of her name made it harder to conclude which is the right one. "I was told she was raised in an orphanage in Swider, some 100 kilometers north of Polish capital Warsaw. She was among the Korean War orphans sent to Poland. I obtained information about her in 2011 from Ms. Ewa Willaume who was a teacher there in 1958. The Polish teacher had vivid memories of the Korean girl and said she was cute and polite and was talented in music and choreography."

Professor Lee Hae-sung, left, interviewed Jozef Browlec, center, former director of the orphanage in Plakowice, Poland, for his research work on Korean War orphans in Eastern Europe. / Photo from Lee Hae-sung

Swider is one of the three Polish venues that housed Korean War orphans. The first batch of Korean children arrived in Golotezyzna in 1951 during the war. The orphanages were located in the woods, hardly noticeable from outside the forest. Such secluded venues were chosen carefully to house Korean War orphans because the Polish government at the time reportedly didn't want to let the public know about the Korean children.

Back then, Poland was undergoing post-war reconstruction and the Polish government was concerned about a possible backlash from its people for using resources to raise and educate foreign children.

Professor Lee said Kim Yeon-sook (or Young-sook) in the picture came from Seoul, South Korea. / Photo from Lee Hae-sung

Lee said it's "quite convincing" that some of the children were from South Korea.

In the early stages of the Korean War, North Koreans occupied Seoul and other parts of South Korea and then the U.S.-led allied forces pushed them back. While moving back and forth on the Korean Peninsula, North Korean soldiers found many war orphans.

It makes sense that some of the orphans North Koreans believed their nationals could have been South Korean children.

South and North Koreans are the same race and use the same language. There are no racial or physical traits that can distinguish Southerners from Northerners.

Unlike today, South and North Koreans would have had few cultural differences in the early 1950s because the two Koreas were separated in 1945 at the end of World War II. The Korean War broke out only five years after separation of the two Koreas.

Jolanta Krysowata, a Polish journalist who unearthed the Korean War orphans in Poland, released the documentary film "Kim Ki Dok" in 2006 and the related book "Feathers of Fallen Angels" in 2013 based on her years of research, first raised that some orphans were South Korean.

In director Chu Sang-mee's documentary film "The Children Gone to Poland," Krysowata said nearly half of the Korean War orphans, who were sent to the rural Polish city of Plakowice, were South Koreans.

The film tells the stories of North Korean children who were taken to the orphanage in the secluded woods of Plakowice in 1953. The orphanage once housed over 1,200 Korean War orphans. The documentary film sheds light on those children's quick adaptation to the Polish educational environment and their carefree lives there.

Krysowata said the orphans had medical checkups after they arrived at the orphanage in Plakowice. According to her, Polish doctors found some children had parasites in their lungs and some parasites were from outside Poland. Later they found the parasites were related to epidemics that occurred in South and North Korea, she said.

"Their findings suggest that the children were from both South and North Korea… All the children were sent to North Korea, although some of them were South Koreans. I wonder why South Korea has never requested (the North) to send their children back," she said in Polish and her remarks were translated into Korean subtitles.

The Korea Times contacted the Polish journalist for further details regarding her claim, but she didn't respond.

Eastern European countries are said to have made the offer to take some North Korean orphans after they knew North Korea was grappling with a surge of war orphans.

The bloody Korean War had resulted in some 100,000 orphans.

Professor Lee said South Korea had an estimated 40,000 or more orphans, predicting the number of orphans would be more in North Korea due to U.S.-led air strikes.

In late May 1951, days before North Korea's Children's Day on June 1, then North Korean official Hur Jung-sook, who was in charge of overseas public relations, contributed an op-ed to East European newspapers and pleaded for help for the orphans.

Describing the war orphans as child martyrs, she wrote North Korean mothers were in anguish and remained hopeless because there was nothing they could do to help those poor kids.

Hur's op-ed appealed to some Eastern European countries and they offered to take care of and train war orphans to be future leaders.

The countries that joined the cause include Poland, Romania, Czech Republic and East Germany. China also helped.

Dr. Kim Young-ja, also known by her German name Young-ja Beckers-Kim, speaks during an interview with The Korea Times at the newsroom in Seoul, Feb. 22. Kim and her husband Christopher Beckers are working on the Korea Room project inside Valec Castle in the northwestern region of the Czech Republic to exhibit letters, postcards and photos from North Korean orphans, who studied in the castle in the 1950s, after they were sent back to their home country. The Czech Republic is one of the Eastern European countries that once accepted Korean War orphans for training. / Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul

Digging out once-forgotten Korean War history

In South Korea, Korean War orphans, who had gone to Europe for training in the 1950s, were once forgotten history.

They were brought to light in 1992 when MBC TV released a video clip, acquired from a Polish TV station, featuring Korean children at an orphanage in Poland in 1951.

