Gonggam: empathy for needy people

By Cho Hee-kyoung

In the middle of Seoul's concrete jungle, the old palace of Changdeok Palace remains beautifully preserved. The palace is famous for Biwon, or the Secret Garden. Hidden away at the back of the palace grounds, the Secret Garden is a tranquil green oasis, offering a refuge from the noise, pollution and the constant stream of traffic and people ever present in Seoul. Just nearby, a stone's throw away from the palace, is the office of the Korean Public Interest Lawyers Group (KPIL), the first public interest legal organization in Korea. Like the Secret Garden, it is a green oasis offering support to those who need it.

Established in 2004, KPIL, also known as Gonggam, meaning "empathy" in Korean, is funded entirely through donations and employs full-time lawyers as well as volunteers who engage in public interest litigation, provide legal support and advice to non-governmental organizations, conduct legal education and training and advocate legal reform aimed at protecting the human rights and interests of minorities and the underprivileged in our society.

The recent influx of refugees and economic migrants from other countries to Korea, a society that took pride in its homogeneity for millennia, has highlighted a number of significant related social problems in the country stemming from the changing racial mix, migrant and refugee issues, among other challenges. Gonggam has been at the frontline of dealing with such issues by representing refugees from near and far seeking asylum in Korea; protecting migrant workers' rights; campaigning against people, and so on.

There was the case of a young Vietnamese woman who was deceived into being a surrogate by a Korean couple. The Korean couple, who were married 20 years but did not have children, divorced by agreement reportedly so that the husband could remarry a young wife of child-bearing age. He found Ms. Huang (not her real name), then an 18-year-old girl from Vietnam, through an international marriage broker. He lied about his age, saying he was only 40 (he was in fact 47 at the time), and told Huang that he had been divorced for a long time and had no contact with his former wife.

The couple got married a month after they met and Huang moved to Korea. She quickly became pregnant and gave birth to a daughter. The husband then promptly sent the baby to his former wife to be raised by her. Huang only got to see the baby once through the glass in the hospital nursery.

When she asked her husband to see the baby, the husband would come up with various excuses saying the hospital must look after newborns and after the baby was some months old, that she, the birthmother, was too young to look after the baby and so he sent the baby to the countryside to be raised by his sister.

Huang missed her daughter terribly and was suffering from postpartum depression when she found that she was pregnant once again just two months after the birth of her first child. The new baby felt like a renewed hope to Huang and gave her the strength to carry on. But soon, her husband began asking her for a divorce, telling her that all his assets were in his former wife's name and unless he went back to his former wife, he would end up with no money and no means to raise the baby.

Huang was isolated, spoke almost no Korean and could ask no one for advice. The husband continued to pressure her for a divorce, but promised her that if she agreed, she would have access to the children and he will also provide for her financially. The relentless pressure continued right up until she gave birth to her second child.

Once again, the husband took the baby as soon as she was born and sent her to his former wife without telling Huang. Now severely depressed after having the second baby taken away from her as well, Huang could no longer endure the pressure from her husband and agreed to a divorce. After the divorce was completed, she was given $20,000 and told to go back to Vietnam. She could not get access to her children and the husband moved houses and changed his phone number so Huang had no way of getting in touch with him again. Huang never got to see the two children.

Huang was essentially used as a modern day "ssibaji," the ancient Korean custom of surrogate mothers bought to be used as human wombs if the first wife could not bear children. Gonggam learned of Huang's tragic story and agreed to represent her. It sued the Korean couple for violating Huang's basic human rights, having conspired and tricked her into surrogacy, violating her right to physical integrity, inflicting pain and suffering throughout her ordeal. After four long years, the court ruled in favor of Huang, allowing her monthly access to her children, and ordered the Korean couple to pay for the damage she suffered.

Abuses and exploitation of course occur between and among Koreans, but a minority victim with limited means and without relatives or others to whom they could turn for help is more easily exploited and then discarded in Korean society. That our civil society is developed enough to have an organization like Gonggam is something to be proud of. But the fact that their supply of difficult cases seems endless is not.

Cho Hee-kyoung (hongikmail@gmail.com) is a professor at Hongik University College of Law.