Since then, some dedicated experts have chronicled the lives of those children to remind South Koreans of the consequences of the war.

Kim Young-ja, also known by her German name Young-ja, Beckers-Kim, has been working on a project to establish a Korea Room inside the Valec Castle in the northwestern part of the Czech Republic to commemorate the Korean children. The castle once housed the Korean War orphans in the 1950s.

According to her, the entire budget needed to make it happen will be around $10,000.
"I will raise funds for the project," Kim, a retired professor of philosophy who lives in Regensburg, Germany, with her German husband, said during a recent Korea Times interview at the newspaper in Seoul.

She said the South Korean government would be unwilling to set aside funds for the project because of a possible public backlash.

South Korean media outlets reported the orphans were all from North Korea. This fueled skepticism about the Korea Room project because South Koreans would think the country has no good reason to finance the project to commemorate North Koreans.

Kim herself also believes all the children, who had studied in Eastern Europe, were from North Korea. But she noted establishing such a facility is necessary because otherwise Korean War history could be forgotten.

She said she wrote letters to both South and North Korean embassies in Berlin to move the project forward. "No one answered me," she said with a sigh.
Kim came to know about the presence of North Korean children in the Czech Republic five years ago, because of her curious husband Christopher Beckers.

"My husband likes the Czech Republic, so he visits the country frequently. About five years ago, he saw a short article about the Korean orphans in a German language newspaper circulated in the Czech Republic," Kim said. "The story awakened him and he has since done research about the Korean orphans."

In the Czech Republic, Kim said it was difficult to trace those children. Situated in the northwest of the country, the village of Valec, which houses the castle, was once the venue for Germans who were forced to flee their country during the Hitler era. "After World War II, the Germans were again forced to move back to Germany. So there were few people there who knew about the North Korean children," Kim said.

But such an obstacle had not stopped Kim's curious husband. After years of endeavors to reach out to people familiar with the Korean orphans, Beckers finally met a lady who taught the North Korean children in Valec Castle.

"She had quite a bit of information about the children and most of them are photos showing the North Korean children. One of them featured North Korean leader Kim Il-sung during his visit to the Czech Republic. She handed over them to my husband," Kim said.

The couple plans to exhibit some 50 pieces, including photos and postcards the children sent to Czech teachers after they were sent back to North Korea, if the Korea Room project is established inside Valec Castle.

In 2016, U.S. online journalist Ryan Socash, right, made a YouTube video of the Korean children. / Courtesy of Ryan Socash

Koreans, Polish and even American journalists are joining hands to unearth Korean War orphans in Europe.

In 2016, U.S. online journalist Ryan Socash uploaded a YouTube video of the Korean children.

Socash, who is based in Poland and runs the online-based media outlet Mediakraft TV, visited the Polish orphanage in Swider, Otwock, to shoot the video. He mentioned Kim Il-sung's visit to the orphanage in July 1956 and quoted the North Korean leader as telling the children "learn hard" and they were to be asked to contribute their knowledge to the post-war reconstruction of North Korea. Kim dropped by Swider during his state visits to Eastern European countries at that time.

"Poland was a communist country at that time, so communist leaders from many countries had visited here," he said in an email interview with The Korea Times. "I suppose the orphanage was an important aspect of the trip as from what I understand they always planned to return those kids to their motherland to serve as citizens. The kids were meant to be here temporarily so North Korea could rebuild. I'm still extremely curious to know what happened to the kids after they returned to North Korea."

Professor Lee Hae-sung said the children who had studied in Plakowice from 1953 to 1959 had sent postcards to Jozef Browiec, who was then director of the orphanage, as well as Polish teachers and social workers after they went back to North Korea.

In those postcards, they said they missed Poland and the Polish teachers and their carefree lives in the orphanage. Some complained about their rugged lives in North Korea as they were mobilized in the nationwide campaign to rebuild the war-torn country. The two sides exchanged postcards and letters until 1960, and their correspondence ended abruptly as North Korean children no longer sent mail to the Polish teachers. "Polish teachers remember that the Korean War orphans were polite and smart. They called the teachers mama and papa, and they had a strong bond together," Lee said.

Lee published two articles about the Korean War orphans in Poland since he accidentally knew about their presence in the country back in 2007 while picking up his child in Plakowice. "My child joined a Korean church's summer camp near the orphanage which is now used as a training center for the Polish Methodist church in Wroclaw. I picked up my child and saw the monument there and asked people in the neighborhood if they were aware of the history. This is how I started my research of the children," he said.

The monument in the woods of Plakowice had engraved letters both in Korean and Polish.
It reads, "We, Korean War orphans from North Korea, studied at this school from 1953 to 1959. We appreciate the Polish teachers for their parental love and caring and will never forget them. By Korean War orphans on July 30, 1957."